Episode 286

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes back Roy Dockery, Author of The Art of Leading, for a discussion filmed at Future of Field Service Live in Stockholm on what leadership traits do (and don’t) create impact. Since this discussion, Roy has also taken the role of the Director of Field Service Research at TSIA.

Roy stands out as a transformative leader in the service sector, keynote speaker, and creator of an innovative leadership model based on truth, love, and empathy to enhance impact. His background as a millennial executive and former military personnel has trained him to effectively manage diverse, cross-generational teams across various industries.

Through his book, "The Art of Leading: Truth, Love and Empathy in Action," Roy shares this model with 13 fundamental principles, providing real examples of their application. He was also recognized as one of Hot Topic's top 100 Service Visionaries by a panel of global industry experts.

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Episode Highlights:

Roy - 00:00:00: One of the reasons I lean towards love is because I've worked around people for the last 15 years who love what they do. And as a leader and everyone who's ever done a ride along, right, like there's just something different you feel in field service. But it's because they actually love their job. So when I moved into management, I'm like, they deserve somebody that loves them as much as they love their job. Right. So like I need to love their job, but I also need to love them. So it kind of became a language that I use because it's what people in the field say. Right. Like people in service. It's not the income. They're normally some of the lowest paid people in the company. It's not the recognition because they're not getting any recognition. Right. It's not the customers. 90 percent of the time they're talking to angry people. They genuinely love what they do because they enjoy serving people. And so as a leader of people who serve like the best way for me to serve them is by loving them as well. And when I say love, I'm talking about like I want the best for them as human beings.

Sarah - 00:01:01: Hello, welcome to the Unscripted Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. Okay, so welcome back, everyone. Half of the room had an opportunity already to meet Roy, but the other half has yet to spend some time with you. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, tell everyone a bit about your background and what you've done recently, and then we'll get into it.

Roy - 00:01:30: Sure. So my name is Roy Dockery. I'm from the U.S. I live in an area, a small town called Whitsitt, North Carolina. So not jet lag, but did about eight and a half miles walking yesterday. So I think that helped me acclimate to the time difference. But been in field service since I got out of the military in 2010. So I've worked in transport automation, pharmacy robotics, autonomous mobile robots, and like automated packaging systems and things of that nature. And also spent the last two years in kind of a public safety security system. So license plate readers, gunshot detection systems, and things of that nature as well. But always in a field service leadership role. I've been in service leadership the majority of my life. I mean, assistant. Managed a pizza place when I was 17 years old. Owned and operated a restaurant in my 20s. So I've always kind of been in service and people leadership in general. Like in my personal life, I do a lot of counseling and mentoring and things of that nature as well. So that's what kind of put me on a path of leadership in general, outside of just work and field service. But as I was telling the team, I kind of decided a long time ago that I think I really enjoy leading people. So like that's the path that I took, even though I have a very technical background. I have a degree in nuclear engineering. I have a degree in information technology. I'm in a master's degree and a bunch of other stuff. So I went a very educational technical path. But then when I actually started working, I realized what I enjoy doing more than the technical stuff was actually leading people. So that's what I've done for the last 10 years.

Sarah - 00:02:59: Okay. Now the book came out a couple of months ago. Yes. Can you share with everyone sort of what prompted you to write the book?

Roy - 00:03:09: Yeah. So as someone that's been in leadership, one of the challenges that I had is that I've never really had a professional mentor. It seems weird. I'm an anomaly in my industry in the US for a variety of reasons, age, race, geography. So I've never really had a professional mentor. But for the majority of my career, I've mentored a lot of people. I've mentored a lot of people in service, outside of service, everything. I have mentees who are CEOs. I have mentees who are priests. I have mentees who are full-time music artists. I have mentees who are YouTube personalities and things of that nature. And so mentoring people over the years, and a lot of them, it always kind of came down to the same principle was like, how do I become a better person and how do I become a better leader? And so with that, over the last couple of years, I've been mentoring a cohort of probably over 50 people, and I have a podcast and some other things. And so I started with actually a series on my podcast that's just talking about leadership. So I walked through 13 principles that I thought were essential to being a leader in the way that we behave, the way that we engage with people, the way that we manage and delegate and deal with responsibility and accountability. And so I did the videos because I'm mentoring 50-something people who keep asking me the same question. Even though they come from different backgrounds, they have different professions. And so made the videos, people were like, okay, well, we need more information. Then I was like, all right. So then I wrote a book and I released the book. And then almost every mentees have read the book and they're like, okay, we still need more information, which led me to have to build an online course that gives them even more information and 95 lessons for them to walk through. But that's what it came out of. It came out of mentoring people. And when it came down to it, when I distilled all of the different experiences and people that I was mentoring, it all came down to they were trying to be more effective leaders, whether that was at work, in their personal lives, with their personal goals or their ambitions. So that's why I wrote the book on the art of leading and it was just hard for me. A couple of people mentioned it in their extra hour a day. I love reading, right? I've spent 12 years of my career traveling 50 to 75% of the time. Like on average, I was reading 75 to 100 books a year. But whenever somebody would ask me for a recommendation for a book to read, I could never give them one book. I always had to recommend like 17 books for somebody to read on leadership, depending on who they were. And there's a list of, and I know Sarah's read it, there's a list of books in the back of the book that if I had to give somebody a recommendation, but it's 20 plus books so I said, I enjoy writing. So I'm like, I'm going to write one book that in my mind can actually take a lot of different lessons and distill it down into one book so people don't have to go buy 25 of them.

Sarah - 00:05:48: Okay. So one of the things that you cover early in the book is that you view love as a fundamental element that can empower you to excel in leadership and drive remarkable outcomes. So can you talk about the importance of love in leadership or the role of it?

Roy - 00:06:07: Yeah. And I know I had a podcast on it. Love is a very misunderstood term because we look at love love romantically all of the time. And I was just sitting, I was thinking today, I saw the list of questions. One of the reasons I lean towards love is because I've worked around people for the last 15 years who love what they do. And as a leader and everyone who's ever done a ride along, right? Like there's just something different you feel in field service, but it's because they actually love their job. So when I moved into management, I'm like, they deserve somebody that loves them as much as they love their job. Right? So like, I need to love their job, but I also need to love them. So it kind of became a language that I use because it's what people in the field say, right? Like people in service, it's not the income. They're normally some of the lowest paid people in the company. It's not the recognition because they're not getting any recognition, right? It's not the customers. 90% of the time they're talking to angry people. They genuinely love what they do because they enjoy serving people. And so as a leader of people who serve, like the best way for me to serve them is by loving them as well. And when I say love, I'm talking about like, I want the best for them as human beings. Right? Like that's what that is. Like I want the best for you. And sometimes the best for you isn't over time. It might not be a promotion. It could be discipline. It could be development, just kind of like with our children or loved ones. That's why I kind of put it in that category because I think what we've done in a lot of our companies is we build our companies around who we like. We build our teams around who we like, right? Like the person that we like gets promoted. The person that we like gets recognized. But then what's weird is that relationship between the employees and the manager, the person that the manager or the executive likes, nobody else likes. And the reason you like each other is because you have similar interests. Like you're both into the same sport or you went to the same school where I think you level the playing field when it's like, look, I love everyone who works for me, whether I like you or not, right? So whether we get along or have similar interests or come from same backgrounds, like I owe every person that I lead the same amount of attention, the same amount of respect and the same amount of care. And when you lead, and I think that's fundamental to the way that you lead because we're all biased if we're honest, right? We're all biased to a certain regard. So if we don't base our leadership style off of something that actually equalizes the people that we're engaging with, we're going to wind up leaning towards and leading the people that we like more than the other people that we don't have that like initial connection with.

Sarah - 00:08:37: Yeah. So that leads me to a quote I want to share from the book where you are tying the importance of love to equity, right? So you say, equity has become a popular term, but I truly believe that love is the only true path to equity. Tolerance and inclusion can easily become prisons for those in the out group because to be given, access without true consideration is a cruel illusion. Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

Roy - 00:09:07: Yeah. And I think it kind of goes a little bit to my previous statement about the people that you like. Right. Like we want diversity. So we diversify the table. Right. I was just talking over lunch like field service doesn't have a lot of women. Right. Like in America and Sarah knows field service is mostly older white men. I am one of like three African-American vice presidents in field service in all of America. So like 10 years ago, Sarah was one of like two women and I was like one of two African-Americans like in an event that had four or five hundred people at it. So from a diversity perspective, if you don't actually care about the people you invite to the table, then you don't give them a voice. So, right. I checked the box because I added more women to the leadership team. I checked the box because I added more minorities to the leadership team or I allowed them in the room. But the voices that are speaking are the same. Right. So and that's why I say to give someone access. And I have a conversation. I think it's probably still on my YouTube channel as well. But there is a difference between using diversity as a token or allowing a diverse person to be a totem. Right. And that's like totem. So like in Native American folklore, totems are used to tell stories. Right. So when you look at them, they're like every section of the totem tells a story where like a token is just access. Right. You think about before everything was digital. You needed a token to get on the train. Right. Like so a token just gets you in and that's it. And so what I would tell a lot of people that I mentor is that like if you feel like all you got was access, then you're probably a token. They just let you in a room, but they don't let you speak. And your diversity isn't changing the story. Right. Because if I'm a totem, that means I'm a new layer within the organization. But that also means I should change the story. So like if you are only given access and you're not actually allowed to change the story. It's cruel because one, you're being publicly lauded as diversity, but privately, you just feel like you're there. Right. And I've been in that room in a variety of situations. Right. Like, you know, me and Sir and I were just talking. I think I've spoke at every technology conference in field service on the topic of diversity. I am not an expert.

Sarah - 00:11:22: On the last day.

Roy - 00:11:22: On the last day. And it's on the last day when everyone's flying out. But it's like people are just like, Roy, can you speak on diversity? Like. I don't have a degree in diversity, right? But like I am diversity, like just in existing, but I always try to expand that conversation and make it broader. And I have the patience to deal with it because I mentor people. But I think that's the challenge. Like a lot of times, like I said, we want to diversify, like if to use an illustration and I do a lot of this, it's like adding chairs to a table, but not adding microphones. So, right, if I was sitting at a table and everybody had a microphone, but then I add a table to the end and I add a chair to the end, but they don't have a microphone. So it's like it looks like they're in the room, but they don't have equal voice. And I don't think that's fair. And I think that's why, at least in the U.S., you're getting a lot of pushback on DEI programs because a lot of them gave access, but it didn't actually fundamentally change the organization. Right. So you hired different people, but then there was no innovation. There was no true benefit from diversity because people weren't given a voice. They were only given a seat.

Sarah - 00:12:26: And I think we talked about this a little bit in the breakout that I was in earlier. But, you know, people that are focusing on that because it's a checkbox exercise, right, is kind of what we're talking about. Whereas companies that really understand the value of people want to focus more on the inclusion and understanding and giving everyone that voice. And I like the point you make that as a leader, you don't have to like everyone equally, but you need to love everyone equally to make sure that you are being fair to your teams. Okay, so the next thing I want to talk about is authenticity. Okay, so you talk about how authenticity can unleash potential. So I'm going to share another quote. And it says, when you truly love and respect the authentic version of yourself, you grow to have a greater appreciation for the unique authenticity of others. Authenticity serves as an inspiration for others to do the same, leading to a collective unleashing of potential. Why do you think some leaders struggle with showing up authentically in their roles?

Roy - 00:13:34: I think the primary thing is that it's never really been exemplified, right? We talk about it, but for the most part, most of us were raised in cultures and traditions where we're told to compartmentalize, right? I've got my personal life. I've got my work life. But even within your personal life, you have pockets in your personal life, right? So those that are married, you've got the friends that you have with your spouse, but then you have your own friends, which is almost like a separate group, right? So I think we naturally are inclined to put things in boxes. And then when we show up to work, we show up to work in our work box. But there are skills and behaviors and things that we bring to the table that may not be specifically related to our job, but because it's a part of who we are, we can have influence in that area. Right. And so in the book, I talk about the fact that, like, I believe that everyone with influence is a leader and everyone has influence. So everyone is a leader in that regard. And you may not have a leadership role specifically within the organization, but it doesn't make you a leader. But the reason and what I tell my mentees all the time, and they're always struggling with work, right? They're burned out. And so and I remember I said it to one of my mentees and it stuck with me as well. I said, if only half of you shows up to work, why are you surprised that your job is twice as hard? So if you're a creative person, but only the analytical part of you shows up at work, then you're leaving an entire part of yourself at home because you don't think it's applicable or vice versa, right? You're a marketing person, but you can also do logistics and you're structured. But like you leave that part of your like we turn that part of our brains off or, you know, you're a people person, but you're not an extrovert. So then like at work and you're an individual contributor, so you don't interact much, but you could actually have a lot of influence and you can engage with people because I do a lot of public speaking. And Sarah knows like Sarah and I, neither one of us are extroverts. I'm a social introvert. I can socialize. I prefer not to write. I would rather go read a book in silence. But just because I can interact like. People assume and because I can be charismatic when I want to, people assume I'm extroverted. I'm not like doing this drains my energy. Right. But I think that's one of the challenges. So when you show up authentically and we learn that it doesn't matter where the skill came from, where the experience came from, like we show up in our totality. So when I'm in a meeting, even if we're having a meeting about something service related, like I've done sound engineering for 17 years. Right. I've organized my own events through a nonprofit that I own. So like I can speak to event planning, even though I'm the vice president of service. Right. I can speak to creative writing and marketing, even though that is not my job. It actually, it keeps me awake in a meeting, right? Because I can engage and interact in different ways with things that may not specifically be my role. But I'm authentically there. Like if I'm artistic, even though my job is technical, I can weigh in on artistic things other than kind of shutting myself down. And I think it allows you to have more access to more of a diversity of thinking right? And kind of seeking that feedback from different people. But you have to establish a culture and you have to exemplify what it looks like to show up and not just show up in the job title in the job description that you have. Again, I go back to love. If I love your entirety as a person, I understand you're a technician, but who else are you? I understand Electrolux. I know you work on appliances, but what else do you actually like to do? Because you'll talk to a technician. I had a technician who worked on mechanical systems at my company, Swisslog, but he built computers in his free time, had taught himself how to code when he was 12 years old, and he built motorcycles and cars in his spare time. So he was by far one of the most advanced technical software-oriented people that we had, but his job was working on pneumatic tube systems but getting to understand him and know him, it was almost like, yeah, you're too qualified for this job. You should go do something else. But he had no experience, so he couldn't put that on his resume because he had learned to do that in his free time. He never had it in a particular job. So I think that's where the authenticity comes from. It's like bringing all of your skills to the table and becoming comfortable speaking up. And I think that's why a lot of leaders don't do it, because we're used to just speaking based on our job description, based on our title, based on our responsibility and since we're not comfortable speaking outside of our box, we set that example for other people who stay to their box, right? I'm accounting. I only talk about accounting. I'm sales. I only talk about sales. But you have opinions on everything. So why are we afraid to share the opinions? You know, the worst somebody can say is no, right? I say that in the book. The worst somebody can say is no, but the best thing that they could do is adapt an idea from a different perspective that actually adds value.

Sarah - 00:18:30: How would you describe the tie of authenticity to empathy?

Roy - 00:18:35: Yeah, I think, right, empathy is putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, right? It's not just, oh, I can feel you, but like I can actually kind of like transpose myself into your situation and feel it. I think that requires a level of transparency. That you only get when you're authentic, right? Because first of all, most people aren't going to open up to you if you already appear to be closed off, right? So like the level of how much people share with you and how much people engage with you is going to be limited by how open they think you are. And if you're already compartmentalized to where you never talk about your personal life, you never talk about your children, you never talk about your marriage. If somebody is going through a divorce, like why are they going to bring up their marriage when you're asking them how they're doing, right? So like you see their performance slipping, but they've actually never seen a personal side of you where, you know, authentically, I think we're all going through stuff, whether it's medically, personally, financially, family issues, aging parents, right? There's things that if we're authentic and we share those experiences, especially during one-on-ones and conversations, you kind of open the door for people to bring you things to give you, because I think a lot of people, we can contextualize and find a way to be empathetic, but we haven't demonstrated it in a way where people actually feel like they can bring a problem to you. So it's not even that, you know, you shut it down, but like most people have learned over the course of their lives or their career to keep that stuff to themselves. So it's like you have to set that example and break that tradition that people have like kind of ingrained in them, because you have to realize that regardless of what you think your company culture is, it's just like relationships. People are bringing baggage, into their job. You may have never said keep home at home, but somebody did 10 years ago, right? So it may not even be you. You may be completely different, but you also have to lead as an example and you have to untrain people from unhealthy behavior that they've actually brought into your organization from other places. And so I think that's something people know. They're like, oh, we have a healthy culture, but if you're not doing anything to actively instill that into people and to help them understand what it is, then people are just going to be like, oh, we're going to keep going with the same behavior they had before. And then, you know, come through your organization and leave feeling the same way they did when they got there, because they didn't actually know that they were in a place where they could have been more open and would have gotten more empathetic responses from leadership.

Sarah - 00:21:03: So when we talk about love and authenticity and empathy, you know, they're all things that to some people, I think, can sound very soft or woo woo still, right, especially if they come from a different way of thinking. But you also talk about, you know, our skills that can have a big impact, but they're not skills that are used in isolation. So you say, you know, love without accountability becomes enabling. Honesty without tact, empathy or maturity can be damaging. I'm just wondering if you can share an example of love with accountability or balancing honesty and empathy just to sort of illustrate that, you know, applying these practices doesn't mean that you are just giving everyone hugs and, you know, letting everyone walk on you, right? It's their skills that are balanced with those other elements.

Roy - 00:21:59: Yeah. And that's one thing in the book, I had a lot of my mentees kind of read the pre-draft and there were some stories and they were like, no, we need more stories in the book. They were like, we've known you, we've worked for you. And so there's a section in the book called principles and action that is literally a story based on actual people that kind of lays out each one. But to give an example of love and accountability, we had an opening in Philadelphia, right? For a field service technician. And I went up to actually right outside of Erie, Pennsylvania. We interviewed a couple of candidates and we had a really solid candidate who was very honest, right? He wanted to relocate, had just went through a divorce, right? A really tough divorce. And he wanted to kind of get to a new area. So we hired him, moved him to Philadelphia. He had like 15 years of experience in field service. He was former military. But then we started getting complaints from the customer that he was falling asleep in the pharmacy. So like just sitting in the pharmacy, supposed to be doing maintenance and pulling data. He would just fall asleep at a desk in the pharmacy. And I'm like, what is going on? And then I sent somebody to do some training with them, sent a supervisor down there, and he got in a car accident because he fell asleep at the light. Not bad, but like bumped the car in front of him and he fell asleep. And so the very objective part of my brain is like, I have customers complaining that you're falling asleep, right? You're late from a response time perspective, probably because you're asleep or something's going on. And you just got in a car accident with another employee and the car, like you are a high risk. But like the part starting with love is that like, okay, I at least owe you a conversation to ask you what's going on. Like, can you explain to me why your fault, like what's going on? Like, is there something going on? Are you having trouble sleeping and all of this other stuff? And he actually admitted, he was like, well, I've been having a hard time sleeping. And so I asked, have you been to a doctor? You know, have you seen somebody and whatever else? And he had. So before I took action as a leader, I'm like, I at least want him to have an answer on what's going on. So he went to the doctor, actually discovered he had severe sleep apnea. Even though he was laying in bed, he was only sleeping like 45 minutes to an hour at night because his brain was being deprived of oxygen and his body basically kept shutting down. So, you know, so they put, they were like, you need to, you know, got to lose some weight because he had gained a lot of weight after his divorce. He had too much weight on his chest. And so going through that whole scenario, turned around a relationship with the customers, loved them, but on a discipline side. But then after that, then he started showing up. He wasn't meeting SLA. Something was going on. So I did the same thing, had a conversation. I said, hey, what's going on? You're not responding. And literally our contract stated our technicians are supposed to live within 45 minutes of their primary site. At the time I was living in Delaware, I lived an hour and 45 minutes from the customer. The customer called me. They had called him three hours before, right? I'm a VP at the time. I get in my car and I drive. To the hospital in Philadelphia. And I get there before he does. So now we're four hours and 45 minutes in and he didn't show up. And then when he arrived, I'm like, what's going on? What's happening? And he told me he moved. So he got into a new relationship. He got a girlfriend. He moved to New Jersey two and a half hours away. So he had an ultimatum. Like, I love you. I'm glad you got a new relationship. I'm glad you're doing better. Right. He had lost a ton of weight, you know, was healthier. He didn't need to see Pat machine anymore, but he didn't want to reload. Okay. So we terminated them. Same person. Right. But like, I have to hold you to the same expectation that I hold everybody else to. You made a personal decision that you knew because you were hiding it from us. You knew it was in violation of your employment contract. So unless you move, I'm going to have to hire somebody else. So we gave him time to transition. And when I actually went to go pick up the company vehicle from him, you know, I took him to breakfast. So I had another technician with me. We went and picked the vehicle up and he apologized. And he was like, I'm so sorry. You know, I should have, I'll let you all know or whatever else. And I still have a relationship with that person to this day. Right. So, you know, he went back, he, you know, works in another industry, has a good job, is remarried, and we still stay in touch and have that relationship. But I held him accountable to what his job called for. And, you know, we had already given him an opportunity to get rid of an issue that was actually a health problem that he could have got terminated for. And then he would have still had that issue moving forward if we didn't have just take that opportunity to have that conversation.

Sarah - 00:26:21: There were some questions earlier about recruiting, retention, and I'm just wondering if you can share maybe a synopsis of your observations on how do we find and nurture the next wave of talent?

Roy - 00:26:40: Yeah. So on finding and, you know, I think you were at, so I spoke a couple of weeks ago at Field Service Palm Springs, and there were kind of like four R's that I went through that we need to do to just the way that we recruit. So I think one of the problems that we've had in the field service industry for a long time, I've called our job descriptions, Dear John letters, right? So because our job descriptions look like we're trying to hire former employees. Right. Because when you look at the requirements of what I'm asking for a new employee to know how to do. It's the same requirements of the people who already work here. So how would I have two years worth of experience, especially if you don't have like a commodity and your equipment is proprietary? Like how would anyone have experience in proprietary equipment that only you sell? But it's in your job description. You have education requirements in your job description that none of your technicians actually have, right? So I remember seeing job descriptions that an associate's degree is required, you know, a bachelor's degree is preferred, but no technician in the field actually had that experience. So one thing that I've worked with organizations on and I've done it in every company that I am is go to your job description and compare your job description to the people who are actually performing well in the field today. Right. Because what you'll find is you had a referral that was an atypical candidate that you hired because a good technician recommended them. So you brought them on board and they're doing an amazing job and they completely defy your job posting. Right. So if you have atypical people within your organization. That are doing well, that are doing the job well, then go revise your job description based on those people so that you kind of expand the pool of candidates you're actually recruiting from, right? Because we're saying there's no talent out there, but it's because we've basically fished all of the talent out of that pool, but there's like a whole other ocean that we haven't even bothered to go check, right? And like those people, because we've invested in training, because we've got augmented reality, because we have all these tools, but I think the first hurdle is the pool of people you're recruiting from is actually smaller than it should be because you haven't got what your hiring managers and the teams that are actually leading the people on the ground and rewrote the job descriptions, right? So like pay attention to those referrals and things of that nature. And then also start getting the managers back involved in screening. We have to stop trusting all of the, I know we talk about AI a lot, but all of the rank-based keyword search screening that we're doing on resumes. One of the things that I've done at my two last companies is we let the tool run in grade resumes. Then I took a group of managers and had them go through resumes blind and grade them. And the grades were the opposite. So what the system said was an A or B. My manager said they would not hire those people. And what the system said was a C or a D. My managers wanted them at the top of the pile to interview so that's the other thing is that we're also using tools that are not evolving, right? Because the tool is based on historical data. So those are the resumes we were using. Those are the resumes that were successful. But now you need a different group of people. So re-involve those hiring managers and let them dive into the system and just look at resumes blind. Because normally what you see as the hiring manager is what's been screened by human resources, right? So there's a thousand applicants and maybe you get to see eight or nine. And what I've learned, let the manager go dig through a thousand applications and I guarantee you they'll find you over a hundred candidates that otherwise would have been screened out because they know what it takes to do the job. They know who they can train and they can see skills in those resumes that the system or that keywords won't catch. So, and that's one. And on retention, care for your employees, respect them and value them, right? That was my last, I do leadership tips on LinkedIn and Instagram Monday through Friday of every week but that's, yeah, make sure they feel cared for, make sure they feel respected. A shortcut for respecting technicians, ride-alongs, respect and value. You get a two for one if you do a ride-along with a technician, especially if you're not from the service organization. So encourage other people in the organization to go spend time with technicians because that isolation that we talked about earlier, like that, they start to feel more a part of the company when more people within the company actually understand what they do because they stood beside them. And even if it's two hours or three hours, that'll help you with a lot of retention because they feel more connected to the company. And it's harder for them to get poached by somebody that just sees them while they're out and about or somebody that, you know, that may jump into their email to recruit them because they feel more connected to the company.

Sarah - 00:31:34: Last year at our Paris event, there was a presentation by Culligan, and they actually shared that they have, I think it's a certain month of the year within their company that every employee that isn't in service is paired for a day with someone who is, whether it's call center, field service, et cetera, to spend the day with them. It helps them understand those roles better, but also understand the customer needs better. And it's something that within the company is so valued on both sides. To your point, the technicians and the service teams feel that they're being acknowledged for the important work that they do. But then the people within the company appreciate it because they learn so much and they see so much of what goes on and what the customer sentiment is and all of that. So it's a good point. Can you speak to what makes one adept at having hard conversations effectively?

Roy - 00:32:30: Yeah, Crucial Conversations. Another great book, by the way, if anyone has read it. I think having hard conversations requires, on the listener's side, it requires a level of emotional intelligence. One thing that I tell people, and me and my wife also do marriage counseling, we do a lot of things what it applies at work is that you have to learn how to listen past being offended that helps in every area of life, but we tend to get defensive very early in a conversation. You're not actively listening in a defensive standpoint because you're trying to now find how you can counter or counterpunch or offer a rebuttal instead of listening. I think you have to be intelligent enough and emotionally intelligent you enough that even when you hear something that you think is false or inflammatory or offensive, you have to keep actively listening. Because what I've learned over time and being in service, and I think, sir, we've talked about this before, angry people are the most honest. It's a hard conversation, but everyone in here has heard something about their service team, their product, or their offering from an angry customer that was 100% correct that they had never said to you when they weren't angry. Because there's a level of honesty that most of us withhold until we're angry. It's like when you say the mean things. But when customers do that, as service leaders, when we listen, I've had customers that will complain about a technician that they've had for 17 years that I'd never heard a complaint about. But in the same regard, they talk about how they have a bunch of new employees and I don't have time to be training them, so I need your technician. So I'm like, okay, we weren't hitting our SLA, we were late, but you also just shared with me, you have a bunch of people who you're contractually obligated to have trained on my system who are not trained. So one of the reasons it keeps breaking and I have to keep responding is because you have people using it who are not trained, right? So I'm going to deal with my response time issue, but then let's have a conversation about training and how can I help you? How can we facilitate some professionalization development? Do you want to bring some people out? Because ultimately, it's going to save me money on my service contract, but you've got to be able to hear something difficult, whether you think it's true or not, and continue to actively listen through the part that you're offended by, and then be able to take that information and articulately respond to what's actionable. You got to throw out all of the subjective stuff that's just emotion and kind of learn how to sort through that. But when something is true, it doesn't matter how it was delivered. It's true, right? So you may not have liked the way that they said it. You may not have liked the context, but it's true. So you need to respond to that and you need to follow through on it. And I think that gives customers, honestly, a level of comfort and safety to know that they can just unload on you. You're not going to take it personal. And then you'll actually help them figure out their problem. And the same thing applies to technicians, right? People want to come. Or your management staff or whatever. They just want to get stuff off of their chest and then get it out on the table. And you can throw a bunch of stuff on the table. I might pick three things and say, well, I can help you with this, this, and that. So let's talk about that. But it creates that space where people are not afraid to offend you. So they can just be honest and they can be open and just kind of let it all out. But you've got to be able to not be quick to be offended because that's the easy way to get shut down. And I talk about what people bring in to work relationship. A lot of people are bringing in, okay, well, when I was honest before, I got shut out. I was isolated. I got blackballed or I became the outcast at my last company. So you've got to make sure that you don't repeat the same thing when people are being honest, even if they're tact or their tone could be a little bit different. And I tell my team all the time, if they're right, they're right. I don't care how they said it. Get over it. It's our job to deal with the issues. And sometimes those issues are going to come. Enter like twist it with a lot of emotion and frustration. But you've got to be able to unwind the two, not be offended and just listen and then have that crucial conversation.

Sarah - 00:36:58: Okay, last question before I open it up. What advice do you have for someone who is working in an environment where they want to deploy some of these principles, but there's toxicity higher up in the organization?

Roy - 00:37:13: So we talked about this a little bit in my session downstairs, but do what you can where you have control. Right. So a lot of times we want to go to the top with the change. But if the resistance is at the top, that doesn't work. But I think where you have influence, use it. Right. So if you're a manager and you're managing, you know, like even looking at my career. Right. I wasn't a manager, but I was the trainer responsible for techs in the Northeast. And the culture that I developed with people that I was training is actually what led to me becoming the manager. But I was also one of five managers. Right. So the way that my region was run in the culture that we had was not the same in the other five regions. But when people saw the culture actually in my region, they actually demanded that the other manager be fired. So the technicians actually got together and collectively wrote negative feedback on their service manager and said that, like, he's breaking the law. He's asking us to do stuff that they're not doing right on the other side of the border. And we work at the same company. So even though, like, I didn't do anything specifically, but just because of the culture that you created, I think, you know, there's adjacency where people will see it and say, OK, like, that's something that we want to adopt as well. But I think it's doing what you can in your sphere of influence that you have control over. Right. And some of that, like, you know, I don't know how rigid companies are, but like the way that you can recognize your employees. Right. The way that you can recognize leaders on your team. That can be an email out to your employees. Right. So like even, you know, in every company that I've worked at, there was always something that we did within my team, whether it was customer care or operations that the rest of the company did not do. But if the company doesn't want to adopt like a leadership program, then like I'm going to put it in my budget. I'll borrow it from somewhere else. Right. And so I take it out of my own budget or out of our manager's travel budget and we make it work. Right. And so we have ways to recognize employees. And there were times that I paid for stuff out of my own pocket. Right. Buying somebody a fifty dollar gift card isn't, you know, and then when people see their reaction to it and the response, then it winds up being funded. But I think that's the key thing. Like we want these like sweeping organizational wide changes. But the reason people are afraid to take that step at the executive level is because if they make this grand gesture and it fails, then what do you do? Right. So I think it's actually easier for when you have a smaller team and a more controlled space and then just try to do some things to encourage leaders. Right. Lead authentically. Be empathetic. Right. And then make sure that it's also reflected in your policies and the way that you operate and the way that you train and the way that you onboard. Because you're responsible for the culture that you have the most influence over. Right. So like even if you're in a company with an overall toxic culture, it is your responsibility as the leader to make sure you are the umbrella and that that doesn't go down to your team as much as possible. Right. So I think that's the main thing. Like we have more influence than a lot of times we think we do, especially when we're not on like that executive leadership team or whatever. You know, that dogmatic group of people that are set aside as the change agents. They're not like you have individual technicians that have more influence than your CEO. Right. Across the overall organization, if they say something, people listen. So it's getting with those people and then using your influence as a manager, director or VP to change the culture around you. And then I guarantee you it will start seeping into teams that you don't run because behavior is contagious. So toxic behavior can be contagious, but also healthy, productive behavior can be contagious as well. Because when people see things that they like and that they appreciate, then they try to replicate it as well.

Sarah - 00:41:04: Questions for Roy.

Speaker 3 - 00:41:06: Great. Thank you for a good session. One question regarding the recruitment session where you went into the recruiting manager to dig into the CVs. How can you elaborate a bit about not being biased when you look into the CVs, the people applying for the job? If you dig in and came from the same area or have the same former employee. Yeah, if you can elaborate on not being biased when you look into CVs.

Roy - 00:41:32: Yeah, right. And you're talking about that experience. I think one of our, it's not necessarily a problem, but we've been spoiled by the fact that we get a lot of applicants that look like the people we already have. Right. So when I look at their resume, it's like, oh, I hired somebody from this company before and they worked out. I think one of the ways that you overcome that bias is by and to use a photography term, right, is to expand that aperture because there are people at your company. You have no idea where they came from. Right. Like you don't know where their background is. So like the more that you actually understand the different people who work for you and where they came from, like you have somebody that's outside of that, like because 70 to 80 percent of them are normally relatively similar. But you have like a 20 percent that's not. And so once you see that and you recognize like, oh, these people can also be successful. I think experience in relationship changes bias. Right? Because I think there's a certain kind of person that works when in reality you have people right now that don't actually fit that mold. You just don't know that. Right. So that's why I say like when you engage the hiring managers and the supervisors who actually know more about the specific details of all the people that are working, like you start to understand the different types of people who are good at doing this job. So then when you look at a resume, you're looking at skills and you're not. You're not looking at they came from this company. They came from this school. They came from that background. You're looking for behavior and skills. Right. And I think that's like shifting towards skills in behavior based recruiting. I think every company should have a behavior assessment that you use to give you behavioral based interview questions. Stop asking the generic. What is your greatest strength? What is your greatest weakness? Right. Like have an assessment that gives you better behavioral questions. And you just got to stop giving so much weight to experience that you're used to. Because first of all, you're running out of it. Right. Like you're running out of those people anyway. But you already have some people in your organization. If you went and kind of like look through that don't meet the mold. But we treat them as exceptions. And they're really not exceptions. They just would have been eliminated by our current screening process. Right. Because if they can do the job well, we didn't have special training for them. Right. They came through the same onboarding process, went through the same training, and they're successful at the job. So I think we've got to stop focusing so much on experience and really look at the skills. And you're going to get that more from your hiring managers and your supervisors, like the people who actually work with them day in and day out. Then you are from like a recruiter who may understand the job description, but has never actually done the job in the field. So it's involving those managers and letting them look at resumes. I think we'll help everybody kind of undo their bias because we've been spoiled. Right. Like in the U.S., my service organization was 80 percent ex-military. But ex-military in the U.S. Are just high school graduates that went to trade school that was run by the military. So why would I not just hire a high school graduate that went to a trade school or a high school graduate that would do well in trade school but hasn't gone? Right. So when we change that, then like the organization became like 40 percent ex-military. And we started hiring more people that were 20 or 21 or 22 years old when we just kind of adjusted that and stopped just picking from ex-military people because that's where we had hired from for five or seven years.

Sarah - 00:45:15: All right. Roy, thank you so much.