From building habits that support a workplace based on healthy, continuous feedback to fostering a culture that embraces it, join Dr. Emma Sarro and Dr. David Rock to uncover why performance management needs reinvention and how to make it happen. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your leadership game and unlock the full potential of your brain at work. We hope you’ll tune in and join the conversation.
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Shelby Wilburn: Welcome back to another week of your brain at work. Live! I'm your host, Shelby Wilburn, for our regulars. We're happy to have you back. And for our newcomers. We're excited to have you here with us today. For the first time in this episode we're gonna experiment bravely and do a hybrid where we start with the conversation around performance management in today's cultural landscape and then replay a session that we had from our 2023 summit that was really impactful. So as I sure some housekeeping notes, let us know where you're joining in from in the chat
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Shelby Wilburn: we are recording today's session. So if you're interested in a replay, be on the lookout for an email later today that email is going to include a survey for feedback as well as a number of resources that are aligned to today's conversation. And we suggest putting your phone on. Do not disturb quitting out of your email and messaging apps. So you can really get the most out of today's discussion. And it's also going to help with your audio and video quality. And we love interaction. So feel free again to share your thoughts and comments in the chat with us. We also have some interactive polls. We'll be sharing, too.
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Shelby Wilburn: Now, as I get this show underway. I'm going to introduce our moderator for today.
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Shelby Wilburn: Our moderator for today is the director of research at the Neuro Leadership Institute, where she focuses on translating cognitive and social neuroscience into actionable solutions for organizations as well as helps to communicate relevant research in an accessible manner. For the public.
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Shelby Wilburn: Previously she was a professor at Dominican College and New York University, and a researcher at the Nathan Klein Institute. She holds a bachelor's degree from Brown University and A. Ph. D. In neuroscience from New York University. A warm welcome to the Director of Research at Nli. Dr. Msaro. Thanks for being here today, Emma and I will pass it over to you.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Thank you so much, Shelby. Thanks everyone for joining. And as Shelby said, we are going to be doing a bit of a different kind of episode today, because we had so many amazing sessions at our this year summit. And we already knew we were going to be talking about performance management. So just a little bit of lead in, and then I'll kick it off to our experts who were had put on an amazing show.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So this year we're taking taking another look or this week at performance management, it's absolutely moving up in the priorities for organizations. And interestingly, it's almost like a cyclic appearance that every few years it becomes a priority again. And it's really interesting. And there are different reasons why one of them this this year, I should say, is that it? There is this
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Dr. Emma Sarro: steady state of the hybrid workplace. So how do we do this right? How is it? How do we best manage performance?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: What needs to change? And we've talked about this recently. The calls for accountability and psychological safety have only gotten louder. So how do we manage performance? Get to high performance while keeping all of these things in place?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And actually in our own surveying at this summit event. We found that up to 90% of organizations are planning to make or have recently made changes to their performance management. So this is something that many people are thinking about. Organizations are trying to get right again. So
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and and also just a bit of some just some recent stats on why performance management so important? We know. And because conversations are kind of central. And this is part of the conversation that we'll have today actually is that we are spending over 18 HA week in conversations, if not more, in in meetings, I should say costing up to organizations up to over 100 million dollars. So this is an
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Dr. Emma Sarro: expensive and timely endeavor to have these conversations. How are you having them? But is the quality at the level that it should be.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Are you truly motivating your employees to get to their best performance? And so just to get us kind of started before we dive in with the experts. I just wanna ask you a few questions. We're gonna put up some polls for this.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: The first one we'd love to get your feedback. This is also helps us. We're always collecting data and surveying our our followers and people are listening to us. So how would you thinking about your own organization and what you put in place? How would you rate your performance management system?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: oh, this is the wrong question, how does your performance management system? What does it currently solve for? And you can answer, any of these or all of them
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Dr. Emma Sarro: nice.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Oh, it's so interesting!
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I guess
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Dr. Emma Sarro: oh, oh, everyone
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Dr. Emma Sarro: has answered awesome. So if we were to look at the results, and I think everyone can see these. It's so interesting. It seems like most of the case. What you're solving for is making sure that you at least have one conversation a year. And is that really the best
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Dr. Emma Sarro: first goal for this? Or is it really about outcomes? And also that maybe the second best would be that everyone has quality conversations.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Awesome? Alright. So the next question, oh.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I didn't share the results. The next question is, I guess if we were to put the next one up, so I know exactly what it is, and I don't read off the wrong question. The. Let's see.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: how well do you feel that your performance management system encourages people to feel like they're paid fairly. Now, this is a really interesting question.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I love that. Everyone's responding
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Dr. Emma Sarro: nice.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Well, it seems that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: wow! This is kind of all over the board, but it seems that most of the time you would rate your system as being as feeling like you're being accurately paid or fairly paid.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: kind of low on the level. Alright. So final question final question is, and then we will pass this over. I promise to the amazing session that we held. What does? Let's see, how well, how would you currently rate your performance management system on its ability to motivate and improve performance, which really is, I would say, the ultimate goal of actually managing performance.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Wow!
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I love how fast you all are responding, wow! And that is really interesting, that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: how well we would rate this is actually very low. So absolutely, I think I'm
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Dr. Emma Sarro: thrilled that you all are here to listen to this and hopefully you stay with us and listen to our own Christy brute Haynes. Interviewing Bex port from tenx genomics, Iliana Oris valiante from Accenture, and Julian Hugo from premier nutrition, all sharing their stories, and how they get to best performance.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and I will pass it over to Shelby to start this.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and I will also, I should say I'm also be in the background to answer any questions, and pop in at the end.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Everyone welcome to our next session. I am thrilled that you are here with us, and you are in for a treat. I am really excited about this one. I'm not biased. All of our sessions have been phenomenal, but
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Dr. Emma Sarro: everyone welcome to our next session. I am thrilled that you are here with us, and you are in for a treat. I am really excited about this one. I'm not biased. All of our sessions have been phenomenal, but I think this one's gonna be really, really innovative for those of you who don't know. And my name is Christy Pruitt Haynes. I am our global head of the talent and performance practice here at Ni. And I am joined by a dynamic panel which you will meet in just a moment.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and you will see their pictures in just a second as soon as these slides advance.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: There we go. So we're going to talk a bit about cultivating an organization of high performers. How many high performers should you have? What does that look like? What has to be present in the culture of your company to make that work. So we have a wonderful panel. Who's going to share a bit about this topic? I would love for each of them to introduce themselves. So you know who we're talking with, and then we'll move ahead.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Bex. Hi, I'm Bex port. I'm the chief people officer at tenx genomics. We are a biotech company that is based in the Bay area. That's very focused on advancing the understanding of biology to help facilitate human health
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Dr. Emma Sarro: wonderful Hello, everyone. Iliana, Oresfoliente in my days I'm the managing director and head of Innovation and Esg at Accenture in Canada, large global consulting technology company. I'm also building out a community of fellow potted plants. Global citizens, I promise this will make a lot more sense towards the end of the presentation and figuring out how to enable that emerging lifestyle trend, but pleasure to be here today.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Hello! Good afternoon. I'm Julianne Ugo. I'm with premier nutrition. We are a protein drink company located out of the Bay Area, and so we are a fast-growing company.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: We hope you like our drinks
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Dr. Emma Sarro: wonderful. Thank you. All. So want to share just a little information with you about the talent and performance practice. We've had the privilege of working with numerous companies across the world in improving and enhancing their talent and performance practices.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: as you know, with neuro leadership. Everything we do is based in science and research. And we have published a number of white papers and research papers. You can see some of them represented here on the slide that I'm sure many of you are probably familiar with on talent practices. Performance practices. One of our most popular was about removing ratings. And why that really plays into the brain-friendly research and science that we want to see in all of our organizations.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: We continue to publish in a number of publications across the world. Hopefully, you all have seen some of these articles before, but if not, please Google them, they are phenomenal, and we have a number of solutions within our talent and performance practice that I know several of your organizations have had the opportunity to engage with our most recent one was Team. If you heard the opening session yesterday, Dr. Amy Emmonson. That's a collaboration we have with her all on psychological safety.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And then one of our most popular connect is one that we've been using for a number of years to help enhance the quality of conversations that your managers are having with their direct reports. You see, some stats here, but the one I really want to bring attention to is after going through connect 91% of our managers have said that they now have a better interaction, higher quality conversation
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Dr. Emma Sarro: with their team members, as we know, the quality of those conversations is really what drives the high performance that we're looking for across our organization. So connect is one of the ways we're able to help organizations drive that change.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Now, why does connect matter so much now? And why does this conversation matter so much? Now? You all know just as well as we do that. The talent landscape today is uncertain and complicated more than it has been at most any other time in history.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: What's interesting is when we think about high performers. One of the ways we often reward, if you will. High performers are through promotions, makes a lot of sense, but almost 30% of individuals who receive promotions end up leaving the organization a month later. Oftentimes, that's because some of the systems in the company may not sustain and may not provide the culture that they're really looking for. We're gonna talk about that a bit. Today.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: We've all heard the phrase quiet quitting
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Dr. Emma Sarro: almost 60% of employees right now are doing that that complicates the landscape within our organization. And then, as you can see, 80% of individuals say, their current performance management practice actually demotivates. So when we're talking about wanting to enable and create high performers, unfortunately, one of the best tools we have that could do that is having the opposite effect. So we're going to talk about some things we can do about that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So as we look to what we hope organizations aspire to and what we're able to help organizations move towards. We know that when our performance management enables a growth mindset, many of you have probably gone to either a growth mindset session here, or may have heard about that in the past with our product growth.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But when employees lean into that growth mindset when they're asking questions when they're collaborating, when they're remaining open-minded. We see all of the benefits that we're looking for.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: We also like to think that instead of talking about performance management. Because who here wants to be managed?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Let's look at it as performance improvement. That's what this system should do for us.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: We also don't want to think about this as a one and done this isn't something that's just about going into a system typing in a few notes, maybe putting in a number and calling in a day instead. Let's focus on those quality conversations throughout the year. Not just once. If you're only hearing from your manager once, or if your managers are only talking to their employees once they're really missing the boat
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Dr. Emma Sarro: with performance management, it's designed to do a lot of things. Obviously, obviously, it's going to recognize and reward. But what we really believe is it should create and enable high performers. That's when we get the real bang for our buck from our performance management system.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So we're going to talk a lot about high performers. But I think what it's important to really discuss in this moment is what is a high performer. So before we get into the conversation that vex is going to kick us off with, I'd love to hear from each of you. How do you define and describe what a high performer is?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So, Bex, if you wouldn't mind starting? Yeah, sure for me, a high performer is not just what somebody does. It's how they do it. And so we talked yesterday about you know what are the capabilities that make leadership in the 20 first century. But as we look at the same of you know, what does make high performance in the 20 first century, I think ultimately, we're looking for the impact that people can have
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Dr. Emma Sarro: in the organisation.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I think that that takes much more than somebody being technically exceptional. It's how they go about doing that, how they interact with their colleagues. We talked a lot over the last couple of days about empathy and the importance of that. So for me, it's those sorts of things as as well are critical, absolutely. The what and the why and the How Iliana
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Dr. Emma Sarro: in the type of work that we do, creativity is hugely important, and we've all heard the quote, hire smart people, and please get out of their way and let them do what it is you hired them. For so in our organization, what really differentiates the high performers are those that keep the end goal in mind and take the paths that make sense to to arrive there. I don't need to be micromanaging and checking in in every interaction. It's
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Dr. Emma Sarro: you know what you need to do. Please go ahead. Let us know when you're having issues. And when you give people that long leash, that's where we've seen some of the best performance and the creative ideas coming, coming out
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Dr. Emma Sarro: absolutely that autonomy is so important.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Yeah, I would say that for us, we're we're a good energy culture. We're the good energy peoples. And so for us, it really is about that how so the technical is really important, the impact, the value of the impact. But the people that you're touching along the way. And so you can't be a high performer without making a high impact contribution in a positive way to the people that you're interacting with. And that's really important for us.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I love that. And I completely agree. Obviously, it's about what people are accomplishing. But the how they get it done. If you're having great results. But you're leaving a trail of of people behind you, then it's not sustainable. You're probably not gonna be with that organization long. And your collaboration and things like that are really gonna suffer. So I'm so glad all of you hit on those topics.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So we've got a great conversation. I would love to now pass it on to Bex to talk a little bit about her ideas around high performers, how we can truly create an organization of high performers, and some of the things we need to have in place to make that work effectively fantastic. Thank you.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So
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Dr. Emma Sarro: as we look at sort of conventional wisdom. One of the things that is often presented to us is that it's not a good idea to have entire teams of high performers
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Dr. Emma Sarro: back in the 90 S. William Mayer at Purdue University, did an exploration of of high performance and tried to look at how can we create high-performing teams?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And in doing this he looked at chickens, because measuring performance in chickens is really easy. You look at how many eggs they lay, and so over several generations. William Maher screened off the the chickens, who were the highest layers, the best-producing chickens! And produced a super flock.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and then looked at the productivity and the performance of that superflock compared to a normally averagely kind of formed flock, with the hypothesis that the superflock would outlay and outperform the the non-superflach chickens and what he found was that all but 3 of the chickens ended up dead because the chickens had pecked each other to death.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and when I share that story. A frequent response that I get is, oh, that sounds like my organization.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And the reason I tell you that is because I think that that has actually led us to believe that high-performing teams are actually quite toxic, or teams that are full of only high performers are quite toxic where everybody is competing for status and and and pecking each other to death.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I want us to challenge that and say that actually, if done well.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: that you can have a team of only high performers. And so I'd like to consider, what would it look like in my organization if I ran my teams like I would a sports team. Now imagine going to see your favorite sport and paying, however, many dollars for a ticket, if it was a normally distributed team, like what we see in organizations where the top 10% are really awesome. And the the bottom 10% are terrible and
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Dr. Emma Sarro: being benched or managed out. And then everybody else is in the middle.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Would you pay to see that team? And I think the answer is probably not. And by having normal distributions, whether that's forced or or not through the systems that we've created. Often in Hr, what you end up with is 80% of people are in the middle and 80% of people are mediocre.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and the disadvantage of that is that I don't think that we're getting the best from all of the people in every single seat.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And so I think that we can have high talent, dense organisations, and we can look at that performance, bar and move it across to the right and say, rather than just have 10% of top performers. Could we have almost everybody as a top performer? And what we consider great and acceptable performance is that top performance.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Now, the benefit that you get from that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: is that individuals are are better at their job. And so you need fewer, better people. And there's research that looks at roles like software engineers. The difference in output, creativity, complexity and quantity of coding that you get from what's been labeled Rockstar Coders versus somebody who's just a decent coder is is exponential.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And you may argue that there are some roles that that's more important for my personal belief is that no matter what the role that you'll get more out of somebody who is exceptional, whether they are a customer services analyst, whether they are a trader, whether they are a software code or whether they are a scientist.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Then you would put somebody who is just average at the role.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I think another benefit and and pro of having high talent, dense organizations. Is that to your point about management, that really high performing people need a lot less management. You need less bureaucracy. You allow much more freedom around the organization, much more innovation in shoes.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And we talked yesterday about the relationship with work being broken.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Work at its best should be a source of joy and inspiration for our employees.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And what you find is that high-performing people want to work and collaborate with other high-performing people. So if you create the right environment and you hire high performing people, what you get is this positive reinforcing cycle.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Now, it's not without its cons, because some of the cons of having pure, high-performing teams are that you could create a culture of fear.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: because in order to maintain a high performing team, you have to be willing to exit the average.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and people look around and they say, Oh, you know, I understand why Sarah was exited. She was grossly underperforming. People can understand that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But if Sarah is doing Ok. And is removed from the organization, it can create a huge threat response in people, and if Sarah can get fired, then I can get fired as well. So I think one of the cons is that you have to be cautious about this culture of fear that could ensue.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: It's also potentially more expensive
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Dr. Emma Sarro: if somebody is an exceptional performer. Are they going to demand a higher salary. And so thinking about how this relates to your to your compensation processes is actually really important.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But I really do think that we need to look at across our organisations. Is it possible that we can actually have
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Dr. Emma Sarro: pure, high performing teams? And are our systems and processes in how we manage talent
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Dr. Emma Sarro: actually reinforcing that? Or are they actively working against it and creating this normal distribution curve?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I think when you think about building this dream team.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: there are a number of things that are absolutely crucial, so that you don't end up with a super flock of chickens pecking each other to death.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I think. Firstly, it's really encouraging this growth mindset so that all of employees strive to get feedback
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Dr. Emma Sarro: are interested to know how they're doing and take that feedback in their stride and learn as they go along.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I think you have to hire and be prepared to hire really slowly, and that means holding out for the best person for the role.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Sometimes we'd be, you know, somebody is better than nobody. I just need to fill this job. But actually, if you're really driving a high performance team. You really hold out and don't let that talent bar drop.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But on the reverse of that, when we do end up with a false, positive
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and you make a Miss Hire or somebody isn't right, for the organization or their performance has slipped, and it's gone into mediocre
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Dr. Emma Sarro: now continuously giving feedback is critically important. But if somebody is unable to respond to that feedback, then you need to be willing to move somebody out of the organization and exit them.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and then encouraging deep collaboration, which is what I said before. So certainly at 10 x. Performance is collaboration.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and so making it clear that absolutely.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Collaboration is table stakes. It's not a nice to have when somebody is a really technical expertise, but a technical expert, but difficult to work with. And I think if you have all of those things, then what you can create is this really continuously reinforcing environment where awesome people are working with other awesome people to create awesome results.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And so I'm going to hand back to you. Yes, wonderful. So what we've heard Becks really share. And I think we really want to. I at least want to double down on it a bit.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: That collaboration piece is critical, and having that as a part of the culture of your organization, and there are other things that I think have to be present within the culture of your company in order to have an organization of all high performers. So that's what I would love for you all to think about and talk about just a bit now.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So we're gonna take a few minutes. Give you 3, 4 min or so to really talk to your neighbor, get to know the person next to you. This is your opportunity to collaborate. But think about what needs to change within the culture of your organization, to sustain an organization of all high performers. Think about what's there and what you may want to think about adding to that culture in order to make this work. So we're gonna give you about 3 min to talk about that. Then we'll come back and hear a bit from Iliana. So talk amongst yourselves
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Dr. Emma Sarro: a.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: A.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: A.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And dance, and pass
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Dr. Emma Sarro: a
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Dr. Emma Sarro: a
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Dr. Emma Sarro: some of you after this, so we can kind of talk through some of the things you just discussed. So with that, I want to introduce or pass actually the mic to Iliana. We've talked about high performers and what they are, if it's possible to have an organization full of them. But the other thing we know about high performers is, they have high expectations.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: There are certain parts of the organization that need to be present in order to sustain them. There are certain things and and opportunities that they want to see present, and that autonomy and flexibility oftentimes is really important. So an organization has to be able to flex and really think about, how do we engage with our team members in order to sustain them? And that's not going to be the same for everyone. So I'd love to pass the mic to Iliana, to really talk through her ideas and theories on some things that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: we can do, to really assess what individuals need in order to sustain them. And some things organizations potentially can do to support that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So, Iliana.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: perfect. Thank you so so much. Let me start by telling you a very quick tidbit about myself.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Years ago I had done the Clifton Strength Finder and realized that my Number one strength is individualization, and being a relator.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: My team jokes that I often refer to people as snowflakes, because everyone is unique and as a manager, as a leader, I do think one of the most important things we can do is get to understand the unique nature of the people that are on our teams and then figure out to your sports analogy. How do you put people in roles
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Dr. Emma Sarro: that best play to their strengths that allow them to to collaborate? So you don't end up. Back your example, with a group of chickens. I am never going to be able to get over that mental image, that mental, that mental image. And so when we think about a culture of high performers. I like to use the analogy of a forest or the ecology nature
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Dr. Emma Sarro: in a forest. You walk around and you'll see a variety of plant species out there and guess what they are coexisting, and they're thriving, even though they have different resource requirements. I was having a great conversation at the lunch break today with someone around mitochondria and how humans we need sunshine in order to to thrive. And so the theory I've been working on is actually called the potted plant
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Dr. Emma Sarro: theory. And it's this idea that you can take people and you can plot them along a spectrum, the human plant
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Dr. Emma Sarro: archetype.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and as we dig in I will walk you through the plants.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And what does that mean for the human plant archetype? So if on the one side of the spectrum. You have sequoia trees, Sequoia. They're giant. They're majestic trees. They are hundreds of years old, and they have these extensive root systems.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: If you wanted to transplant a sequoia tree tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to. It's physically impractical. They have wisdom and secrets of of decades past.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But you move along the spectrum to a slightly smaller tree. A red maple is a great example. You can actually transplant a red maple once, twice, maybe 3 times in its life. But you need the help of an arborist, and there's a whole host of conditions that need to be met in order for them to move and they can thrive in that new environment. You move further along the spectrum and you end up in potted plant territory.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: That's where I sit. I'll come back to those ones in in a moment, and you end the spectrum with airplanes.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Many of you, I'm sure, have been to a plant store before, and you'll see them usually hanging from a string in a small glass jar. They tend to be small. They don't have the largest root system. They don't need a ton of water or fertilizer or soil. Enough moisture from the environment is really all they need in order to to thrive. And so, if you need a person that actually personifies an airplant.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: They might describe themselves as a traveler. They might tell you an anecdote about the fact that you know I'm still on the road after 5 years. I'm doing van Life, and I'm so content.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Oftentimes it correlates with what people picture as a creative, whimsical, artsy person that is free flowing, and doesn't require a ton of structure. There's not much that needs to to ground them.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I'm not on that side of the the extreme of the spectrum. I'm very much so. A potted plant for me. Home is wherever I happen to be for, and any period of time my roots are attached to me. Some people have a spirit animal. I have a spirit tree. I'm a hibiscus potted plant. You can have me in the pot. You can
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Dr. Emma Sarro: plant me into the ground, you can let me grow the deeper roots. I will grow taller. I was just in Greece, where you saw hibiscus plants that are 8 feet tall. They can grow even larger, but you can happily dig it back up and transplanted from room to room, city to city, country to country, and it doesn't skip, skip a beat, cooler climates, warmer climates, and and the rest.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And so when you think about people and where they might fall on this spectrum or or matrix. I look at it across 2 dimensions on the one side you have your need for certainty, and on the other you have your need for for novelty and adventure, and the other matrix line is your need for resources in order for you to feel secure, establish.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: settled, and to thrive as a sequoia. They need copious quantities of space and soil, and and the rest.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I knew that we were onto something with this theory when at a dinner party I was in New York talking to a woman I had just met, and this conversation came up. She's like, Oh, this is really interesting. We go our separate ways at the dinner, and she finds me at the end of the night, tracks me down, and she grabs me back somewhere to demonstrate with you. She's looking at me, and she grabs me by the elbows and stares me in the eyes and says.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I just wanted to say, thank you, and I'm struck thinking, what are you thanking me for? And she says, Thank you for helping me realize that I'm actually a potted plant.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But I've been living life as a sequoia.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I need to go home
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and drastically reassess every aspect of my life.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: to figure out how I can live more in alignment to who I truly am.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I was speechless, and those of you that know me know that I'm never speechless, which was a reminder that, Ok, I think we've hit onto something
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Dr. Emma Sarro: because the world as we live in today is mostly designed around the Sequoia model. That has been the case, at least for the past couple hundreds of years. The societal construct of expectations of you know you're born, you grow up, you go to school, you get married, you move to the suburbs. 2.5 children work a job you dislike. We saw the stats yesterday. 80% of people are disengaged in their roles. They retire, and then they hope that they can begin their
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Dr. Emma Sarro: and do something interesting. Now I've been asked the question of Does the placement of where you are on the spectrum relate to your age. Is this just for the younger folks, who maybe don't have as many of the of the attachments? And the answer is no, from wide qualitative research that has been done with folks across
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Dr. Emma Sarro: geographies, across age, across professional boundaries. This model works well for who you are at the core.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: irrespective of the life circumstances that you may be experiencing. The woman from that New York dinner party works for a top tier institution, the sort that ivy Lea ivy grads try to bend themselves into a pretzel to get a job at, has assets, lives in New York City, has all of the trappings of life. And now work, being a big component of our day to day, is going back to her organization to figure out, what do I do with this
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Dr. Emma Sarro: with this insight? And so for each of you, as leaders in Hr. Functions, the question and the feedback I would love to get from you is, where do you think you fall on the spectrum?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Where do you think your employees fall on the spectrum? We do clipped and strengths? We do scarf. What if we did the research questionnaire specifically around this theory? And what does this mean for the policies.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: the procedures within your organization, as well as the benefits packages that you're rolling out. Because what I need as a global citizen that doesn't want to live in one city 365 days a year as a benefit is very different from that of a sequoia. Maybe a benefits package that you're rolling out in the future is global travel insurance and a really really flexible work arrangement. Where we move past this debate of return to office or work from home
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Dr. Emma Sarro: when the world is your oyster, what does that mean? And so, as we shift gears, and we look to better understand ourselves, our colleagues, our family members. This is a framework that I'm hoping people will get a chance to use.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Thank you. And so what's fascinating to me if you would click a score one slide, what's fascinating to me? And I think a lot of us discovered this, especially during the pandemic. We saw a lot more people traveling, and while I believe this theory and this phenomena has been around for a number of years. I think more people now see it as a possibility. But there's a tension between organizations
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Dr. Emma Sarro: on how do we support this going forward when it's not just we're doing this during the pandemic, we're providing that level of flexibility. So it really becomes a conversation around what systems need to be in place to sustain all of our team members. I'm sure many of you have had a number of conversations around retention of talent.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: especially when we are talking about our high performers. Organizations want to do all we can to retain our high performers. And this is a wonderful, I think element of that that we need to think about, and and at least for myself, I can say, probably have not thought about as much as I should have or could have
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Dr. Emma Sarro: so would love to hear from the rest of our panel.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: as you all hear the idea of the product plant theory. And you think about how that intersects with how we sustain and retain our high performers? What's really coming to mind? What insights are you having, whomever would like to kind of chime in first.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I'm just trying to figure out what I am. Maple, I think is what it's coming to. But you know, it's it's a really interesting thought process and and and trickery right of the mind of trying to figure out. How do you actually address those
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Dr. Emma Sarro: those employees who are the airplan or the pot of plant. How do you address those folks in this hybrid environment where we know that relatedness and connectedness is still so important for collaboration. And so it's really about, how do we allow that? And do we allow certain times of the year where we have work from anywhere for the summer, or for whatever it might be, as a way to retain those folks who maybe need a little bit more in their
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Dr. Emma Sarro: day to day global civilization. So it's really interesting
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Dr. Emma Sarro: love that. And I love that idea of maybe it's a seasonal thing that could be one way that organizations look to
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Dr. Emma Sarro: pilot this idea, or sort of tiptoe into it if you will. So I really like that idea, vex what's what's bubbling up for? You
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Dr. Emma Sarro: think it's about people as individuals like I love the spectrum, and that we're all in different places. And I think you know often
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Dr. Emma Sarro: one of the the new. You know, the new world environment is very individual. And so, making sure that we can flex to what do people need and what you might need might be very different to what I need, and how can we give that kind of choice and flexibility?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And then, as as you say, kind of make sure that there's still this space where we all come together together and appreciate that difference. Yes, I love that. And I was doing the same thing trying to figure out what I am. I'm pretty sure I'm a potted plan. Also, I've also lived as a sequoia for a number of different reasons, but it's it's fascinating to think about.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: how much better can you perform when you are supported with what it is you really need at your core. And I think, as organizational leaders, that's one of the questions we ask ourselves every day, what can we put in place in our organizations? What benefits can we offer? How can we retain our talent
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Dr. Emma Sarro: by creating systems that support what each individual needs. As Vex pointed out
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Dr. Emma Sarro: great conversation. We could keep talking for hours, I think, on this, but we do want to move ahead. So we've talked some about some of the systems that may need to be in place to really sustain a high performing organization. But there are other things that have to be in place, too. I would love Julianne for you to speak a bit about. What do leaders need to do? What else do organizations? How do we reward high performers and and just move us along a bit in the conversation? So, Julianne, over to you? Yeah, thank you and thanks again for having me today.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So none of this is rocket science. We've been hearing this over the last few days. Right? It's really about, how do we have those quality conversations? And how do we free our leaders up to have those? What what I really focus on is? And we heard somebody speaking of it yesterday of fulfillment. And it's it's easy to talk about fulfillment when you've hit that self actualization stage. But when your basic needs aren't met. Fulfillment is really hard to get to. But leaders can really provide a fulfilling environment
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Dr. Emma Sarro: in one of 3 ways. And it's making connection to 3 different things. And the first thing is making connection to purpose. And it's making connection to both the organizational purpose as well as to their own individual purpose. And so when you're working with high performers, you really want to make sure that you are able to make them a connection for them? Is, are they doing what they meant to be doing? And are they connected to the purpose of the organization? That's the retention part, right? If you can't connect to the purpose of the organization you struggle in keeping them on board.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So the second part of of connection that leaders can do is connecting to accomplishment. And so that's the goals. That's not only the goals of the organization, but really connecting them to stretch goals connecting them to how they get rewarded. That status of of the organization, if you will. Where do they? Where do they feel seen? Where do they feel heard? Where do they feel like they have an opportunity to make a difference.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And the third connection is connecting to others. And this is really critical, I think, for leaders with high performers is, it's not just about building your own individual team. But how, as a leader, can you make the connections to others within the organization or to others even outside of the organization for your high performers
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Dr. Emma Sarro: to really keep them engaged. And so that those 3 aspects of connection really help for fulfillment when you're talking about working with high performers, and those are those quality conversations that you have as to what is their purpose, what is most interested to them? What, what do they find? Accomplishment? With what excites them and their goals? What can be a stretch goal? And then again, and who do they want to be connected with? How can you help them make those connections?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Investing in Team Member Development. I don't think I have to say much about that, right as as I think the old theory used to be, 70% of of your learning was on on the job. 20% was through mentorship, 10% through self learning. And I think that's shifted a little bit to now, being more, 2025% of self learning is actually higher, because we have so many things at our at our fingertips. So so many platforms for our employees to be able to engage in
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Dr. Emma Sarro: the important piece is, how do we get them to engage? How do we make that time? How do we make that space? And really, with high performers?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: They're the ones who end up getting a little bit more tapped on the shoulders to do more work because they're picking up some of the slack for others. So how do you really provide that space for them so that they can continue to develop and know that that's expected and and wanted of them, and that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And then finally, you have your scar signals. Obviously, we? We've been talking a lot about scarf. We don't have to hit this too much, but you really do have to understand what is important to them of those signals? What are the ones that they really relate to? And so that's really, obviously an aspect that we we always try to connect to? Is, is it the status? Is it the the autonomy and autonomy through where where you work right? Focusing on the outcomes, not on the.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: not on the input that you have to do, but on the outcomes.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And so really, quickly, I'm not going to hammer this as we've talked a lot about this. But it's really understanding what's important. We've we've really shifted from these monetary aspects of of our performance management to to really giving opportunities for folks. We've shifted more from that. It's just in the merit that you receive your reward, and just in the short-term incentive bonus
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Dr. Emma Sarro: to surprising with rewards. And so one of the things that we heard yesterday was unexpected. Rewards are are more impactful than expected rewards, right? And so we've really worked with our leaders to shift them from. Oh, we want to bonus somebody, you know $2,000. Well.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: at the end of the day, that's not very impressive on the paycheck, right? How about you bonus them with a surprise. Getaway for the weekend. How about you? Give them the opportunity to work from wherever for
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Dr. Emma Sarro: you know a month, and and that can be their their reward. Right. Those are the unexpected rewards to really show high performers what's important to them, but also giving them this opportunity to have some autonomy and say, and and really surprise with the reward. You know, we've
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Dr. Emma Sarro: promotions is really a big topic, and people want to keep moving up. High performers want to keep moving up. And so it's really also about helping them understand that it's not just that climb. It's that lattice, if you will I use lettuce in my organization. And that fell flat. So I'm gonna say, mountain climbing, the ability to climb from different place to different place and still achieve new heights right? And so really helping high performers understand.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And all of your employees, for that matter, really understand that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: sometimes growth up is not the way growth out is the way to really grow. And and and so it's, how do you really invest in making sure they have opportunities that aren't just up.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: as we know some high performers, and what they do may not always always be the best managers, right? And so so really evaluating where you have your high performers and what it is that you're using them for, so that it isn't just we're gonna move you up. If you're not really meant to be in leadership. We're gonna use you for your qualities for what you bring to the organization, what you give back to the organization and what we want to give to you. So so, giving them the opportunity to be that mountain climber versus.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: or a rock climber versus just the latter climber.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So those are some of the ways that really we think about. How do we retain these high performers, and how do we reward them?
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I love what you shared about it. It isn't always about moving up. I like to think of it as a career lattice versus a career ladder, and we're seeing a lot of that in organizations. And we're seeing a lot of individuals wanting that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: As an example, you may have someone who started, as a say, marketing coordinator. But instead of becoming a marketing manager, they actually may move over to another department. Maybe they're going to be graphic design or sales or Hr. Or who knows? So really leaning into. And I feel like a theme we've all talked about
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Dr. Emma Sarro: is thinking a bit about the individual as much as you can, but making sure your systems support that autonomy, and support that flexibility, and support those options as ways to really sustain and retain some of your high performers.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: This has been a great conversation, and I see we have some questions coming in, and likely have some questions out there in the audience as well and thankfully. We have time for those.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: so I am going to throw it to my panel, as you all remember from yesterday, me and my glasses. We don't always play well together. So, Bex, if you wouldn't mind picking your favorite question there, reading it, and then we'll take some turns responding to it. Yeah, sure. So let's start with the first one. So the question is, some feel like high performance. Cultures create some certainty and the threat of layoffs and firings. How do you ease that tension while also ensuring
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Dr. Emma Sarro: you bring the best talent to your org. And so for me, that's all about feedback, you know, and I think that that is, there is a tension point between talent, density, and psychological safety, and I think that the absolute anecdote to that is feedback. And so, if people are fabulous. Make sure that they know that they are fabulous. Make sure that you are giving feedback and telling people how they are to relay that threat. So if we think about kind of certainty.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: are certain that you are doing an amazing job status, we reaffirm somebody's status in the organization. And so I think that that is the the key to that. But it is one of the potential consequences.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I agree. Anything either of you would like to add to that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Yeah, I think it's also the clarity of expectations, right? And going to what vex just said on the performance. It's really important that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: people know when underperformers are are showing up right, and and part of the trouble with high performers wanting to leave is that underperformers aren't being being handled in the organization. And so it's really important about creating that certainty through being really clear in those expectations. And and I think that that is something that in those regular conversations that you have with those high performers is understanding.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: What are those expectations? And and them knowing that they're meeting them so
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Dr. Emma Sarro: absolutely. And I think somebody I can. My apologies for not remembering who mentioned it, talked about how you manage out and vex. I believe it was you. How you manage out your average or low performers, and this is something that your high performers, as you mentioned, they really recognize. If an organization is maintaining or retaining
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Dr. Emma Sarro: average, or even worse low-performing talent than others. See that and think, well, this is going to add more to my job because we have this person who's only pulling 70% of what they should be pulling.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So as leaders, we have to have that managerial courage to really look at that performance, to really talk to those individuals hopefully, it's something where we can develop that talent. If not, I always say, let's look at other places in the organization. That individual may have some strengths that would actually serve them well, and make them a high performer in a different position.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: So that can be one of those first things we look at. But then, if that isn't the opportunity, if that's not available, then we have to be able to say we're gonna give you the opportunity to be successful elsewhere. So you know, sometimes that's the difficult conversations we have to have. But it actually improves the organization overall. And you really are giving that individual a gift to go and and use their strengths in a way that's gonna be meaningful.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: We have some other questions here, but I also want to make sure we give each of you a chance. Any questions from the audience. If so, just raise your hand and we can get a mic to you.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Think we have one back here, and if you would tell us your name, your organization, if you don't mind, and then would love to hear your question. Sure. I'm Jacqueline Rodriguez. I'm from Cairo's power. We're also in the Bay area. We have a lot of high performers, and we find that they're really self-motivated
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Dr. Emma Sarro: to the point where they're burning themselves out. And we've implemented tactics like closing the entire company on the first Friday of every month. So everyone has to take a break. But
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I'm curious. If you have any other tactics that you're using for your high performers.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Absolutely, I will share one, and then would love to hear from each of the panel
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Dr. Emma Sarro: there are a number of organizations, and some that we've worked with, who, instead of having vacation maximums, will say vacation minimums.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: which is an interesting concept. So you still have your maximum allotment. So I'm not saying you can, you know, take the next year off, although if anyone's doing that, you know, let's have a conversation. But but saying you need to take a minimum of 2 weeks off.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And I've even seen some companies that say, one week of that needs to be as a solid week, and then the rest. Take it, however, you need to to really say, not only do we care about you, we care about you to the extent that we are almost moving you out, so you can have that mental rest that you need. And while you're going, don't answer your email.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Don't. Don't call into meetings and really upholding that. So sometimes we have to care more for that individual than they care for themselves in that regard, and really give them the opportunity to have that downtime. We talked a lot, and and within in LA. About the necessity and the importance of mental downtime, and that mental rest
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Dr. Emma Sarro: so encouraging your employees to lean into that is always going to be important.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: But what would any of you add to that? Yeah. And I think building on the sort of minimum leave also kind of
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Dr. Emma Sarro: insisting that people take leave and away from leave. I've worked in heavily regulated organizations where, for compliance reasons. When you, you take what was called kind of block leave, which was 2 weeks. You couldn't check email. You couldn't make any approval approvals. You couldn't go into that
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And actually, what it did force was that mental break because somebody could take a 2 week holiday and still be doing email every day. It's not really a holiday, and so figuring out a way to instill that as the norm, the norm is that we don't do that.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I take inspiration from my aura ring. It's the first wearable device that literally tells you to rest.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: It says, Hey, based on all of your indicators and your body temperature and your recovery, etc, etc. Please slow down. We are turning off your activity, tracking mechanisms as someone who has burnt out. And it was not a very pretty burnout.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Please implement the equivalent of this in your organizations.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Yeah, it's interesting. I think it's leaders, too, right? The the role modeling that leaders have to do and and the expectation that they set for it. And so you can have a, you know, 2 week mandatory. Everybody's off. But if your leaders, sitting there in the background doing doing work or expecting you to respond to them. Or what have you? Right? That's obviously going to diminish the the actual impact of that. And so it's really important that leaders are role, modeling it.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And a lot of times they don't want to, because they're they're high performers are the ones that they rely on. So they look to them. And they, you know, oh, just just this one question, or just answer this, or just take care of this. And so it's really important that holding leaders accountable to those potentially even metrics, of of how much time has your team taken off this year? And and how are we tracking to make sure that they're fully off. Those are ways, but not that we want to go to that end, but but not wonderful.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Thank you all so much. Thank you so much as I said. I feel like we could talk about this for hours, and it's fascinating. So, thanks for joining us, we will continue the summit. I appreciate all of you and appreciate all of you. Thank you.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: Hi, again. Thank you so much for sticking with us through that. It reminds me of how amazing that that event was! Seeing it all again. What did you think? Do you feel that your own definition of high performance, or or what a high performer is, has changed over that? Or is it just supported by this discussion that you're doing the things that you need to do. I just love hearing the perspectives across the panel there.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: And what it does solidify for me is that getting this right is very difficult? And it might keep changing over time as we learn more and more about how to really optimize performance.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: I know David is incredibly excited to looking forward to, or to diving into this this evolving conversation, our evolving Pov. So we will have that session in the near future. But next week he'll be back. And we'll talk about the neuroscience of what true habit activation is.
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Dr. Emma Sarro: how it's evolved over time, with how our understanding of learning and how that's changed and how we've done it ourselves, and how we how we put this into play. So I am done here. Thank you for joining us. And I will pass this over to Shelby, and she will close this out. Thank you.
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Shelby Wilburn: Awesome thanks so much today for this, Emma, and we hope you enjoyed the session. Just a few things as we close up. So we have a poll. Let us know how Nli can help you in the future. A few more housekeeping notes. We are getting summit planning underway. We're extremely excited nailing down details, and we'd love to hear from you about what you're interested in for 2024. So we have a summit survey link. If you want to participate in that and share your
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Shelby Wilburn: thoughts. We're really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Our second lead cohort is gonna be kicking off on April eighteenth. So if you're interested in joining our team will share more information about that as well as visiting our website. If you want more. Insider exchange. This is specifically for senior executives. So if you enjoy your brain at work, live, we think you'll love insider exchange. It's an opportunity to have round table discussions with our internal leaders
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Shelby Wilburn: as we innovate and do new products and different initiatives. So if you're interested in that, there's also a link to apply. And then we wanna expand with our community. So if you'd like to partner and host an event with Nli, we would love to hear from you. Please check out the link that we share in the chat. We'll also have more information in our follow up. But we're really looking forward to expanding and building those positive relationships. So if your team is ready to host.
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Shelby Wilburn: let us know. And lastly, the podcast if you like the episodes here, then, listen to your brain at work wherever you listen to your podcast. And that is where we say farewell. So thank you so much for being. Here. We appreciate you from our team behind the scenes. Have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you next week.