Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Wendy, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you on board today.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:05] Speaker A: I want to ask you, is there a wrong way to give feedback?
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Give us, give us a few examples of the horror shows that you may have experienced.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: You know, it's like criticism. People think regardless if it's your friend, if you're a manager and you're talking to employee or a coworker, they often think that criticism is feedback, and it's not. Criticism is not feedback. That's just trying to prove to somebody that you're right and they're wrong when it's not at all going to change their mind on how to do things or how to say things. So everything needs to be, especially at work or even just in your personal life, having a positive spin on things just because somebody made a mistake or is doing something wrong intentionally or unintentionally, if you're not going to give them feedback in a way that gets them to go, oh, yeah, I see, your way is the better way, then they're just not going to listen to you. It's going to go in one ear and out the other if it comes out as negative. So criticism is not feedback. Criticism actually stops our brain from learning because our brain says, you're a danger. I'm going to stop listening to you. So when you literally say to your kids, I'm talking to you till I'm blue in the face, it's because you're probably doing it in a negative manner and their brain blocks you out because you're a danger.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: So we, on the other hand, and let me play devil's advocate here for a moment, we can also just sugarcoat things to the nth degree that nothing gets through. How do we find that balance? What is the, like, guide me on what are the best approaches or how do I think about really giving that constructive feedback to help somebody to get from point A to point B.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Sure. So I'm glad you brought up the sugar coating because it's all over my website. Wendy Sellers, the HR lady. No sugarcoating. But that doesn't mean I'm a jerk about it. Right. It's just like, okay, let me tell you how you are doing this and the effects on other people. And that might be a one way to get people to change the way they're doing something. Because nobody, well, not nobody, but most people don't want to hurt other people. So it's really about, I call it a feedback sandwich. Where you think about a sandwich, you know, there's Two slices of bread, and then there's all filling in the middle. And the bread's the really good part, even though it's not good for you. But if you're doing feedback, giving some kind of feedback with starting out the pieces of bread, hey, you've been in my life, or you've been at this job for six months now. Things have been going really good. However, what happened yesterday cannot happen again. This is what happened and this is what I need to happen next time. And then you end it with the other piece of bread. Just say, you know, I'm glad we're talking about this and we're going to get through this together. That's it. Super quick.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: I love that. What about when things are complicated? It's not a behavior that, you know, people have bad days, people, you know, sometimes mess up. That's a thing. You know, if it's clear to them and to us that it can't happen again, you're reinforcing that feedback. That's okay. But what about when situations are just complicated, when there's multiple parties involved, when it's not really 100% clear what happened? How do you navigate those situations where you yourself are asking myself, like, I don't know what the right thing to do is?
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So thank you for asking that. You know, it's a cross between having some kind of workplace investigation, if this is at work, or even if it's not, like, okay, let's get down all the facts. Let's not let the emotions overrule this conversation or this situation. Even though emotions are important, we all have them, like it or not. Empathy is important in our lives. But let's figure out what the facts really are. Is there finger pointing going on just because somebody doesn't like the other person? Or is the fact of the matter that, yes, you know, this person over here made a mistake and therefore caused the team to miss a deadline, for example, or make a major mistake. So you have to learn how to investigate. And maybe you're not the right person. Maybe somebody else needs to get involved because you're too close to the project or you know, the mistake that happened. And so often we have to get an external person involved. They could be external to the project, for example, or external to the entire company, depending on how serious it is. With me, as an HR consultant, you know, my clients know, just text me first. Text me, call me, email me. Don't go handling this on your own, especially if it's super complicated, because you're probably not going to Know what laws and lawsuits and court cases have, you know, made decisions a little bit different and now you need to handle a different way today than you did yesterday on a similar case. So I really like to get, you know, the experts involved.
The other thing that I really love to do is I love committees. I love solving problems with committees, whether it's committee of neighbors solving a neighborhood problem or a committee of employees, not just managers, but actual subject matter experts on the issue to say, all right, all hands on deck here. Let's have a. It could be a short term committee, it could only be, you know, it's only there for a month to solve an issue. Or it could be a long term committee where it says, okay, we're going to try to figure out how to change our policies or time off policies, you know, attendance, whatever it is, get people involved that they can speak up and speak on behalf of the company and their co workers in a safe area. And then, and only then are you really going to make change.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: What are the advantages that that structure, kind of the committee structure brings?
[00:05:43] Speaker B: So I'll talk about the disadvantages first, because the disadvantages are it's time consuming, right? And so now you went from one person making a decision to you're paying five, six, seven, seven people to make a decision and they're meeting on a regular basis, therefore they can't do their actual job. So that's the disadvantage. Now the advantages are though, that people feel like they were involved in the decision. We'll just say we're changing holidays, right? We're going to add holidays or we're going to switch out holidays. But you actually asked a bunch of employees and managers, not just, you know, leaders or managers, but employees as well. Hey, go out and get feedback from your co workers. And then when a policy is changed or procedures changed, those employees that are out there, you know, yapping their mouth about it can say their coworker is going to go, oh, I was part of that decision, by the way. Oh really? So we did have somebody representing us. So it's just, you know, getting people involved, getting people, the subject matter experts involved. I just find way too often we make decisions from the top and we forget to ask the person at the bottom of the ladder, the new person, somebody who's been in a role for, for a while. It doesn't matter what their role or their title is or even their experience, but they usually know what's going on and we just think we do.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Okay, so we have the committee where we're taking A group of people. It's probably not going to be more than five to 10 people. We'll put in them a room. What about these surveys, right? You can technically, you know, send out a five minute survey to the whole company and just get the, you know, where people stand in a few minutes. So what's the difference between, let's say these survey approaches and a committee approach?
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Well, I like to use them both together actually. So use the survey. Have the committee help develop the survey with an expert because you want to make sure the survey questions are valid and reliable and not leading into answers or getting people to answer in a certain way. But if you have them combined together, more sets of eyes looking at the results is better. So a survey, the issue with the surveys, which I love surveys by the way, but if you already have a, maybe a trust issue within your organization, people aren't answering that survey. They're like, no way, they don't trust you. They feel like they're going to track it on. You're going to track them on the phone, on your computer, you're going to figure out who answered what. So they just choose not to answer or they just do yes, no and that's it, and no other information. So surveys only work if you already have some kind of trust, which if you don't have any trust in your organization, you definitely need to get a third party involved in those surveys so that there's a go between to say, okay, this consultant or this third party company are the only ones that are really going to see who said what or tracking, you know, IP addresses, for example. But if you can convince your employees to say, all right, we're going to have a third party involved, we're not going to get the results.
You know, please be honest. If you don't act on those surveys, they're never going to give you your feedback ever again and their engagement is going to go from bad to worse.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: Unfortunately, I've been on the executive side where even though they were anonymous, based on the verbalization of the text, they're like, oh, this sounds like this person and assumptions were made. And it's like, if you're going to do this, why did you even make it anonymous?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Right? Why did you even make a survey? Oh well, we're just going to judge that person even though they're right on the survey, even though they're given the feedback that everybody knows is right, we're just going to judge that person because we had one issue with them one time ago, five years ago, and so again, you know, getting an external person involved and making sure that that person meets with the committee who is rolling it out internally and so that they could explain to their coworkers and the rest of the employees like, oh, so and so is involved. This is the company that's involved. We made sure that, you know, the survey is not going to be trackable. Here's some information. I mean, if there's no trust, people aren't going to believe it anyway, so. But, you know, I love having surveys and committees. I'm just a big committee person because the more hands, more diverse ideas, a diversity of thought, the more of that you have in decision making, the more information you're going to get that really is truthful and honest and that can affect real change in any kind of company, whether it's a small business or a, you know, ginormous business. Yes.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: And that point that you made before, that really, through the committee process, you're really gaining buy in, right? You're really bringing people in to own the decision. I think that's so important. Here's the thing that has happened to me. You put out the survey, right? You have a committee with or without employees. You get answers that you don't like.
Right. And one example of this that a lot of people are struggling with nowadays is the back to office, how many days, stuff like that.
Unanimously, almost, employees said they don't want to be back to office, you know, four days a week.
The executive team didn't like that. How do you, how do you deal with these conflicts of what the employee wants versus what the employer believes that needs to be done?
[00:10:50] Speaker B: I mean, that's, that's a hard, you know, hard decision right there. Because why does the employer want this? Is it just because they don't want to be paying, you know, rent or whatever it is? Oh, we're paying for it anyways. People should be filling the seats. Well, that's a stupid reason because if you have a lease, no matter what, you know, it's still not going to change the productivity of employees if you have that expense or not. So figure out how to rent, re rent out that space or use it for something else.
But really, you know, executives need to, in my opinion, look at the bottom line. If you're spending more money with turnover and recruiting, which is incredibly expensive than you are with, say that rent, and you're still getting the same results in the end, why does it matter if they're in person or not? I found that because of the pandemic. You know, many Companies went remote, and then they stayed that way. Employees liked it, they ended up saving money. But now they're saying, oh, we're having productivity issues and we're going to blame it on remote workers. And it's like, no, you've been having productivity issues for the past 20 years. Don't blame them. Working from home on the issues. Why don't you train your managers on how to be managers and then go the next step, Train all your people on how to be leaders instead of pointing the finger at the employees. If executives can't grab that mirror and say, I think we're part of the problem, then they're not going to change anything by forcing somebody back to the workplace or not. So it's really about having those real, raw conversations without pointing the finger, even though you kind of are. But, you know, without pointing the finger of saying, hey, executives, why don't you look at the reality of the situation? Unfortunately, with employee relations and employee engagement and productivity and revenue, it takes a long time to measure change. You know, it's not just one thing that change, which is working at a desk at. In the workplace versus working at a desk at home. All these other things have changed at the same time. So, you know, really figuring out what, what can we truly change and measure that over, you know, three months, six months, nine months. But this human thing's hard.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: I think the problem is, right, that there are things that you see and there are things that you don't see, or their results are incredibly delayed. Right. So if I, if the employees come into the office, then, you know, you can jump over, you can have a discussion. There's a. There's a very tangible feeling of progress. Right. You know, what people are seeing, doing, you know, that they're productive, they're coming to you, you're asking questions. And many times in the remote environment, there's just this silence.
And it's also very uncomfortable to, you know, anybody worth them salt. They don't want to micromanage their employees. So it creates this uncomfortable feeling of, well, how do we, how do we even create a structure to make sure that everybody's productive and to have that interaction that we don't have when we're face to face. So there's some, there's some very simple things working against remote work. What are the strategies or practices or processes that you've seen that have worked to enable strong and healthy remote environments?
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so I would say, you know, kind of like what we're doing right now, getting on a. Getting on a You know, a zoom or whatever technology that you use to have live face to face conversations. It would be the same as if you were sitting over here. But guess what? Now you have to maybe, you know, schedule it with me or at least give me a, you know, a two minutes heads up versus pop it in and interrupt me every seven minutes.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: So there's actually pros about the remote work. But for whatever reason, many companies are afraid to do what we're doing right now, get on camera with their employees. I mean, if that's going to be your culture to say, hey, we're going to have live conversations all the time as long as the employee knows that. So they, I don't know, can shower and you know, you know, look presentable and make sure, you know, if they are working out of their kitchen, they could at least have a blurred background on or a fake background so you don't get to see into their personal life. But letting them know in advance when they start working there or the minute you went remote to say, this is what our culture is. We have, we do have meetings, they're not an hour long, they're only seven minutes long. But we do meet every single day and we do expect you to be on live. So be presentable. I don't care if you wear a T shirt or no, you do have to wear a suit. You know, so just being honest, it's all about communication. Shocker, right? It's all about transparency, communication and ongoing communication. But you'd be surprised how many companies that are either 100% remote or mostly remote across their, their work teams, they have amazing cultures. I mean, I was just on a training recently with a company and they, they did let me know, hey, before the training, before you start doing a training, it was a live training, just to let you know, this is what we do. And I loved it. I like wanted to work there. They got on and everybody was on and talking about their weekend. And then there was like a little, kind of like a little skit, a little game that they play, like favorite color or something like that. And everybody was in it because it wasn't the first time they did it. You know, if it was the first time, I think it would have just been like awkward. This is weird. But they would just had such a fun environment. And then we got into the meat of the matter and talked about the topic that we were training these managers on. And at the end there was even more of, okay, this is when our next meeting is, you know, in doling out tasks and dates. And then they were. They were talking about a system that they were implementing, and everybody was very casually dressed and everything, but they all knew they were going to be on video and that they all needed speak. So I just was blown away by that and was like, I'm going to tell all my clients about this because you can really change the culture about. It wasn't a surprise that we were going to be on video and having this conversation.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen a lot of successful implementations of the standup meeting. Right.
I think one of the issues is that the dynamics changes over time and that what may have worked, you know, six months ago, suddenly you're putting out one of these surveys, nobody wants to stand up anymore.
Have you seen that happen? How do companies respond in that situation?
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I mean, let's face it. I mean, we're in an age right now almost, you know, into 2025, that technology is changing so fast.
Processes are changing so fast. I mean, you can't even have, like a policy anymore that doesn't change every six months because of laws or because of culture and, you know, new things that are coming out. So the days of like, oh, we'll change that policy or that process, you know, next year and three years from now, you got to be on it now. You've got to be listening to your employees. And if they're saying they don't want to have the standup meeting, that doesn't mean that they get that decision. Maybe we say, well, no, this is what our process is and we're going to continue to look at it every three months, but for now, this is what we're going to do. Thank you for the feedback. Here's what we've decided, however, we are going to continue looking at this, you know, three months from now, not three years from now, three months from now. So letting them know, I heard you, and this is why we've made that decision. We can't always tell our employees why we've made every decision, but if we can share it with them, because then those few times when you can't tell them why you made a decision, then they're going to be like, okay, well, you usually share most things with me, so I still trust you.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Right. I think there's a point about the binary view of it. Right. So, you know, there's one thing to say, okay, this is not working. We don't want it. But then there's another thing to say, well, this is not working. We acknowledge that maybe we change the process of what we're doing in these standups. So I think there's also a middle ground in terms of, well, why isn't this working? Maybe we take another stab at it or maybe whatever processes we've used so far.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Right. And then how about, you know, if you're, if you're having a stand up meeting or you just know, you know, every day at 11:15 we have a 15 minute Zoom call or whatever it might be. How about we have an agenda so that everybody who's going to be there knows, even if it's an ongoing agenda, like we're just talking about the deadline, are we going to meet it today? You know, that's fine. But if it's an impromptu meeting, even if it's just me and you saying, hey, let's get on a call in 10 minutes, I want to know why, so that I'm prepared.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: I would definitely point the finger here at the executive culture.
I kind of see executives expecting the employees to have agendas and to be prepared, but then they come into meetings unprepared themselves.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: So I think this is definitely a top down thing here. If I as an executive come into every single meeting that I manage with an agenda and clearly communicate that ahead of time, allowing the employee to be prepared, like they're going to do the same thing 100%.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: I know, shocker, right? I mean, this is brain surgery here, but really is, you know, I write about and I teach about personality styles and personality traits and you know, certain personality styles, like they, they want all the details ahead of time and they're not gonna, they're gonna feel very, very uncomfortable even having a conversation without doing hours and hours and hours worth of analysis, looking at reports or other personalities are like, okay, I can wing it. There's no right, there's no wrong. Well, for certain roles there is. But you know, you should just expect that everybody is at least looking over the agenda and being prepared and know that, know who's on your team and that certain personalities are, you know, an impromptu meeting in 10 minutes, you're not going to get what you're looking for because they want to be prepared and they're not going to be prepared in 10 minutes.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I think those two points are so important. Right? A, even the people that feel more comfortable handling situations of ambiguity. Right. Like you said, winging it. Even those people appreciate a heads up because then they can get their mind in the right mindset. But on the other hand, when you really do need a lot of data and you really do need to prepare because they're going to ask me about the quarterly numbers and I need to pull up those reports and analyze them. You're just not going to get the productivity that you need from that meeting, which I think is really a really undervalued point.
Wendy, you mentioned different personality types, and I want to tie this back to what we talked about before. Feedback. Is there kind of one way we talked about. I know you didn't want to call it the shit sandwich, but, you know, is there one way to give feedback or does it really also depend on the person you're talking to?
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it definitely does depend on not only the person you're talking to, but the topic as well. Is the feedback just casual feedback to help them whether you're a manager or not. Like, hey, I've noticed this. If you do this differently, maybe, you know, it will help improve your results. Well, is that a mandate or is that a suggestion? And if it's a suggestion that they don't take it, you know, it should end right there. That's it. Like there should be held, no consequences held over them. Now, if it's a mandate or, or if you don't do this and there's consequences, you better be telling them the consequences. And that's the biggest thing that I feel that, you know, humans as a whole, whether you're a manager or you're in your personal life, they don't explain the consequences. They just say, don't do that again, okay. Or what? Or nothing. Okay, well then I'm going to keep doing it again.
So consequences are super, super important. And then understanding that not everybody understands our terminology.
And so we have to change the way we communicate based on who is sitting on the other side of that table. And regarding personality styles, yes, you definitely need to adjust your language. So I do training on disc, which is a derivative of Myers Briggs. And I just like it because it's four letters. It makes it a lot easier. I'm super high off the charge D, which is dominant and direct. And if I'm talking to somebody who's on the opposite side, which is the S, stable, supportive, they are going to probably, unless they've learned otherwise, they're going to just say yes to me. Oh, can you do this for me today? Yes. And what I didn't realize is they have 10 other things, including their kids doctor's appointment and then they're turning around canceling that because I didn't say, hey, what's on your plate today? Oh, okay, well, we can do this tomorrow. I didn't ask the right question. I just went, I'm going to dump stuff on you versus asking the right question. And so you have to get to know your employees. And this works at home, too. You have to get to know, you know, your neighbors, your spouse, your family members. And so you can say, all right, I need to spin this conversation in a way they understand, even though it's going to make me uncomfortable for five, ten minutes. Too bad. You know, get over it. Get uncomfortable so that you can get what you want. To be quite honest.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: And, you know, I would argue that to a certain degree, if you're to the level where it's, you know, this, you have to do this, and here's the consequences. To a certain degree, you're already failing. And really, the discussion starts at a negotiation where you're trying to get to a certain. A certain level of alignment. Here's my point.
Would you. Is there different negotiation tactics or approaches with different people, or is it just one style that fits all?
[00:24:30] Speaker B: No, I mean, every single human being is unique. I mean, I just talked about personality styles, but we have so many other things. You know, life expectations, experiences, education.
Have they lived in other parts of the world, different language barriers, generations, you name it. You know, there's. Every single human being is unique. And so you have to get to know your employees on an individual basis so that you can say, okay, this is the way I operate. But when I'm talking to Wendy over here, I need to change it a little bit so that we can both get through this conversation and understand it. And she walks away with marching orders and. Or consequences if it doesn't get done. And so I'm not a master negotiator or anything, but I've been around long enough, unfortunately, to know that I royally screwed up. And I've learned from those mistakes to say, all right, next time I'm talking to this person, I can't go marching in there and expect them to drop everything and have a conversation with me right now because they're in the middle of something else and they need time to prepare for my meeting where that person over there doesn't. And we can just jump into the conversation.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Right? You know, that's so interesting, and I appreciate that. I had an employee that I was trying to. Because natively, I'm like, okay, let's see how this affects other people. Let's see how it's affecting the team. The response that I got from this employee was just like, he doesn't care.
And at that stage, instead of doubling down and be like, look, you need to care. I took a whole different approach and I said, look, let's look at how the business works. So I moved from the emotional to the logical. And I broke down revenue, I broke down time efficiency, I broke down bottom line profitability. And I said, by doing this, you're endangering your job and other people's job by impacting revenue. And at that stage he just got it. It was like, oh, I did not understand that, how that's how everything works. So it gave me this huge slap in the face to different people have different ways to rationalize the world. Sometimes it's logic, sometimes it's emotions, sometimes it's team, sometimes it's self selfish. Right. You just kind of need to understand there's different tools. There's this real problem. I think that if you kind of look at the individual contributor versus the executive team, senior executive C suite versus middle management. Right.
They don't always agree on everything. When I as a middle management have certain philosophies or cultures, I can sometimes create this like utopia inside of my team. It's not what the rest of the company looks like.
How do we basically, as a senior executive team, how do we make sure that we have a culture in place that we believe in as opposed to every middle manager just trying to do the best that they can?
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So one thing that I like to have across the company is a set of company values. You can call them something else, you know, but they're usually, you know, very positive words. I often just see them on the marketing page of the website. And we're only having these company values for our customers of respect and trust and transparency. And it's like, no, no, no. How about marketing and HR get together and a committee with a bunch of employees kick out the executives. They could just tell us, hey, this is what I want. Let the employees decide what is our company culture going to be? And let's create a company, a set of company values and then, I don't know, let's hold everybody accountable to it, from the executive to the, you know, the client that's a jerk, get rid of that client. I don't care how much money it is. That's a painful decision. But once you do that, your employees go, whoa, you care about me more than revenue. Okay, Now I'm going to work hard and we're going to go get more customers that we actually want to work with. So it's a cycle, but you know, really focusing on the company culture versus this department has that culture. This department has that culture. Now, between me and you and our listeners, if you're in a crappy company and you are a manager and want to care, then, yes, have a culture just within your department.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: And let your employees know, I'm going to protect you. You still have to do your job. This is how we're going to operate here. And then maybe other departments will start adopting it, and then eventually the executives will, too. But hopefully we do have some executives listening that will say, you know what? We do need to change things. We have a set of company values. Nobody knows what it is because it was made for a sales site. And let's start really putting those company values into everything we do. Put it in. Put them in the job descriptions, give feedback based on how people behave. I'm an HR consultant. Many of my clients that use me for HR consulting, they're too small to have hr, so they'll never have hr. But I have to tell you, when my phone rings all day, every day, it's usually because somebody's acting a fool, not because they're not doing their job. Most business owners and managers know how to, you know, handle that, but they don't know how to handle well. My. They're not violating anything, but they're acting a fool. What do I do, Wendy? And I'm like, remember those company values we created that are in your handbook, in your job descriptions, all over your walls, or in your, you know, your intranet and Internet? Let's hold them accountable to that and let them know you are supposed to be acting in this way professionally, respectfully. And what you just said to the co worker over there was not respectful. And now you're being held accountable. If this happens again, XYZ will happen, which is most likely. You're being removed from the company not because you're not a subject matter expert, but because you're a jerk.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: One thing that I personally had trouble with is I don't know to trust the information that I have. And when I take it to, like, I know who's to blame. And I'm going to have a chat with this person. I feel very uncomfortable with that. So one of the strategies that I've used and really my question is, what should we do? Is, okay, I'm not going to go and talk with anyone specifically. I'm going to bring the whole team and I'm going to talk about our values. And I want each and everybody to make sure that they're aligned with these values. And if they Feel that there's any issue, come talk to me. On the one hand, I feel like I'm missing something. On the other hand, I feel like I'm hedging against maybe making a mistake and accusing somebody of something when I don't really understand what happened. I wasn't there. How do we solve those situations? And what are the pros and cons in your mind? Wasn't.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Then you need to do more research and you need to ask more people and get more people involved for sure. Which is also, you know, It's a catch 22 there, because the more people that get involved equals the more drama. But if your culture eventually becomes, we're going to have a problem, and we're not going to just let it slide or, you know, push it under the carpet, then everybody's going to know he's not letting this go until it gets resolved. And so I either need to fess up, I need to own it, or my coworkers are going to out me and they're going to be protected because they're part of the investigation and they know that they have to do the right thing. So unfortunately, it's not, you know, so easy to do, but you have to just be like, I'm putting my foot down. And then once it's resolved and somebody comes, you know, another employee comes over to you and say, oh, I want to talk about what happened. Nope, I'm sorry, this isn't up for conversation. This is a private matter. What else can I help you with? So eventually, if you stop and push back at the drama and the gossip and say, nope, this isn't open for conversation. I want to do that to you, and I'm not doing that to somebody else, then the negative Nellies and the gossipers, they're going to have nowhere else to go because everyone's going to go stop and have a reporting mechanism. But if you have a very, you know, I'll just say, like, a uncomfortable and not respectful culture today, it's going to take a while to get there. But all the managers, all the team leads, all the supervisors and all the employees need to get on board to say, you know, report it, and we will do our best to protect you, so to speak. That's a whole other conversation. But report it to me. I will take care of it. I'll do the research, and we will fix what's wrong, even if we have to remove people from the team.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Wendy, there's only one scripted question on the show, and it's the last one. If you had to go back and it's a hard one at that as well. If you had to go back to 20 year old Wendy, what would you advise her?
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Oh, 20 year old Wendy. Well, I was having a lot of fun there. So I would say how about you don't get that master's in health care administration?
Because I have a master's in healthcare administration and then I ended up not ended in health care obviously, although many of my clients are healthcare now. So I guess I'm kind of still in health care. I would have said go get your, finish your bachelor's, go get some work experience, don't immediately go to get your master's because at turn I, you know, I've ended up in a different career. And then I had to go back again for my master's in human resources. And on top of that, what I would say to people today that are 20 years old, because that was back then when all this education was required is, you know, we don't every job does not need a four year degree and it certainly doesn't need a, you know, six or eight year degree. And so there's a lot more options. Figure out what you want to do and try it and if you do love it, then go back to school for it.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: Wonderful. Wendy, thank you so much for coming on show today. I appreciate you.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Thank you. Take care, everybody.
