002 - When Growth Confronts Your Ego

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Our egos are not our amigos. You got to remember that your ego is not your amigo. If you show up one more time with that, they will fire you.

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The voice you just heard is the voice of our next guest, Marcy Anderson. Marcy is the current chief human resources officer at Quantic Bank and the former customer service supervisor at Southwest Airlines. She's talented, she's passionate, and she's a little... Oh, you know... Disruptive. And I'm sure they're expecting me to drop the F-bomb tonight, but I don't think I put it in, so I'm just going to go ahead and go...

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Let's go.

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This is the Leading Through Growth podcast. And my name is Tony Sanders, your host. And what you're gonna hear in today's episode is not something that you could learn about or find in a leadership book. This is something that you only get through lived experiences. When Marci describes HR as empathy in action, you could really tell she means it with every fiber of her being. She's passionate, she's talented, she's smart, she's experienced. And I had to dig deep with her to figure out where that philosophy comes from.

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I don't know that I ever looked at it differently, Tony. My first, I didn't like grow up as a kid and go, I can't wait to be 53, which I will be in two weeks, so, and be a taro, right? I didn't grow up going, I can't wait to be an HR. I mean, honestly, I don't think a lot of us do. I'm a teacher by trade. I am a seven through 12 English and journalism teacher.

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I graduated early. I looked just like them. And that was during that era of, oh, you know, the fourth grade teacher.

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and the student, right? So I just felt too close to the students and didn't want to do it. Took a job with Southwest Airlines. Started with Southwest Airlines straight out of college. And that was it. That was the foundation of how you treat people. Therefore, it doesn't matter if you stay in aviation, if you go and be a...

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computer science person, if you go into business analytics or finance, it really doesn't matter which segment of the business you're in. It's about taking care of your people, right? We at Southwest were never the golden rule. We were the platinum rule. Treat people better than they expect to be treated.

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And when you do that, you naturally reap the rewards of it. I mean, how many Gallup surveys are out there that say, right, people who feel appreciated will give more discretionary effort toward work. So if you took every role in the business,

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as empathy and action, your business will move down the field to the goal line faster and in more uniformality, if that's the right word for it. But you're going to get to your goal faster because when you take care of your people, your people take care of you. So I can't say that my philosophy or conviction has ever changed because from the time I was barely 22, that's

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That was what I knew. I knew work hard, bust your ass, turn the plane, but take care of your people.

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Take care of your people. That's one of those things that's just like so easy to say. And we're all like, yeah, when we hear it. But it's one of those things that's easy to do when things are stable. But when you're in a fast paced growing environment, it's easy to lose track of. Growth introduces friction. Speed increases, complexity increases, expectations increase. So question then becomes, what does it actually look like to take care of your people inside a growing organization?

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Southwest is very unique because pretty much every position at the airport is a union, but it's not the same union. As customer service, I was an international association of machinists.

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Do not ask me how they represented customer service, but that was the union. However, the person, now you got to think back to the days when you had plastic boarding passes, right? Because I'm from that era. I'm from the era that we weighed you before we interviewed you. And if you didn't make weight, we walked you back out and said, come back when you can.

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Shocking, but that was within our generation. But that person who took that plastic boarding card, different union. The person who loaded the Cokes and the peanuts, different union. The person who loaded the bags in the belly, different union. So you get my idea, right? We had all these different unions and a typical union environment is that's my job. I get paid to do my job.

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You get paid to do your job. You don't do my job. That would cause a union issue. But at Southwest, that was not our focus. Our focus was turn the plane in 20 minutes, get the people on and get them to their destination because they're trying to get to their destination. This is a pass through. So it didn't matter when the flights were running late, when the flights were overselling, when the flights were crazy.

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If that meant I was in the belly of the plane helping to get the bags in, I was in the belly of the plane. I love Marcy's take on this because most companies defend job descriptions like there are some barriers or boundary lines never to be crossed. But what she's describing, she's describing alignment around a purpose and a goal. And that's really what true leadership and being a part of a team is all about.

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then we can actually put our egos to the side. My working geniuses are discernment and enablement. So doing those assessments, they don't define you, but they help guide you, right? I realized that discernment and enablement, so you can throw me an idea. I can discern whether it can be done or not or how it can be done.

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And enablement, I help you. I help you achieve your goals. I can over enable. It's like strength binders and the radio buttons, right? Be careful because you can dial things up too high and you can dial them too low. So finding how to navigate that diplomacy or balance. And so my enablement helps me get in relationships with the businesses. It also helps me guide them

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teach them, train them so they can go off and do it on their own. A lot of time, HR just expects you as a leader to know how to do it or to go do it, or that you have to sit through a two-hour training course on how to supervise in order to supervise when honestly, sometimes it's just taking that amount of time. And I call it swimming, you know, like leaders are swimming in water with sharks all around them.

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They don't know what to do. They're flailing. A training class might give a little assistance, but it's going to get waterlogged and it's not going to help them. So I believe in getting in the water with them. I believe in swimming with them, coaching them through it, doing parts of it with them initially. And then like any type, right? Any type of job skills training, you then start backing up because they're doing it independently. That's more of how I believe that.

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we should play versus let me sit in front of a classroom, give you this session, and then good luck, go apply it, right? Where's the through in that? So my view has always been a little bit different, but it's probably tied to that working genius of enablement. And I'll dial it up for new leaders or leaders that need

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a little guidance, coaching. And then as they start to get it, I will dial it back. HR can be industry agnostic if you are a good business-oriented professional because it's not about, right, the fundamentals of how you deal with people

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is doesn't matter what industry you're in, especially if you focus it the way, you know, you and I talked about the very beginning, empathy and action, but you have to learn the business. Sometimes people look at it as you have to have the compliance first and then play the business. And I look at it maybe a little bit different. When you understand the business, you can make the compliance fit.

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I mean, I am. Let's make sure we lay that on the line. While I am a very empathy and action person, I am also a very compliance person in the sense of compliance is your foundation. You can't build on a sand foundation. It's a solid foundation. But if you don't know the business, you can't build that foundation quite right. And that's where when I was brought into Quontake, that's really what I was brought in to do.

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was to help build that foundation. And because I have it, then when the business leaders are unsure of things, I have it as my appendices, the cards in my pocket. I don't throw out, we can't do that because the policy says. I throw out, well, what if we did? Have we thought about, can we consider? And then have that in my pocket for if push comes to shove, right? I don't start with the policy. I figure out how to help them understand how actions they can take

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our better actions, and it just so happens, just so happens to align with policy.

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Marcy is a phenomenal leader, and you can tell that by all the wisdom that she's sharing. You can also tell that that wisdom was gathered in earn in action, in lived experiences. And that means that there were times where she had to get out of her own way. There were times where she had to even overcome her own resistance in order to grow.

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I'll tell you. I'll tell you a story. You want a story? Absolutely. So back in the day, in the way, way back machine, when you walked uphill five miles to work every day in the snow. In the way, way back machine, the company I was working for was implementing a new HRIS system.

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I won't identify the HRIS system. That would be unfair to them, but I did not like it. My expertise at that point was in recruiting. They were using the whole HRIS system, which, let's be real, the majority of HRIS systems are built for the HRIS side, the information side. They're not built for recruiting.

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learning and development. They're not built for recruiting, right? The external pieces, they're just built for a core. And then they bolt these things on and they're oftentimes POSs. Everyone can, you know, define what they want that to be.

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POS to define, but they're POSs, which is why so many people go out and they get ISEMs or Jobbyte or one of the other, Taleo, if that still exists. I've not been in recruiting for a while. Anyway, workable is what we use today. But you see my point. We use these bolt-on systems. The company wasn't willing to use bolt-on systems. Therefore, I was told I had to use the system for recruiting.

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It was a POS. And my attitude went into every implementation with exactly that. It's a piece of piece of poo. It's a piece of poo. It does not work. I don't I don't want it. You know, it it it. And I I got pulled in by my leader.

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I'll never forget this. And he said, if you show up, little bunny foo-foo hopping through the, if you show up one more time with that, they will fire you. Because the reality is we're implementing the system. You need to make it work.

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Holy crap, right? Like the light bulb turned on. Cy Wakeman came down from the skies and she said, this is the sandbox you are in. Success must be in this sandbox. And that was it. That was it. So every situation I go into, I go into with the mindset of what does success look like? And when you go in with what does success look like, you don't go in with what won't work.

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You go in with an open mindset on figuring out how to make it work because that's the sandbox you're in. Right? Everyone's like, think outside the box. Think outside the box. I don't believe thinking outside the box is always the right answer. Thinking within the confines of the box and figuring out how to redesign it or how to be successful inside of it. That's what success is.

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I love that story because it shows what growth is really about. True growth confronts identity. She had to make a shift not on the outside of her, but on the inside of her. The tools didn't change. The system didn't change. The business didn't change its mind. But she had to shift from resistance to responsibility. And that's what growth is all about. When we think about empathy in action, it's not just about how you manage yourself. It's also about how you lead and respond to others when they struggle.

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Will you be my accountability buddy? When I'm in the room and I'm starting to tip, will you help bring me back? And that's the trust and psychological safety that comes from learning the person before you learn the process. And so I think people can get there. Their comfort level will be to turn it down. My job is to be beside you and help shine a light on it and start turning it up.

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I'm not saying you won't be a flip-flopper, but as more we shine the light on it and write incentive plans, compensation plans. You incent the behavior you want. Is it not the same with empathy? When you are empathetic,

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you get more benefit, right? You get more discretionary effort. You get more caring, more trust, more loyalty. When you do that, then you get better performance. So when you don't, you have higher turnover. You have employee relations issues. So again, when you swim in the water with the leader and you're like, hey, look, like which one would you...

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You know, would you rather let's play the game of would you rather, which one would they rather? They'd rather have the employee who's loyal, who can do their job independently, who raises a flag when they make a mistake. And the people, people will not admit they made a mistake if they have a leader that isn't empathetic.

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Right? And then all of a sudden the world is blowing up. The leader's in trouble, guilty by association. And the leader's like employee, why didn't you tell me? Because the employee is scared to tell you because you're gonna flip out. You're gonna flip out, right? The world explodes.

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This part really resonated with me because I've worked for that leader before that was the type of person you'd want to hide a mistake from. And it wasn't because you didn't want them to know about the mistake necessarily. You just didn't know how they were going to respond to it. And that's when it clicked for me that empathy is not about lowering standards. It's about lowering fear. I want you to feel comfortable and safe enough to know that if you bring me a mistake, I'll approach it with a level of understanding that you could be safe in sharing whatever you're struggling with.

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with. You can't do that if you don't have trust. If you don't have a relationship, you cannot tell them something they don't want to hear. In my supply chain position, we had done Strength Finder. I had done Strength Finders. I was a business partner and really like the head of HR for the business, right? And I worked with the white-collar side because supply chain has the beyond-the-turn style and they had the white. And so I had a white-collar side, but

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I had a guy. I had a guy. All of them. Still text with them. Always do. Like, everyone's like, why don't you go into a consulting? Because you people get it from me for free. Like, well, you won't pay me because you've always gotten it for free. Anyway, he and I got into this intense fellowship. Intense fellowship over a job. You know, in the job. And he told me to get out of his swim lane. And I.

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I laughed and I'm like, buddy, like people are my swim line. So let's, let's, let's look at that differently. But we, we had this intense fellowship and yet we could bring it back. We could bring it back because he has a, he has a belief as a top five in his strength finders. Well, you know, when you have belief as your top five, like you're a ride or die on that belief.

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I want you to listen up to this next part, because if you're leading through rapid change or even if you're early in your career, this is something that we all should think about and be aware of. And way back in 2012, I love the way, way back machine. I had a gal named Lydia who worked for me and my friend Lisa. We're still very close. We actually get together. We have a text string and we haven't worked. We haven't all worked together since 2017.

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but 2013 for most of us. And yet we're very, you know, that's, that's the result of building a good work relationship. Anyway, um, Lydia said to me a long time ago, she was an HR coordinator. And now, by the way, she's like this special director in the FDA under like very cool, very cool job. You can be anything you want to be believe in yourself. Let's go back to bad

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The best thing that has ever happened to me was sitting outside your office and the fact that you don't close your door. She said, I got to hear you. I got to watch you. I got to witness things because you didn't shut your door. I learned just by sitting outside your door. So I think that's breathe. Pick up the phone.

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and get to know people. I'll fly anywhere, I'll go anywhere. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was hard to get out of jammies for you this morning. I've almost kept them on the bottom, but I did get fully dressed for you. I did get fully dressed for you. That makes me feel so happy. I'm passionate about it. And you can say that's generational. You can say generational says presence matters, but I believe presence matters. When you have presence, then you can be remote, but you come back for touch points.

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Because if your CEO can walk next door and talk to someone versus calling you, he's going to walk next door. Sure. So what are you doing to make them believe that they should walk next door? They should call you.

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Leading through growth requires more than a strategy. It requires emotional discipline. The discipline to check your own ego. The discipline to stay close to your people. And the discipline to respond instead of reacting. And sometimes it starts with remembering your ego is not your amigo. Thank you, Marcy, for sharing your story. And thank you all for listening.