Welcome everyone. My name is John Nasson. I'll give a little brief intro introduction. I work for air call. Uh We're a cloud based phone system where I did it, Jo and I did it.Yes, we're the voice um component of of your best in class tech stack um for, for any of your customer interacting teams. So think about when you have ordered that mattress online and you're like, where the heck is that mattress? And you call them up and they're like, oh, hey Joanna. Um I see that you ordered a mattress a few weeks ago. It's on its way. Is that why you're calling? We can help power that contextualized conversation through the push and pull of information between your tech stack. I joined about a year and a half ago as the general manager and head of North America. I've been in SAS and uh tech in the tech space for about 15 years and 21 years in sales leadership. Uh I absolutely love the energy and the momentum that it gives. I get a high off the lows. I get a high off the highs and now I'm looking for a little bit of uh consistency and a little bit of calmness in my life as we're all coming off of a very tumultuous time. I think that we all share that in common.

Um But I, I can't help but love the energy that, that my world brings. And I hope to share some of that with you and hope that it inspires you to bring some of these learnings that I've had over the last couple of decades into your world as well, whether you're in the sales arena or not. Uh This information is, is quite applicable to motivating a team. I love to consider myself um part analog and part digital. I entered the workforce where hierarchy and proving yourself ruled, right? You would never leave before your boss left. You were there before your boss and these were the core principles that really drove an organization forward. Now being the boss that I am, we all need to be that boss that vocally encourages people not to work too late. Uh six o'clock, come on guys. Uh make sure you get home and rest up or go exercise and really encourage that work life balance. Now, I say that with a caveat because I think that we work hard in order to have a stronger work life balance later on in life. But things have definitely changed. We no longer work for our bosses. We now work for our teams. And I think that that is such a coarse shift in how we think about being leaders and what we bring to the table.

So about three months ago or so, you know, I was dating with marketing on, on what I'd like to enter into um this conference and what I'd like to speak on and, you know, we like the great resignation, let's talk about retention. Um because that's what this really means. And it's funny, I now see great retention a couple of months later and it feels so outdated as a topic. Um that said, uh there is a different driver that is still demanding, stronger and truer retention practices as companies are unfortunately, having to lay people off. It evokes fear right in all of our employees across sectors and borders. And so it's more important than ever to retain and foster top talent. And so that what today's topic is, as I mentioned, I joined in 2020 of October here at a call and we were at the height of the quarantine. I mean, we were all, you know, locked up, couldn't meet, couldn't, you know, see each other. And I didn't realize the gravity of that situation until I joined day one and was like, holy moly. How am I gonna do this? How am I gonna lead the whole go to market the whole customer journey teams um remotely never having met them.

And they also air call, waited six months for me to join after me accepting these, I was doing some volunteer work and the team really craved a leader at this point. And so I had a really huge task ahead of me. And what I realized was that my first call to action needed to be building trust and credibility. You know, when I think about myself, I think about wanting to know and having the security of knowing that my boss has my back and that he he or she specifically wants me on their team, right? I remember one of my first bosses in tech sales used to say to me, you're the, you're the idea person, you're the builder, you're the fixer. And this removed any fear that I had any of the questions of that inner critic that that made me think that perhaps I shouldn't be there or that wanted to sabotage myself. And instead hearing this from my boss, it allowed me to drive forward, inspired and wanting to achieve even greater impact. And again, I'm a basic human being.

So we all want this and it took me years to develop a leadership style um to really foster this energy and this um ideology a across the entire or across my org, not just myself delivering this but really empowering emerging leaders to embody this as well. And I'm confident, you know, that's why I'm here today and that's why I've had the success that I've had at air call a year and a half later. So, you know, in joining, I knew that I needed to treat um to, to create the environment where how I treat my employees right is how they're going to treat their clients. And so the importance of this is really twofold. It's not only building the inner brand of, of culture community, thriving for more, thriving for greatness, but it it's also creating the outer brand. It's also creating success and how we treat and how we empower our customers as well. So every action, every program and the overall culture has to emulate this. So the first component is care, right? We want to inspire our employees to care and to put care into everything that they do. And this creates self growth. We want to act with kindness and how do we teach our employees to think the best of other people's intentions and this will foster respect, right? It will, it will drive relationships, it will create relationships. And lastly, we want to drive collective growth.

So we're gonna talk about how in a few slides but to really drive this home, this new generation of workforce, right? Not, not the a the analogs like I used to be, but really this beautiful digital workforce. Um they want and love and crave to be inspired, they want to drive more impact, they want to influence the overall growth of the organization and be a part of that growth. You know, I remember, I don't know what a decade or so ago. Uh It was all about happy hours and ping pong tables and that's what worked. But that's old news and this generation can car compartmentalize how these are just perks and they view them as just that what we all crave as humans more than ever is being fulfilled. And this now takes place in the workforce. Right. I remember those days, you know, back in, in the seventies, seeing my parents where they would work a whole lifetime for one company gain a pension. Now, it's not about that. Now, it's about gaining joy from work. It's so melded together, especially in this hybrid world of remote workforce, uh hybrid workforce in office workforce. Our work life balance is so meshed together because our environments have been meshed together. It's more important than ever that psychologically we're driving joy in people's lives at work as well because of this meld together this works. And again, we're going to talk about how to do this. I'd just like to share with you some quick steps that I'm really proud of.

After having joined a year and a half ago, we've done three engagement surveys and I have had all three or really the last two because I needed a quarter to uh to, to create impact. Uh But I had the highest company engagement score at 84% two surveys in a row. And we are 10 points above the tech benchmark for similar companies, uh my team specifically. And so what this shows me is that um these core principles that I'm going to share with you are driving the right um feelings and it is feelings in people that they want to stay here. I want top talent. And so it's inspiring them to drive greater results and it's stopping them from taking interviews because that's when you get into danger zone. So we're a people first organization. That's how I run my team. And for those of us that care about creating culture, individual growth, right?

This is a no brainer, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the business wins, right? Retention creates experts and drives higher achieving results and it drives impact to the bottom line. So there's a business case for this. Here's how we do it. I have five pillars in being a people, first organization, the first people want to feel valued. Second, people want to be an influence and want to be part of the show. Third. People wanna know that they're paid fairly fourth, they wanna learn and grow. And to me, this is one of the most important ones and five, they want to respect the people around them and they wanna be inspired around them. And so that's really the overall culture that you're gonna help drive. Oh Great question Joanna around um pay transparency and we're going to get to that when we get to that section. So really great question there. And if I forget to address it or don't quite pinpoint it, uh Please ask that again first. Let's jump into very quickly. The difference between a people first and a person, first organization, it's nuanced, but it's very important that we talk about this. People is a collective, right? When we talk about person, um that's making a decision in a silo for one person, we cannot give everyone everything they want uh or all the time from you that they want, right?

If people are out for a good example of this vacation time, we need to make sure that not everyone else on the team is also taking vacation at that time. It's a silly example, but this is what it means to be a people first organization, it's thinking about the collective um as opposed to um the the singular person and we can't mix those two up because one leads to mediocre results, which is too much dependence on a single player.

And what I'm really talking about leads to exponential growth with multiple top players again nuanced. But really important to remember that what we're talking about is making decisions and treating everyone to think about and really having employees think about this concept of company, first team, second, selfless, right?

And it's a beautiful way to build community. So the first that I mentioned is field value. Um what everyone wants to understand is that you believe in them Right. And how do we create belief in someone? Well, we as leaders can focus on their gifts and their purpose. So, gifts and purpose, what that really means is let's focus on innate and natural talents because that's how they're going to be able to grow exponentially. If we're always focused on what they're not good at, they're only going to be an average player because one you're not gonna feel great. And second, they can probably only improve so much. So instead, let's really shift the majority of our focus on their natural talents or innate talents, help them lean in and to help give them direction and find joy at work. It's not to say that we're not going to talk about techniques and how to help them grow because that's important. But what we wanna do is really help them start to say yes to the right types of work and the right types of projects to help encourage their career growth and their joy.

Um We want them to walk away and say, wow, I'm doing great at work because my boss just told me so and wow, I am inspired to keep going and keep honing in on this. So how do we do this? There are two ways, one is ask them questions, have a one on one with everyone on your team and get curious. The core questions I love to ask are what do you enjoy the most in your work? Where do you think you are the best? What is the most rewarding thing in your work? What outcomes do you live for? Ok. So it's giving them the opportunity to really share with you where they spark joy and that's gonna give you some inclination of what they're probably naturally good at. And the type of projects you can help push them toward the second way to do. This is intentional observation. Watch them pay attention. Um They've shared with you as honest as they can, but you might be able to see them through an entirely different lens, especially if they're more entry level. And it could be a beautiful discovery zone that they haven't figured out yet. And so you could help guide them in understanding their natural talents and their innate talents. And of course, it's now important to share with them. So how do we do this, um, do one on ones point out what you see them doing really well.

I love the framework aid. I don't know if you've seen it before, but it essentially is, here are some things that you're doing. This is the impact that it's having and this is what you should do. So it's action impact directive and it will allow them to understand what, to keep doing, what to lean in further. And this is what shapes great habits they're going to have the aha moment of like, oh, right. My boss told me that th this is that thing. I should keep doing this. Now, this framework also really works well with constructive criticism, which I call growth feedback. I've, I've banned the word constructive criticism because criticism is negative. Now, I'm not, you know, miss positive all the time. But I think it's so important that we really think about and create a safe space of delivering feedback in a way where it intent matches impact to have the outcome that we're looking for. And so it's all about growing, it's all about growth feedback. So again, action impact directive and this is going to show them that you're really invested in them. And it further builds that trust and that credibility that I was speaking about earlier on uh from when I joined Air call the second pillar uh that I believe in to create a people first organization.

Um again, is being an influencer and part of this show, I used to call this um you know, um them wanting to feel like they're doing valuable work, but I thought it was even more expensive than this, you know, pillar one, the aid framework really facilitate this. But it's important to call out as a stand alone. Um This encourages people to care more. It gives them the right seat at the table to feel like they're responsible for growth rather than the company growing around them. And imagine how inspiring that is to say, look at what you're doing, let's grow the company instead feeling like the company is growing around us and we're trying to keep up, it's so much more empowering to feel like you are that motivational force as well. And so we adopted um a silly little quote that my director of, of my junior high school used to say to me that I carry till this day. And that's if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. And that was the way that I introduced this idea of speak up but speak up with solutions, be action oriented and that's going to allow them to focus on impact and influence. So quick, quick example, um we did uh in exercise, I had all I, you know, overseas six teams and I, I mixed them all together and we did this via, you know, zoom um chat rooms, um or meeting rooms, whatever they're called.

And we did the 11 star experience where we looked at the customer journey and we graded ourselves on all of the different pieces of the customer journey through the lens of the customer. And we identified some areas that we wanted to improve upon from there. We idea it on solutions in breakout groups. Then we compiled all of these and presented on them from there. Managers took the list and prioritized and created task forces. And so this allowed different levels to have the right amount of influence because at the end of the day, they're at the front lines, they want to feel empowered and like they believe in the solutions that are being created and honestly, they probably have better solutions than we do because they're right there experiencing it.

And then you could have your management layer, your director layer really drive in hone in on it and help create, help drive the action of the solutions that have been identified. And so this allows you to create critical thinkers as opposed to doers. And that is one way that you will grow exponentially. The third is being paid fairly. Um Otherwise people feel that they're taken advantage of and remember they can leave at any point. And so this really goes back to value, right? And if people start to leave, others are going to start to think that they should leave as well. And so it's a terrible ripple effect. So going back to value money is really an energetic exchange. Um if money, if they feel that money is matching their effort, they're gonna grow resentment and dealing with resentment is a whole other ball game that is really hard to turn around in. And so I want to address a question that was posed earlier. How do we feel about transparency and pay? I am I believe in benchmarks. I believe in being transparent on benchmarks of here's the baseline of where you start based on, you know, every person with this role is at this baseline and then as you grow, you're going to get um raises, et cetera, um come in with different years of experience.

So really just having that range is what I truly believe in. We do um a six month evaluation of this company wide and it's pretty amazing. And so we're not impacting productivity motivation um or negatively impacting the demeanor um that influences culture really negatively because we're saying, hey, we're going to look at this for you so that you don't even have to go out there. So every six months hr does uh an evaluation of every single employee, we have to one make sure that we don't have any disparity or any unequal unfair pay within the organization. And then we also grade ourselves to um outside benchmarks and, and we, we allocate budget accordingly.

And uh Linda, I see that you're asking about remote locations, we absolutely have remote. So we are a hybrid scenario fully in office. We have hybrid employees and we also have fully remote employees. Um And so our uh salary review is based upon uh these different aspects as well. So, um you know, we all have budgets and, and I understand that um and so, you know, be flexible um if it's, you know, it's cheaper to keep someone period than replacing them. And so you have to think about and if you need to convince your company around this, remind finance of the recruiting costs involved, how it can pull away from potentially critical roles that you need to hire. If you're constantly uh spinning the wheels on some other roles that, that you have high turnover for uh more recruiters will be needing. There's training and on boarding costs, ramp up time, et cetera. The other way that I, you know, want you to think creatively around this is, it's not just about salary. Um Is there a bonus program, commission? Can you play with equity a little bit? Um Really push health insurance and really understanding what's most appealing to the employee um because different as uh different factors will be um will be important.

Great example, my number one top A E um cared more about equity this last round and she shared that with me and it was an interesting to understand where she is at in her career and the influence that she wants to have. So check in with your people for sure. I think we're almost out of time. So I'm gonna keep going if you can stay, I'd love you to. Um So learning and growing is my fourth pillar. And again, this is my favorite because no one wants to feel stagnant. It's boring, it implies being stuck. Um Rather we want to keep people feeling like they're more moving forward and upward, even if they're just staying lateral, even if they stay in their role for a year and a half. Um The danger zone is I've gotten that I can out of this, it's time to move on and you can't change our minds about that. So you constantly want to show them how they continue to grow, how they continue to learn. And this newer generation, this is their deep, deep, deep value. And so we can do this two ways, skill based and personal development. And as I'm sure many of you listen to Brene Brown. Um soft skills are the hardest uh mindset communication, et cetera. So how do we do this? We create a feedback culture. Um make it apparent that there's still more to master in what they're doing and think about how you can do this daily, weekly, monthly. One of the tools that we use is a win learn change framework.

Um wins are, here are some of the things that I specifically did to yield great impact. Here are some of the learns I had along the way, some aha moments, right? And here are some changes that I've identified that I want to work on. And um we have again, cross functional teams meeting same 6 to 7 people with a moderator each week and they all share everyone gets vulnerable on a weekly basis for 45 minutes and shares their windler changes on a specific program, a specific um presentation they may have done or uh on their week in general.

And this will allow managers to also use after specific interactions or during one on ones. Um you can identify themes and then you could decide if you want to do a larger training uh for teams in general. So when I joined North America um air call, we had a deep need for, for a hands on leader and to really focus on people development. And, and so I brought in some help. Um I brought in a company called Forte Consulting and I mentioned them because a lot of these frameworks um that I use, I learned through them over the last decade. And why I share this is because we did a very hyper focused two day workshop training where we learned the aid framework. I mentioned the grow model, different communication styles. Um But now we do this repeatedly. It's not a one undone. Um And I do it too. I share how I'm learning. And so I share this because it, it's crucial that we don't see this idea of learning and growing as just, you know, the layers beneath us. But we have to show them how we're continuing to do this in our same roles as well. So share um you know, again, short term, this will take time uh but this will create a community of grateful employees and you know, you'll learn more deeply, it's gonna be more fulfilling for you as well. So teach it, learn, it, integrate it even more in your life.

Um I was able to use the grow model on one of my colleagues, he's a senior executive here and he was having trouble navigating a diff difficult conversation and I used the grow model on him and, and he, you know, a week later shared with me that he implemented uh some of the ideas that were generated and, and he got through it really smoothly.

And so this again is a way for you to drive even greater impact as well. Um And so, you know, doing this and creating a culture of this growth and, and our employees feeling like we're investing and sharing this feedback, they're gonna go out there and talk to their buddies, they're gonna go out there and talk about how much they're receiving from you in terms of time.

I'm the general manager and I meet with any level that puts time on my calendar because ultimately, that's what I feel my job is, let me help them grow so that they drive the impact as opposed to me trying to puppeteer this whole uh and orchestrate, you know, this whole play this whole scenario that's too difficult when we do this.

Our employees are gonna recruit for us and we get great referrals that way as well. Lastly, you know, they need to feel like they respect the people around them. They truly need to uh believe in the people around them and they want to be inspired by the people around them. Um I like to say I hire kind and nice people who want to work hard and have a sense of community, even if they're an individual compu uh you know, uh contributor. And the second way to do this is to break silos. It's all about how we focus on the common and collective goal we share to drive respect toward each other. No more sales, no more marketing mo no more, you know, attack against sales. We, we have to feel like one team so that we can communicate in a way where we're getting the impact that we're looking for. We're getting the outcome and this, we need to train all of our employees as they grow because this is how you groom leadership. So team first mentality, um you know, I have a strict rule of, of no egos and no assholes to be perfectly transparent. Um You know, again, it's the idea of not competing against each other. Uh and instead competing with self, right? Create the team environment.

Uh We want to share and help each other. You're also going to create peer to peer learning this way. Um And you know, you want them to root for each other because this is what builds morale and it boosts motivation, how to hire for this. Ok. Look for cultural and caring people and my go to questions in the interview process. I've got three of them share a time you failed and how you navigated through this. What was the best advice you received in the last month. What was the time you had to help or care for someone? What was it? And what did you do? Ok. My team, we were about honestly about 15% away from our um Q one target with two days left to go of the month. It was been a very tight and I had both days off and I trusted my team. Uh but I have slack and I was looking at the messages going and I saw something that I knew would happen. They were cheering each other on, they were sharing ideas, they were coaching each other and we had one A E who is close to Target and the top A E who is closing her own deals was cheering him on and sharing tips. And this is what you want to see that collective force of energy, that collective thought process and knowledge transfer to yield greater results. And that's exactly what happened. We made it.

Uh It was the the day of President's club and so it was fantastic uh to be there having won it. Um So competing against each other, it brews fear um rather than the abundance culture very, very quickly. What that means is there's not enough in the pie vers, there's more than enough. And so you want to make sure that when you talk about opportunity, even if there's only one management role, there's always opportunity to drive impact. So really steer your employees in that direction in terms of sharing with them, how much impact each and every person can make. There's plenty of uh space to go around to drive that and it's more, it's needed more than ever when times are tough and let's face it. I think that we're all uncertain right now and how tough times might get right now. Um, or same could be true for short deadlines or, um, you know, when you, when you've got a, a fast delivery and this is when finger pointing can come about as opposed to a culture that works together that will communicate more, that will iterate and that we will find solutions.

Um Quick, quick story for you. Um Blame is my number one flag of this. Um My directors, I just felt like, you know, I've got four direct reports and I can feel like we were just off and I could hear excuses and I could hear, you know, in their tone that they were a little bit short with me and I just pulled them together and say said it wasn't OK.

And I shared with them the impact that it had on me and the impact that had on the team that they could read this, they could feel it. And I asked for more grace. I asked for more forthcoming feedback so that I can be influenced by them to better understand how I could show up better for them if I wasn't showing up the way that they needed me to. And this opened up the opportunity for each of them to share a little bit of what they were going through. They were able to phrase it in a way that really expressed what they needed from me. So they realized their role and responsibility in it as well from there. I asked them to share one thing that we each appreciated about one another to help them and remind them of the impact that their teammates have on them. Uh And that was really important to do. And so I leave you with this, this is hard and it takes time and it's so much easier to throw cash at people. Um But that's not really what they want. Again, they want to feel fulfilled and they want to feel like they're learning and growing while all the other things feel like they're taking care of money, et cetera. Um So that's just an afterthought, bottom line. We can change lives this way.

And I know that I'm out of time. And so, uh I'm gonna skip to my takeaway, um which is I ask that each of you go back to your team and share one thing that you appreciate about each team member and then ask them what else or how you can show up for them differently to help them even more. And I promise you these two questions are going to drive so much insight into what they're looking for and it will drive both of you so much closer. So again, the takeaway from today, share one thing that you appreciate with each team member and ask how you can show up for them differently or how you can help them more. All right, I see that we've got some questions and so I think if I can stay on here, I'll try and address them now. Um But I wanna thank everyone so much um for joining and you can feel free to connect with me on, on linkedin. Um And I'd be more than happy to answer more questions that way and share more tips as well. And I'm trying to figure out how to get to my other screen so that I can read the questions except I am really struggling.

So I don't know that I can read the um the thought so sorry about that. I've lost my mouse. Oh, here we go. I found it. All right. Um I'm thankful to all my male managers for seeing I could do the work and be a manager to Mary. I love that. Um Scarcity. Yep, agreed Joanna. Ok. Any advice from Jennifer, any advice for dealing with a peer manager that always seems to want to compete and be combative, wanting control of all situations while Jennifer uh I've been there and it's so difficult to, to handle.

Um What I would suggest is, is, is trying to get to a place where, you know, this, this pure manager sees that, that you're both that you're on the same side. Um make it about the impact um that you're both going for and trying to find that collective goal, try and find a collective um mission that you could do together and then talk about the roles that you potentially could play. And this way they can see you as a compliment as opposed to an adversary. I found that that technique has worked for me in the past. If you want to be more direct, you can also have a conversation with them. Get curious rather than critical and perhaps ask some questions using that aid framework. You know, gee Jennifer, you know, when we were in the meeting the other day, you know, when you ask the question, blah blah, blah or you mentioned this, the impact that it had on me was blah blah blah. Do I have that right? Am I reading this correctly? So try using the aid framework, if you want to deal with it, head on or find that common um goal or target that you might have and talk about uh the different ways that you can navigate it together.

So again, you're not competing uh and instead of team and feel free to reach out Jennifer, uh if you wanna talk through that as well, I can post my linkedin. Um I believe I'm the only one. So that's my name Janna Scorsone Um So it'll be linked in, you know, in, in that backlash. All right. Oh, and Katherine, thank you for posting that. I appreciate that. Cool. All right, everyone. Well, it looks like those are all the questions. Thank you so very much. I look forward to seeing those connections and I look forward to sharing more uh if it's relevant to you. Thanks so much and uh have a great, great day. Bye.