The Key to Attracting and Retaining Top Talent | Shivani Gupta | Episode 309

Scott McCarthy [00:03:21]:
Shivani, ma’am, welcome to the show. So good to have you.

Shivani [00:03:24]:
It’s so great to be here, Scott.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:27]:
So excited. We were kicking things off before I hit record, getting to know each other, breaking the ice, and stuff like this. And I just love having Aussies on on you know, we we just connect. Us Canadians and Aussies get along so great.

Shivani [00:03:39]:
We do.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:40]:
We’re fine. We would So this is gonna be awesome.

Shivani [00:03:42]:
We wouldn’t think we’re so far away, but so

Scott McCarthy [00:03:44]:
close Heck. Within 2 minutes, you offered to do a house swap. So I don’t know how my wife would feel about that. I’ll have to mention it to her tonight when I talk to her later, but I’ll say, hey. You never know. You never know.

Shivani [00:03:58]:
Exactly. I’ll have the same conversation at home, and people will be like, sorry. Didn’t you just meet the guy? But yeah. But there was a trust fund. Right? They’re Canadian, so they’re very similar to us.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:09]:
I love it. Alright. So today, we’re talking about getting our people to step up. 7 simple strategies to attract and Keep Your Key Talent. Absolutely love it. Love the concept. So let’s dive in. So let’s, you know, set the framework, like, you know, gross and motor, what what are these 7 simple strategies then?

Shivani [00:04:29]:
Yeah. Well, one of the things I found, Scott, running my own business, you know, run a multiple number of my own businesses, but also I did an interview with just over a 100 business owners, and I said to them, tell me about some of the biggest challenges that you have. And the biggest challenge was people. I mean, people have always been challenging to business owners and leaders in business and it’s like, how do we navigate that? People are complex, irrespective of how many frameworks, how many different things that you put into practice. But I think that since Covid it’s become even more difficult. And so one of the things that people told me that there were the challenges that they were finding it really difficult to find good people. People’s values have changed through Covid. Some people don’t want to work full time.

Shivani [00:05:09]:
Some people are being lured towards better money and money has become a lot more important with the cost of living going on up all around the world. And so the book is broken into 2 parts. The first part is really looking at, you know, how do we attract key talent? How do we actually bring the right people in doing the right jobs? Because when we know that we hire the right people, it makes it so much easier for us to run our businesses, you know, as leaders and as business owners. And the second part of the book is broken into once we’ve got these great people, how do we retain them? Because again, we need a different strategy these days in terms of being able to keep our key talent and, you know, often as leaders, sometimes we end up spending so much more time and energy with our noisy people who occupy a lot of our space, occupy a lot of our time, occupy a lot of our sleepless nights at times. And one of the things is how do we actually give more love to the key talent, the people that are actually running our teams and running our businesses, so we start to look at some strategies to to keep them.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:16]:
I wish I had done this podcast interview earlier already. So the past today, actually, all day today, I spent, with my my, my senior team my my team, the senior management leadership of my of my organization. So by day, I serve as a senior Canadian army officer, and right now, I run the country’s largest supply depot. So we’re talking about a organization of a 180 folks. We manage $4,300,000,000 worth of stuff, highly complex. Yeah. Yeah. It’s insane.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:50]:
The the the place is so big. I get I’ve literally gotten lost in my own building. It’s nuts. So today, we sat down. We had, like, what we we call our strategic planning session where a lot of these issues were discussed. Like, we still we are still having issues with filling all of our billets. Now we are much better off than what we were in the past. So I have a a mixture of both military uniform members as well as civilian military or, sorry, defense employees, civilian employees.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:18]:
So, so we’re on the civilian side, we’ve been, like, you know, hurting in the past. Now we’re not so bad now, but, like, like, well, we can’t just sit back anymore and be reactive and, you know, hoping people show up at our doors. We need to be able to get proactive and find them and track them just kinda like we were saying. So I can’t wait. And then as well as we’re talking about, like, okay. How do we keep up people? How do we retain them? Because, you know, we’ve we’ve spent all this time getting them. Some people have been there for forever. Like, literally, I got employees who’ve worked at my organization longer than I’ve been alive.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:55]:
Like, how do we make most of them like look at them? Understand at the same time, like, not everybody’s gonna stay within our unit for their entire career, and that’s fine. But I don’t want everybody just, you know, showing up and walking at the door either, so I can’t wait. So let’s talk about attracting the right people first. So, you know, how do you know, what are some tips that you can give me now that I can bring to my team tomorrow because we’re meeting again tomorrow morning to talk about, hey. How do we attract people to us?

Shivani [00:08:24]:
Oh, absolutely. Now let me talk about a couple of concepts in the in the time that we’ve got today, Scott. One is that, you know, every leader talks about vision. We’ve got a vision that we put into practice. One of the things that as leaders we’ve got to do is we’ve got to reiterate the vision constantly because one thing is having the vision, the other is to be able to communicate that vision so that people, every single individual in your team, whether it’s 180 people like you’ve got in your team, I have now have a team of 5, but I’ve had a team of over 60 staff in the past, that every single person can see their role in that particular vision and one of the parables that I’ve always loved is, and I share this in the book as well, is that, you know, there’s a row of stone masonry workers and 1 guy walks out to them and he says, what are you doing? He said, as you can see, it’s really hot and dusty conditions and I’m working and carving a rock. I don’t get paid a lot of money but I take that money and then I’m able to feed my family. And so this gentleman walks a little bit further and he says to this person who’s smiling and he says, hey, what are you doing? And he says, I’m building a cathedral. Now, each of those people are still working on the same piece but one could see that the work that he or she is doing relates into that bigger piece, into something that is worthwhile achieving and I think as leaders, if we can not just take a vision that is relatively easy to come up with, it’s the constant communication and connecting people in so they can see whether they’re a cleaner or an admin person or they’re a civilian or, you know, they’ve got that army background, they can all see the pieces that they need to go in there.

Shivani [00:10:02]:
The other thing that I wanted to share is that I believe that, you know, when we hire people, we tend to hire people and we say to people, you know, this is our vision, these are our values and this is what we stand for and people are like great and they’re going to sell themselves at an interview because their role is to get that role, that’s what they’re trying to do here. One of the things I believe as leaders, we need to really understand is that every single human on the planet is going to operate from their passions. They’re always going to be driven and motivated by things that they’re passionate about rather than what your business is passionate about and so it’s really important that even if upfront, when we are interviewing people, I’ve developed a thing called the passion model, which really looks at the 7 areas and one of the things that I started to do because I used to interview some people and hire them and within a couple of months I’d go, this is not the person I hired. They seem so excited and motivated, you know, when I hired them and now they don’t seem to be that excited and motivated at all and I use the analogy, you know, it’s like you go on a date, and you know, the person is so well behaved on that date and then you move in or get married and you’re like, oh my goodness, there’s some work to be done here with this particular relationship and so it’s so important that we get the real person at that particular interview. So in the passion model, one of the things I started doing a few years ago was I said to people, here are the 7 areas of passion, we do not expect work to be your number 1, but I would love to know how do you spend your time and energy and I’d love for you to look at that and give me a hierarchy. Where do you spend your most time and energy? What do you love doing? What do you, you know, do and as a result of that, it was amazing some of the conversations I started to have. I remember this one particular person who’d applied to be a manager, she said to me, she said to me, I’ve come to this role knowing you need somebody full time. I’ve got 3 kids under the age of 5 and I would love my number one passion is my family just also because of the age that my kids are at, but I really love working and for me, my ideal would be working 4 days away.

Shivani [00:12:03]:
I looked at her CV and that, you know, that honesty that she shared with me and I ended up repurposing that role for 4 days a week and she ended up staying with me for over 7 years as a manager in that business. And you know, another one said, oh, you know, Shroney, my number one passion is my health and fitness and my body And because I was running my business, I was able to then pay for a fairly expensive gym that she went to as part of an incentive and really linking an incentive to that particular person there. So I think that if as leaders, we actually, right on the outset, started to understand what drives people and motivates them, you know, and if work, I mean, we probably don’t want work to be number 7 on the list of passions, right? They’re probably not our ideal people, but if they’re number 2 or number 3 or number 4, how do we feed their passions and how do the people in return feed my passion? And I’m very open about saying, look, my number one passion is my work and my business and so it’s really important for me, not just from a monetary perspective, but to make that difference. So if you’re going to come into this business, I would love to feed your passion and I would love in turn for you to feed my passion and could we work that out that we could support each other through that journey and they become my best people, you know, rather than getting everybody to fit into me, like how can I fit into their lives, even though I’m the employer or the leader in this business? But also in turn, how can they do that back for me? And having those honest and robust conversations, making the interviewing process interesting and different, making sure we’re looking at all facets of a human being become really important in hiring the right people. Oh,

Scott McCarthy [00:13:42]:
way to start off hot and high. Holy smokes. Wow. So I just got a couple of comments. I love how you started with the the mission and vision aspect. And I often so it makes me feel good because I made a similar comment today to my team. I used the I I think it was JFK who went to NASA, and he saw the janitor. And he said, you know, hey.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:05]:
What are you doing? And the janitor looked at him and said, I’m helping put a man on the moon. And I used that for my team. I said, for our members, we need them no matter what I say to him. Like, hey. Know, what are we doing? Or someone asked them what they’re doing. Their answer should be, I’m supporting the Canadian Armed Forces. Yeah. Like, that’s what we do.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:22]:
We we support we support the Canadian Armed Forces. Army, Navy, Air Force, at home, abroad, that’s what we do. Right? And and that’s kinda like the mentality I told my team we need to put into. Second thing you mentioned there, I love that passion question because I look at it as like, okay, you know, we look at people, and we’re like, okay, they’re a resource, right? But how can we unlock that resource to its fullest potential? And if we can use that passion in an area which you wouldn’t even thought about, like, like, if someone I’m hiring someone. So we have a lot of people who just, you know, warehouse. Right? Warehousing. But if in the interview process, someone’s like, ah, I’m really into data, I would be like, holy smokes. I need a data analytics guy.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:10]:
Like, and wait now. You just said your your passion is numbers and data and stuff like this. Like, can we have a different conversation? Because I think I have a better employment for you where it’s a win win. Yeah. I think that is kinda like the crux of your your your question there and how might I support you to support me in the end as as a as a leader because then you’re not only are you just, like, employing the person, but rather you’re you’re employing them in where, what’s the expression where where they feel most alive. I think if we can find that where we feel most alive aspect for people, then it’s like this is where peak performance hits. Right? This is where the engine just fires on all cylinders because people feel just alive. They enjoy what they’re doing.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:56]:
It’s not like at an office space where, you know, he’s driving to work in his life. Obviously, he hates life. Like, you want people to feel alive. So I love it. I love where this conversation’s going. Oh, Freddy. So we just talked about, like, attracting right people and interview process and stuff like this. How can we tap into this even during the onboarding process? Like, once we you know, like, okay.

Scott McCarthy [00:16:17]:
You’re a fit for us. Now how do we, like, you know, make them wow? How do we keep them, you know, that first impression? To me, the the interview isn’t necessarily a first impression. I find the the onboarding process to truly be the first impression. So I’d love to hear your thoughts there.

Shivani [00:16:34]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love what you just said there, Scott, which was our whole role of a leader is to unlock people’s potential. That is absolutely true because I think as as leaders when we got that, that if we could really tap into people’s potential and help unlock that, that’s when magic starts to happen and I agree with you, in my experience, onboarding is done very poorly across most organizations that I come across and again, that initial part of that onboarding people are really great at, which is the interviewing process, most, not all businesses and not all leaders and that first couple of days, you know, let’s get them meeting the team, let’s get them their IT equipment, let’s get them that. And then in my experience, most people forget that when we do not do onboarding well in those 1st 3 to 6 months, one of the things that happens is disengagement starts very early in the pace. And so, you know, we really need to, I always say to people, you need to do a 90 day plan, like your Q1 needs to almost be mapped out and that mapped out might be on a post it note, it might be a word document, but you’re basically giving them a plan to say, we’re going to be catching up X number of times a week. I also need you to spend time with these particular people and where I want you to be in 90 days time is this, we get very clear about where we want our people, the new employee to be by the end of that 90 day period and we give them a bit of a map. We don’t organize it for them. You know, we say your role is once you’ve got your IT equipment is for you to set up meetings with me, it’s for your role is to set up meetings with all the different people, But by the end of the 90 days on a weekly basis, I want you to ask me as many questions as you’ve got so that you’ve got clarity, you’ve got, you know, whether it’s input on certain people and personalities, whatever the questions are, my door is open that have structured conversations that we have and what we wanna do in that Q1 is to really for that person to take, you know, a document or something that they read on the internet about their role and really start to feel what it, what it feels like to actually do that particular role and what some of the nuances are and what some of the challenges are around personalities and people and oh, wow, I didn’t even understand that was part of that role.

Shivani [00:18:54]:
And you want somebody who you’re working for to be able to answer all questions. No, no silly questions at all and be able to really start to understand that role, know that your manager and a couple of your colleagues have got your back and they’re really going to be in that mentoring hat in those Q1, particularly to be able to do that. I also say to them that onboarding is really a 2 year process. It’s not really, people who have 2 years are like, yeah, you really need to think about onboarding in the 1st 90 days and then as you’re getting towards that 1st 90 days, then set what you want them to achieve in the next 90 days. See a lot of people in our team Scott, like they get that bigger vision when this is what we’re building, we are here to support the army and other things that you might want to be able to pass through them but sometimes people can’t stay at that really high vision. So we want to keep reiterating the high vision and the bigger vision but then we want to also say to them, you know, you might not be able to see the mountain, you might not be able to see Everest here, but let’s actually work out the next base camp. Where are we actually getting to that next base camp and the next 90 days, what I want to be able to do is there. What we want is by that 6 month mark, ideally, you want that person to understand their role, they’ve been already actioning a number of things but at that 6 month to 9 month mark, you want them to start making some changes because now they understand that role enough to look at what process improvements that they want to make, look at the conversations that they want to have.

Shivani [00:20:18]:
They’ve already started to build some rapport and trust with some of their colleagues and that’s where we want them to do that but you want them to be constantly talking to you in that 90 days but really think of onboarding as a longer game. Like, you know, I say that the businesses that I see looking at onboarding at 90 day rhythms of cadence and to be able to get to that 2 year mark, they’re the ones that their engagement of their people is high, their productivity is high and people go, oh, Shwani, like we’ve got 10 people to onboard, that’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but what is it costing you if you don’t do it properly? Right, you’re paying this salary, but and and what’s the opportunity cost that you’re missing if you’re onboarding that is not done correctly? Because you know, when the people that feel really loved and taken care of and supported and they can ask those questions, how many dents are they going to make in your workplace and what a difference is that going to make? That’s what I get people to think about.

Scott McCarthy [00:21:17]:
So many great things in there. I’m like, as you’re talking, like, task, task, task, task, and I just pitch a poor fit up tomorrow going, oh, no. Oh, no. I have do this. I have to do that. Not because I and I told the team, like, I’m not I’m not judging anybody because I’m just new in this role. I just got it in the middle of May. So I’m at now at the end of my, you know, kinda, evaluation period.

Scott McCarthy [00:21:42]:
I like to take 3 months and do absolutely no changes, not touch a thing because I find 2 leaders that too many leaders out there just like, I wanna jump in and change everything right away. Like, well, you don’t even understand why things are the way they are. So how about you first understand and then see what you need to fix. Right? Because you might be fixing something, but the reality is you’re breaking to another things, but you don’t even know you’re breaking yet. So that’s always been my kinda advice and model. And now I’m at the point now where I’m like, okay. We’re sitting now with the team. Let’s let’s make some serious changes.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:15]:
Like, we had serious conversations, like, structural change. I mean, massive structural changes to the organization that are obviously needed because the whole team was, like, on board as soon as I mentioned, like, hey. Like, I I question. Like, we don’t have this type of role. And they’re like, yeah, we need it. I’m like, everyone agrees with that. They’re like, yeah, like, okay, let’s do it. Like, like, you know, like, not a big deal.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:37]:
No no complaints. But I love the onboarding thing that you mentioned. And that I need to in my head now, I’m like, okay. We need to do this process better. And that was always it was in the back of my mind anyway. And now I was like, okay. Great. We need, you know, have these, you know, feedback sessions.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:53]:
Like, you know, get them the private feedback because how often have I told my new members they’re my greatest assets, which often gets them confused. And I say, you’re my greatest asset because you know nothing of this. So you’re going to question everything, which means we might be doing, you know, we might be doing the TPS reports that no one reads, but no one has actually told us that, hey. Why or ask the question, why do we do this TPS report that no one reads? So that’s why you’re my greatest assets. But we need that feedback loop, and I feel like that’s what’s missing right now. So that’s so many great points in there.

Shivani [00:23:32]:
Yeah. And I think you said that beautifully, Scott, that and, you know, hence your title is chief leadership officer. I love that title as I said to you before we started recording. You know, great leaders seek to understand before to be understood and we’ve heard that saying many times and so, you know, but I do come across so many leaders that want to put their stamp on it and we’re kind of almost dishonouring what’s occurred. You know, not to say that everything was done well by a previous leader, but we have to honour when we walk into a place in terms of who they are and what they’ve done and not dishonour that by saying, well that was all wrong and this is how it’s going to be done from here on. So I think an honoring of wherever we walk into, which is by asking questions, seeking to understand before we start to make changes is so, so important.

Scott McCarthy [00:24:21]:
Absolutely. For sure. So we’re we’re, you know, we’re in the onboarding process. Yeah. We got a person through. We’ve taken your advice. You know, we looked at it from a 2 year period, and we, like, looked at where they we want them to be in the 2 years. We’ve worked our way back and put all the steps in place, the onboarding questionnaires, make sure their IT is set up for them.

Scott McCarthy [00:24:39]:
Their desk is clean and prepared as came up today with my team. And, you know, all these great things and show them actually, I have one guest mention, you know, take them show them where the bathroom is because some that can cause problems sometimes or the lunch room. Right? Depending on the type of place you work at, which I thought was quite funny, but at the same time, like, oh, yeah. That makes sense. Now how do we keep them as we as we got them? You know? I guess we just kinda grab a hold to them and say, you can’t go anywhere and you’re never in you know, hold them tight and never let go. That’s the best way. Right? Right? Tell me that’s the best way. Well Or am I wrong?

Shivani [00:25:12]:
I mean, ideally, you know, people go, oh, Shivani, why do you use the word love when it comes to your people? These are just my colleagues. These are just people that report to me. These are, you know, but I always say that it’s so important, you know, as a human, I believe that, you know, people look for 3 things. You know, they look for something to believe in, which is the vision, and we were just speaking about the vision. You know, they look for someone to believe in, which is the leader that they report to. They want to, you know, have a leader that they can believe in and believe that that person has got the right ethics and the right interest and gets the vision. But the third thing as human beings that we look for is for someone to believe in them. So we look for that self belief, that self worth where somebody says, hey, you’re amazing.

Shivani [00:25:58]:
And I think one of the best retention strategies is to have people in our business that know how to act as a coach. You know, I mean, I’m an external coach as well, but I’m constantly obsessed about saying to businesses, you need to have managers in your business that have the capability of coaching your people and, you know, coaching people is about giving them feedback and, you know, coaching people is about giving them 4:one ratio feedback. We want to give so much positive feedback to people when it’s due, when the timing is right, not because it’s made up very authentic and genuine, but we want to catch people doing something right, when they’re doing something really well, they’ve gone a little bit above and beyond, let’s tell them that and you know, I call that, that we’re building up a bank deposit, you know, you can’t withdraw money out of a bank if you’ve got no money in the bank, but I believe that, you know, Stephen Covey and a number of other great leaders and thought leaders have spoken about potentially this 4:one ratio. Let’s give people 4 lots of positive, you know, great feedback when they’re doing something amazing, when they’ve gone above and beyond, then we build the right as a leader to then be able to give them the constructive feedback and then we make that withdrawal out of that bank, we make that, give that constructive feedback that when we build that trust and the person goes, okay, this person’s not just constantly telling me what I need to fix, they’re actually really building me up, they really believe in me, my self worth is going up as a result of working for this leader. So I know that when this leader comes and gives me the constructive feedback on something I could improve or perhaps I can deliver on or whatever the challenge may be, I’m going to be so much more receptive to that feedback and to really be able to do that. So, you know, getting our, getting our managers and our leaders in our business knowing how to coach people, yes, have some external coaches, but also have that capability in your business is really, really important. You know, another concept that I believe is really important is this beautiful, beautiful word called shoshin, in Japan and shoshin says, you know, it’s about having an open heart and an open mind and you know, the fact that our world is constantly changing, but I was at a conference the other day where I was listening to a fellow speaker and the speaker was talking about the impact, in a lot of detail around what A. I.

Shivani [00:28:13]:
Is going to have. He’s a futurist and an A. I. Now, we know that, you know, each year we’re actually learning more than we have previously in any other history. So we’ve got this exponential curve happening in our learning and so how do we get our people to have an open mind and an open heart? How do we incorporate whether it’s AI, whether it’s the way that we do businesses together, whether it’s a new client that we, you know, whatever the new things that we need our people to adapt, we need them to have open hearts and open minds to be able to adapt to that particular change and so how do we as leaders help facilitate that? Well, we, you know, we talk about how important it is to have constant learning, whether you’re doing an online course, whether you’re learning how to manage people better, whether you’re learning how to, you know, do your work better, whether you’re reading books on, you know, areas that you’re really interested and passionate about around your work, you know, keeping that honest and that learning up, but also being able to share that, how do we create a culture where people are saying, hey, I just listened to this great podcast and I know Scott, you were sharing with me, I was listening to this podcast the other day and it was incredible, right? And, so how do we actually create that learning culture in our businesses where when people are learning, when people do have that social mindset, how are they sharing that with each other? You know, that podcast may not be relevant to somebody else, but something might spark and somebody going, oh, that sounds amazing. You know, I’m in a mastermind group and when we catch up, one of the things we talked about, what did you learn in the last month? And I’ll say, you know, I read this, you know, book that might be obscure to other people, but somebody goes, give me the name of that book, give me the name of that, you know, the author, I’d love to be able to read that and how do we create that culture in our businesses where we are learning from each other, where we’re unlocking that potential, but we’ve got that wisdom starting to rise and that’s our role as leaders is that, how do we create that culture that everybody’s learning from each other, but everybody’s on a bit of a learning journey as well.

Scott McCarthy [00:30:10]:
So much good stuff in there. Wow. I don’t even know where to start with any any unpacking of my own there because there’s just so many great things. I love the 4 to 1 ratio. Right? I I absolutely love it because they’re actually gonna bring in a real world, you know, outside of work context to this and that, like, I try to as a father, I’m coming more cognizant of trying to do say more good things to my boys vice picking up on the bad things to do because I wanna reinforce the positive advice, you know, try to smack down the negative. Right? Now don’t get me wrong. If you have boys, 96, it can be a challenge some days, especially with the 9 year old. But you don’t you know what I’m saying.

Scott McCarthy [00:31:00]:
Right? But that’s kinda where I’m going. And, like and that’s why I say leadership’s for everyone in every in any type of situation. Like, you know, that’s me being a father. That’s as a leader of my family. Right? So I’m trying to apply these same types of principles and same thing at the workplace. 4 to 1. That’s a great actual ratio. I I’ve never actually even sat and thought of it.

Scott McCarthy [00:31:21]:
Okay. How much positivity should I give my people before I give them any type of criticism. And, yeah, 4 to 1 is definitely a a great ratio. Yeah. And I’m The other thing you talk oh, go ahead.

Shivani [00:31:33]:
I was just gonna say that I I what I really liked about what you said is that, you know, when it comes to leadership, somebody goes, I’m a really great leader at work but I’m not at home. Or I’m a really great leader at home and not at work. And I, it’s interchangeable. You know, leadership, you’re either a great leader everywhere or you’re not a great leader everywhere. And so, you

Scott McCarthy [00:31:53]:
know Principles are principles. Right?

Shivani [00:31:55]:
Yeah. And like how much do we learn, Scott, of our parents, like, you know, of our children. And, you know, I’ve got 2 teenagers and I tell you the feedback ratio is not working the other way. I’m getting a heap of feedback. It feels like it’s the other one the other way around, sometimes coming back at me from my 2 teenagers. It’s so important to understand their perspective because they’re coming from a different world experience and they’ve got so much access to different things that I didn’t growing up, particularly things like online and social media, etcetera, as well. And so, there’s so much feedback. I think there’s so much learning I have to do as a parent constantly about saying, how do I engage? I’m an engaging talent expert, but how do I actually engage my talent at home? And that’s the toughest job because success to me, one of my successes in life is when they’re in their 30s 40s, they want me around with their families.

Shivani [00:32:48]:
You know, to me, a measure of success, they say, Hey mum, we would love for you to come and join us on this holiday. Would you help us, you know, help us with the kids one night away? Or you know, to me, that’s one of my measures of success and to continue to engage them is really important. But I think you said that beautifully, that applying that at home is the hardest because they always are not open to feedback. They don’t work for you, even though they kind of do and you’re paying for everything at 6. You know? But how do we actually engage them and how do we translate that into work and how do we translate that?

Scott McCarthy [00:33:24]:
Yeah. No. So, yeah, so much truth bombs in there. The second thing I was gonna say was actually an interesting, parallel. So I was at a conference yesterday, and AI was one of the topics I spoke about, from my, you know, my perspective in the material management world and, like, you know, AI is not the future. Ironically, the title of the slide was into the future, but I said, you know, you know, but we’re here. We’re we’re already here now. We just need to get there right now, and how are we gonna use AI and stuff is and so I’m gonna tie this into leadership.

Scott McCarthy [00:33:57]:
And you were talking about, like, you know, when we talk about these technologies, And right now, I’m working with my team. We’re starting a whole new project where we’re trying to envision where we want our organization to be in in basically 20 years from now, in 2040. What do we wanna look like it? And first thing that comes to your own minds, job cuts. Right? Oh, you wanna get rid of our jobs. Like, no. Not at all. Now are we gonna need as many people on the floor manually doing things that we’re doing right now? No. But does that mean I don’t need you, like, the people? I still need the people.

Scott McCarthy [00:34:34]:
It’s just that there’s requirements we don’t even know exist yet. So my point comes to this is a challenge. But with every challenge, such as AI, there are opportunities. And I think as us as leaders, if we focus on the opportunity aspect and not you know, we have to mitigate the challenge aspect, obviously. But if we focus on that and frame it around there, then we can get the buy in from our people that go, okay. Alright. I see where you’re coming from now.

Shivani [00:35:01]:
Oh, absolutely. And I I’d love to hear more about some of the stuff that you’re doing around AI. I’ve heard the same thing and I said, look, guys, people, we’ve been here before. We knew when the internet was coming in, this would happen, people said this was going to happen when the iPhone came in, we’ve been through these technology shifts where we thought a bunch of people were going to lose their jobs. Is there going to be a significant shift in AI? Scott, you and I know that the answer is yes, but one of the things that I’m hearing constantly is people that are in strategic roles, people that have to do the thinking and yes, AI will get smarter and smarter, but we can’t avoid AI, we need to incorporate that into, you know, having that show, share mindset, having that open heart and open mind to AI as well. How can we actually use AI and become smarter? How can we do 1 +1 is equal to 3 rather than try and actually, you know, pass that away? And I know that when I was speaking to somebody who does AI about maybe 11 or 12 months ago, and I said, so, you know, I run a small business and so tell me, how could I incorporate AI? Give me some practical things rather than AI is doing this around the world, give me some practical things and these are the couple of tips that I got off him, which I’ll be now implementing. He said, whatever form of AI is coming because it’s going to explode and it has and it will continue to do so, make sure you’ve got 15 to 20 minutes every day in your diary to play with it. Right? Have an open heart and open mind.

Shivani [00:36:31]:
I went awesome, I’ve got that diarized most days now but I would just have a play with it. What is the capability? Whether it’s chat GBT, whether it’s another tool that somebody suggested to me that’s come out, have a look at it. You don’t have to use it. I don’t have to implement it. The second thing is how can your team become even smarter at doing that? So I sat down and had a team meeting with my team and I said, how could we incorporate Ai? You will, you will have your roles, but how do you use it? So we either get more output and productivity out of the roles that you have or maybe we need to pivot a little bit and get you doing the stuff that you’re actually much better and smarter at that I can’t do, but how do we use it to become better? How do we use it to serve more? How do we use it to add more value? And there’s some of the conversations that we had and now the team of 5 is doing the work of 8, right? So already and that will become better and better. So how do we actually not hire 3 more people? How do we actually incorporate, you know, the people and if I was around when I’ve run a bunch of different businesses, oh my goodness, you know, customer support efforts, like I was like, okay, well, when I had that business where we were filling thousands of calls a week, that would have been incredible to be able to implement some of that. So I’m always saying to people have an open heart and mind, see what the uses are, see how you can run some things at the end of the day in business, it is about serving our internal customers, which are our employees and our external customers. How can we use AI and get smarter at both? That’s the trick.

Scott McCarthy [00:38:04]:
Yeah. That’s awesome. To answer your question earlier, your comment earlier, I I don’t know if the world needs it, but it’s here. I cloned myself with AI. So my my customers who, so remember, I have a mastermind community, a leader it’s called the Leader Growth Mastermind. We meet. There’s 2 calls out per week where members can attend, and we discuss you know, we have content to discuss as well as, you know, we their challenges. And one of the things that they have access to is what I call ScottBot, and it is it’s me in AI form.

Scott McCarthy [00:38:39]:
So if they have a question and I’m not reachable or it’s not a call, they go, hey. You know, I have a conflict with an employee. Can you, you know, provide me with suggestions on how I can resolve this or how you know, what steps I might need to take for a meeting, you know, what have you? I’ve actually used it myself because I, like, I know what I know, but at the same time, you know, we forget little things here and there. So I’m like, okay. You know, my one on ones, my weekly one on ones. I’m like, hey, Scott Bot. You know, make me a template for weekly one on ones on the different topics. Boom.

Scott McCarthy [00:39:14]:
And I spit it out within seconds.

Shivani [00:39:16]:
Wow.

Scott McCarthy [00:39:17]:
And I just I’ve literally taken that, popped it in. Here’s the agenda, folks. Create the agenda. Boom. I looked at it, tweaked a couple things, and away we go. So that’s how I use AI. That’s my clients have access to it. When they when they need it, they can there’s 50,000,000 different applications you can use it for.

Scott McCarthy [00:39:36]:
Wow. It’s, yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Shivani [00:39:38]:
That’s pretty cool. In fact

Scott McCarthy [00:39:39]:
I’ve complete

Shivani [00:39:40]:
I know I’m supposed to be here as the expert on this particular podcast. I’ve just made half a page of notes here as you’ve been speaking, Scott. I’m like, Shivani, what I’m like, okay. Like, I’ve I’ve just started to understand a little bit of this digital twin stuff. I’ve got so much learning to do, so I would love to learn more about that offline because I just think that is I

Scott McCarthy [00:40:01]:
feel like we’re having a conversation after I hit end on this.

Shivani [00:40:05]:
Yeah. Absolutely. That’s incredible.

Scott McCarthy [00:40:07]:
That’s alright.

Shivani [00:40:07]:
Thank you for sharing.

Scott McCarthy [00:40:08]:
Which is actually a good segue. Yeah. No worries. Which is actually a good segue, Shevali, because we’ve I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground already. So we we’ve talked about, you know, finding the right people, you know, get it being proactive. A bit of the interview process, like, you know, talk to them, find out what their passions are, how to properly onboard them, and say, hey. Like, the onboarding process isn’t just a couple days, but rather a 2 year process and how we needed to be delivered with that, which I think is great. Having open hearts, open minds to people to hold on to them, keep them with our organization, you know, implore them within, areas where they’re passionate about and listen to them.

Scott McCarthy [00:40:47]:
And now we’re just kinda wrapping up this conversation with, with AI. With all that, is there anything we didn’t touch that we should have?

Shivani [00:40:55]:
Well, with this conversation, probably, you know, there are people that you meet, Scott, that have, you know, very clinical when I’m doing a podcast, and there’s others that you go, God, we could talk about 8 hours straight. And, I’m sure that there are other things there, but I think the key thing is that engaging people is not going away and if we really not even get great talent, and we want to retain great people in our businesses, which is becoming increasingly difficult, irrespective of where you are in the world, irrespective of the size of your business, irrespective of your positional leadership role, is that it’s so important to try and really understand and work out the best way to do that. For people that are able to engage and retain their talent as leaders, one of the things that you’re seeing is they’re the people that are really moving your business and your dashboards and your needle forward. They’re the ones that treat it like they’re in your role, they treat it like their own business and they put that heart and soul into it and, they’re the people that we need to love first and not the people that take up sometimes a lot of our energy and are noisy and are constantly complaining and I think we need to shift our energy and our focus as leaders and entrepreneurs to the people that are extraordinary, that are quiet, that are not asking for a lot, that come in every day, put their hand up, do all of the extra things and we really need to shift the focus and caring for those people first and parking the people that take up so much of our time and that’s one of the things I think, if we can really focus our energy as leaders onto that, I think we’ve got a much more better chance of retaining the people that we don’t want anywhere to go and if the noisy ones go somewhere, we’re like actually, you’re doing me a service, please go, so that I can engage somebody and hire somebody that’s going to be a lot more passionate and interested in this particular role. So I think that’s a shift that I come across so many managers and leaders that are spending so much time managing the noisy people and I think if we could shift our focus onto the people that are talented and we want to retain them, I think we can start to do a lot more work in that area, probably where I’ll leave that.

Scott McCarthy [00:43:13]:
You just answered the second last question of the podcast. I asked, you know, is there a final point that you’d like to leave with the audience? And I think you just nailed it beyond out of the park. It’s funny or interesting how you phrase the end, though. You know, kinda like basically, you’re saying, like, for the noisy people, we need to let them go and move on to, you know, better better opportunities, what have you. In the Canadian Army, and it’s probably similar to the Australian Army, we have a saying, and that is the the 90 10 rule, which I despise, and I’ll and you’ll get it as soon as I explain to you what the 90 10 rule is. 90 10 rule is is that 90% of your time is taken up by 10% of your people. And that’s those noisy people you’re kind of mentioning, those who end up in trouble, yadayada yada. So when I was a actually haven’t needed to talk about it yet in this current role, but I was in a different role where I commanded a squadron of 200 people.

Scott McCarthy [00:44:09]:
I said, I the 90, 10 rule is not here. We don’t use the 9, 10 rule, and they’re all confused. I’m like, we do the 90, 90 rule. 90% of our time is taken up with 90% of our people because I wanna invest in the good people. Those other 10%, they want our time. They want my my attention. You gotta cross the 4. You gotta compare to the 90.

Scott McCarthy [00:44:29]:
So I love your message there. Shavani, this has been fantastic. Love it. I feel like we’re gonna talk probably for another hour when I hit stop. But before I hit stop, last thing, shameless plug, have at it. Where can people find you, follow you, be part of your journey? It’s all but you now.

Shivani [00:44:48]:
Yeah. Thank you, Scott. My website is called ask shivani.com. My handle on LinkedIn is the same, ask shivanee, and on Facebook and on Instagram and so, because I want people to ask me as many questions as I can and to be able to share some of the things I’ve not done so well and and some of the things I will and would love to connect with you. And if you’ve got any questions, please shout out.

Scott McCarthy [00:45:13]:
Awesome. And for you, listener, always, it’s easy. Just go to leadoboss.comforward/theepisode number in digital or digits. You know? So if it’s like 303, you put in 303. I don’t know what the episode number for this show is yet, but once we do, we will let you know in the intro. So thanks again, Shivani. Appreciate you. Appreciate your time.

Scott McCarthy [00:45:34]:
I got a lot of those episodes, so no doubt the listener did too.

Shivani [00:45:37]:
Thank you so much for having me.