The following transcript is from an interview between Brandon Laws and Molly Kelley on the podcast episode entitled: “Developing for Skills, ‘XenTalks’ and Employee Engagement”
Brandon: Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us for another podcast episode. I have with me a returning podcast veteran, Molly Kelley, and we are so happy to have her again with us today. Today we are going to talk about training and development, and we are going to take it to another level and talk about something we did at Xenium that hopefully other people can replicate. We are in the beginning stages of it, so who knows what it’s going to end up like. Molly is the ring leader and we are going to talk about the whole thing from her perspective.
Let’s start out by talking about retention and development. Retention is a huge issue and part of it is developing for the skills that you actually want in your organization to keep employees engaged and to keep them moving forward. Talk about why that’s important not only for employees but for the company, the culture, all of those things.
Molly: We found that a lot of our client companies and companies we have partnered with over the years consulting, that coming out of that 2009, 2010 economic dip were a little reluctant to start throwing money into salary and compensation increases. A lot of them had gone into a dormant period where they had salary freezes; some of them even had salary decreases. When you’re not sure if the economy is really turning around and you want to retain your top talent and develop and grown them, one way to do that at a one stop basis is to offer training and development opportunities. That doesn’t necessarily translate into an expected or anticipated year over year salary increase.
We had a lot of organizations that were reaching out to us and other training organizations to say, “We want to bring in training and development or executive coaches to help our people learn and grown.” That is a way of investing in them that really matters to folks. We hear a request for training and development from almost every employee in the organization regardless of the industry. People want to know more, they want to grow. In some ways it’s a financial impact that is small for the company at times, but has such long term growth opportunities available for the employee. That was a really interesting realization for me personally as someone who is a big fan of training. It’s a way of rewarding somebody and retaining people and letting them feel like we care them and are investing in them. We see them sticking around and growing and learning within the organization for a long time.
Brandon: It has become a huge component of HR.
Molly: Absolutely. I’m really proud of our training team in particular because we have really become known for that. The strides I’ve been able to see with my clients over the past couple years in terms of we’ve really double-downed on training and have great training programs that we put in front of people. We ask them what they want to do in terms of training and coaching and growth. The return on investment is 3, 4, 5 fold sometimes.
Brandon: When we talk about training and development, are we talking about training for certain skills that are important to that individual’s job, or just leaderships skills, other soft skills, or technology?
Molly: It’s so broad. When I think about training and development I think about everything from a mentoring program—so partnering someone with someone they can grow with on a one-on-one basis causally or formally—all the way up to your more formal training courses on professionalism in the workplace or leadership development coaching. There’s just so many paths you can take and so many venues and methods that you can use for conveying training. So whether that’s mentoring one-on-one, webinars, or giving people access to great business books. We have our book club that instills values and education in conversation and it’s a fantastic way of learning and growing as a team and an individual.
Then, of course, what we tend to think of is a more formal type seminar where you bring in a trainer or you have somebody onsite who is training and developing and helping folks grow.
Brandon: Those can be valuable, but I think people want to learn a lot of different ways, so I think being able to offer different resources is huge.
Molly: You need to be able to meet your learners where they are. You’ve got folks who are auditory learners so it might just be putting on a webinar or podcast in that sense. Then you’ve got folks who learn better through doing, so really mentoring or cross training might be more beneficial to them. It’s really about managers meeting with their employees and figuring out: How do you like to learn and what do you want to learn? Is it something we can encourage and that’s relevant to what we are doing? Maybe it’s not but it would keep you here longer. Maybe I’m in an accounting team role right now but I would love to learn more about presenting in front of a crowd. Maybe I’m going to partner up with someone on the HR side who is doing more benefits conversations with employees or training and development with their clients. It’s important to realize where people are and where they want to go.
Brandon Laws
Brandon: What do you think it does for an individual either in the short-term or the long-term. I think there’s both. I think there’s the long-term implications – you grow, you develop…those sort of things.
Molly: I think engagement is a huge buzz word this year. There are a bunch of studies that have come out recently that are talking about employee engagement. It’s not a buzz word, but something we see in terms of workplace happiness. If people feel like they are engaged—personally engaged with their coworkers and of course engaged with their work—and learning and growing, then that has a huge contribution to employee retention and recruitment.
People who are engaged are going to recruit additional coworkers, friends, colleagues, and family members that are engaged and ready to go. It just adds so much to the culture. Find a way to help people connect with the work they are doing and the impact of their work – kind of the “why.” For us, putting someone who might be in a more of a behind the scenes role (let’s say the payroll department) who isn’t frequently out in front of clients, or with a client company (a manufacturer of a widget), putting that person in front of a customer and hearing how what they do impacts another company, employee or customer can be a huge connection piece. It increases engagement and enthusiasm in general.
Brandon: Let’s switch gears a little bit to what we are doing at Xenium. We have a gap in terms of what we need for our training and development program—our workshops and webinars—and we have a couple people that love training on a regular basis, but we are trying to develop other folks in the organization who we know have a knack for speaking but we need to develop those skills. Talk about why we are trying to develop those skills and what we are doing right now.
Molly: I’d be happy to, I’m so proud of this series! Suzi and I are kind of the one and a half members of the training team right now for Xenium. We have a lot of other folks out there who are training, but in terms or truly dedicated training resources within the training department at Xenium, we are kind of a two-woman show.
We have amazing folks who are out there already training, educating and supporting clients on the business development side. Certainly our payroll team is informing clients about payroll taxes and how these reports impact this, and what you can and can’t do in terms of final paychecks. We spend a lot of our time as an organization educating other people and communicating with them. What we’ve realized is that some of our absolute best assets as a company are, in my mind and in our leaderships’ mind, are our people. The enthusiasm and passion that we have for doing what we do and doing it well just shines. Getting a broader group of folks in front of and adding additional support to all of our clients, contacts, partners and vendors really made a lot of sense.
Suzi’s brain child was to have an informal speaker series internally where we would help folks develop and grow their public speaking communication skills. That might be for me, for instance, harassment training. My role calls for a lot of training in front of large groups. But, we didn’t want to exclude people in the accounting team, business development team, benefits and payroll because the reality is they are doing a lot of communicating also. Part of this is around how you structure your thoughts when you have a message to communicate. How do you communicate that well and with confidence? How do you build credibility, how do you engage people?
The product that we have put out for the team is something called “XenTalks.” It has the feel of a supportive environment for folks to learn and grow and develop their public speaking skills.
Brandon: It’s sort of like the TedTalks but with a Toastmaster feel to it
Molly: A little bit of both. We are borrowing heavily from trainers we’ve had in the past to have train the trainers series, more with the HR team. We are borrowing heavily from great TedTalks that we see. Suzi and I are spending a lot of time watching other people train and give talks and trying to figure out what makes a really good communicator. There are a lot of really great materials out there. My bedside table right now has got 20 books on public speaking! There are just so many ways you can take it. The biggest thing is the community engagement, support and feedback. I train two or three times a week right now, but I could always learn something and grow. Brandon pointing out something that I can do is something different than Rich or Alishia or Tana.
Brandon: You said you have a bunch of books at your bedside on public speaking. I always think reading and research is great, but without action it’s only going to give you so much. The format is something like this where you actually have to step out of your shell. You have to get up in front of your peers, which is harder than anything. I spoke in front of a group of 100 folks before, but getting up in front of them is easier than it is 25 of my peers where I feel like I’m being judged, because I care about what they think.
Molly: I agree. I was more nervous for the launch of our “XenTalks” series than I have been for my 75-100 person trainings. It is because you know these folks so well, but there’s also that sense that there’s no one better qualified or safer to present in front of. If you really tear it down to the bare essentials, these are my teammates who want me to be successful, who know what my typical audience is going to be, and can help shape and craft my public speaking in a way that really resonates on the back-end.
We just launched this two weeks ago on a Tuesday, we are going to do it the first Tuesday of every month. Everyone has their homework and they are worried about it, but the first day of the talks I had so many people come up to me who had signed up and said, “I don’t know if I can do this, I’m kind of nervous, am I going to have to talk today?” We are starting out with baby steps, not throwing people out in the deep end, basically allowing them to present to small groups rather than large groups on day one. People will get out of this what they put in. And there is homework, there is structured reading and watching a TedTalk here and there and really digging in. Again, if people are investing and also finding a speaker buddy or a mentor they can work with then there is really an opportunity to grow from it.
Brandon: It’s funny because you go back to where you started this and it became a need in the training department. You are trying to develop those skills and figure out who out there could be a potential trainer. Out of your needs to grow the department and serve your clients you needed those trainers, but at the same time you’re like, “Wow, well we can actually roll this out because this skill is needed across the organization because we are constantly communicating with clients or trying to communicate with our peers if you’re an internal person.” You fully developed the curriculum to develop the skills that are needed to communicate effectively in public or just in small groups.
Maybe talk about that structure and, you don’t have to go into great detail, but talk about some of the things that we are going to talk about as a group and then maybe some of the homework pieces because I think that’s an interesting component.
Molly: The exciting part for me was trying to figure out what have I seen that really builds a great presentation, whatever it is. That could be just a one-on-one conversation around taxes, or a business developer sitting down with a prospect and really outlining Xenium. We are kind of a different animal, so how do you explain that?
Obviously the place to start is to get over your fear of communicating with another person. Have some format (people would call it an elevator speech): Who am I? What do I do? We took that one step further and said: What am I passionate about? What defines me and my role and my organization and what am I here to talk to you about? The introduction or the icebreaker speech, to use Toast Masters format, is really important in terms of setting the stage for folks.
From there, we’ve got a couple of other layers. How do you build that stage presence, that confidence, and then audience rapport? From there we’ve gone on to additional nuts and bolts. If you’re giving a formal presentation, which a lot of us will be versus just a conversation, how do you structure that talk? There’s a beginning, middle and end. Then there are some commonly accepted tips on speaking – you want to tell people what you’re going to say and then say it and then tell them again what they’ve heard. So how do you tap into adult learner styles and make sure that we are leveraging every resource we can to make sure we are conveying whatever we need to convey? That’s a big piece of the conversation as well.
Establishing credibility. I’ve seen a lot of trainers who get up to lead a training and immediately start knocking themselves down. “Well you probably really shouldn’t be hearing this from me because I screw up disciplinary practices all the time, I can’t even get my dog to obey.” There’s that piece of how do we establish rapport but in a way that really makes us credible as a speaker, so we have a section on that as well.
Then there’s the fun part of it. Suzi and I are story tellers; we like to use a lot of stories in our trainings and statistics. A lot of studies will prove that having some kind of personal connection and not just a bunch of data and dry PowerPoint slides does not go over as well as giving a real world example of what you’re talking about.
Brandon: I find the information sticks longer, too.
Molly: It does. And again, you don’t want to make them up, they have to be real world. That comes from that credibility piece of getting your knowledge in buckets so you can share it with people. The storytelling piece is really important in terms of giving people something they can hang on to.
On the HR side we often do harassment prevention trainings and there are times when we have folks in those trainings who are really resistant to what we are sharing. It doesn’t matter if it’s the law, it doesn’t matter if it’s going to make a great company culture, it’s a tough topic to talk about because perception is a big piece of that. One of the segments we wanted to have in there, it doesn’t matter if you’re talking to a client who is fighting back on, “I don’t want to have to tax that this way,” if you’re a payroll specialist, or if you’re someone in a business development role, a tough prospect who has a lot of overcoming opposition. How do you stay in control and really engage when you’re giving a presentation and how do you overcome opposition and try to persuade people that it’s an idea worth considering?
We’ve gone on from there to realize there are persuasive elements to speaking. Then, I think I’m dreading this as much as anyone else, but physically how you come across even if it’s a one-on-one conversation. We are going to bring in an element later where we are going to video tape everyone. It’s Suzi’s philosophy, and I don’t want to admit it but probably mine, too, that seeing yourself train – if you have an annoying habit you will find a way of eliminating it.
Brandon: That’s what I always tell people. If you want to figure out if you say the “uhms” and “uhs” come on a podcast and listen to the recording after. It’s tough to listen to your voice but you get used to it after awhile.
Molly: It is and there’s nothing like that self critique. Usually we are our own worst critics and sometimes that can be to an unhealthy degree. But having a supportive environment to give that feedback will be really helpful. We’ve got a lot of fun things coming up over the course of 12 months. At that point I don’t know if we will start the cycle over again or maybe we would change the format and have it be more of a supportive environment for practice. It doesn’t have to be speeches or trainings, although, we tend to focus on that, but even if you’re in a role where you aren’t conversing often, your coworkers are happy to have you present, too.
Brandon: I’m fascinated to see where it goes because obviously you realized there’s a gap in this area. We are going to develop this program and here’s what we are hoping we are going to get out of it, but maybe it can turn into something much more. I’m hoping at the very end of this we can come on again and talk about how the employees developed and whether or not you get more trainers out of it; hopefully it’s both.
Molly: I would say there’s a third piece that we haven’t really talked about but that I’ve certainly seen with the book club and other cross team task forces working on internal problems. When we had the first session of “XenTalks” almost a month ago, we had about 35 people signed up in a company size of 67, that’s really great! A lot of folks are offsite and unable to attend, but that’s still a lot of interest and they were from almost every department in our organization. We had representation from payroll, benefits, business development and HR, and that is really an incredible thing. What’s fun about that is if it becomes nothing else than an engaged community then that’s fantastic. That’s one thing I’ve loved about Xenium is being able to be able to network across departments. Even for the folks who aren’t presenting in public, being able to do something together can be a really great team builder.
Brandon: I do love these programs because even though it’s intended for a specific purpose, like the book club as you eluded to, you are trying to develop new skills and expand your knowledge, but the other component is I’m in a silo most of my day. I’m working on marketing things, I’m at my desk working on technical things. The book club allows me to share ideas with people across different departments. I think I develop relationships with these folks and I trust them. Without that or “XenTalks” or some of these other training and development opportunities, I don’t think that would ever happen and I don’t think I would be as engaged as I am. If there’s a lesson for the listeners, these programs on the surface seem like they could be a huge investment but it has unintended positive consequences.
Molly: I would agree. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback already, granted it’s only been session one and no one has had to do public speaking yet, but my anticipation is that people will really grow from it and enjoy it. That’s the side goal too, is to have fun together as a group.
Brandon: We will have you back at the end or maybe even in the middle if we have good results. Hopefully not bad results, but we will talk about that! I think it’s worth talking about because people, especially those who are probably listening to this, are trying to figure out where to start when there’s this gap in certain skills. They are trying to figure out where to go from here. Hopefully this can help guide some people.
Molly, thank you for coming on and sharing. I’m excited about the program and we will see where it goes from here.
Molly: It’s been a delight! Keep on speaking, keep on doing your homework.
Brandon: I need to get on that! Our guest has been Molly Kelley.
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