Intelifi Talks Presents: "Connecting in Turbulent Times" featuring Stephanie Crowe
One of the foremost authorities on Talent ROI, Stephanie Crowe is Head of Global Learning at Ingenico Group.
Stephanie will share her thoughts on addressing the current issues affecting the country and give you actionable steps on how to discuss change, leadership, and ways to move forward with your clients.
Watch the video below and find out how HR Executives can play a major part in helping companies move through crises in order to move forward.
Resources: Stephanie Crowe in "What's Changing...What's Not"
Or Read the entire interview starting here!
Intelifi Host:
Hello, I'm Cassady Dill. Today at Intelifi we're hosting a very special discussion about connecting in turbulent times. Today, our special guest is Stephanie Crowe, a leader in the talent industry. Hi Stephanie, and thank you so much for joining us today.
Stephanie Crowe:
Hi, Cassady. It's great to be here with you today.
Intelifi Host:
Stephanie is Head of Global Learning at Ingenico and began her career as an international business consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she honed her people-centric approach for success. Stephanie leads Ingenico Group's worldwide efforts, employing creative learning methods to connect the dots for our global talent, helping them feel aligned and fired up, so they can multiply their impact. She has served in several senior-level global learning and development roles, led worldwide trainings, and founded her own learning company. Stephanie is a Wharton MBA grad, and for more than 20 years, she has turned perceived business roadblocks into massive opportunities.
Intelifi Host:
All right, I'm really excited about getting into this discussion. So let's get right into it. Many in our network are preparing to, or in the process of returning to work. And I know that at Intelifi since the quarantine has let up, we've seen background screenings increase exponentially. So that's always a good sign. How can HR directors and business leaders best prepare for this time
Stephanie Crowe:
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned the screening as we're quote-unquote, "returning to work," because I've heard a lot of my colleagues talk about this as a re-boarding time. Almost a re-onboarding. So there's so much going on, not only for people who are new to roles and new to businesses, but also who are returning to work, who may have either been on furlough, had to leave and come back, or who were just working at a different location, working remotely, working from home in confinement.
Stephanie Crowe:
So all those things create this sense of coming back and restarting. And I think that as we look at that, we need to consider that this represents a whole lot of change. It's just change after change and HR leaders, when you think about the things that we have to do to support people through change, whether you're coming to a new role, whether you're changing, you're coming back, we need to think about what impact we want to have with our people as they're going through this.
Stephanie Crowe:
When I think about re-boarding, I think most people have tactical plans. They have plans for masks, for social distancing, for how many people are allowed in the elevator at once. And people are putting tape down on floors and helping to coach people about what six feet really means to make everybody feel tactically comfortable and certainly safe. That is the priority and that's why we have our new procedures. And I'm not saying that's not important.
Stephanie Crowe:
What I would recommend is to add to that list. If you've got your tactical list, how many people do I need? What positions? What do I need to do in terms of masks and social distancing, or handing out things to keep our hand washed and reminding people how to wash their hands? We also need to add to that how we want people to feel. Add to your plan the intention of how I want people to feel in a new environment.
Stephanie Crowe:
Do we want them to feel supported, cared for? Do I want them to feel like they're part of the team or do I want them to feel like they're an outsider coming back? So these are things that you can be intentional about and it also takes empathy to listen to what people need, to check in on how they're doing, because you really can't guess how different people are going to be feeling given whatever they've experienced at home, with their social lives, their family lives, with their fears about public health and quite frankly, for the economics and other social issues that are simultaneously occurring right now.
Stephanie Crowe:
So even if you're handing out masks and hand sanitizer as employees walk in, I think it's important to consider making them feel welcome and showing care and concern in all of your communications. And really this is a leadership opportunity. Honestly, I think that as leaders, we need to intentionally decide how we want people to feel and how we can support them in the new world of work.
Intelifi Host:
Definitely. I love that you mentioned how do we want our employees to feel. That's an amazing point to make. So you mentioned people having been going through a lot of change. How is it that we can best support them? How do we achieve that?
Stephanie Crowe:
Sure. So change is a funny thing because a lot of the change that's been happening is happening to us and people feel like they don't have a lot of power, or they're not in control of what's happening to them. And that's real. That's a real feeling. And what's interesting is that for leaders, whether you're in HR, whether you're in learning development or you're actually in change management, we can use tools for communication and change when we're implementing change in organizations.
Stephanie Crowe:
So the idea that this is change management is a little odd, but if you think about it, the same tools that we use when we're purposefully implementing change can be used to support people while they're experiencing change that's, for lack of a better phrase, done to them. So we didn't invite Coronavirus into our lives. We didn't intentionally have a pandemic. These are things that are happening to us. We can really start to take more control over the situation by saying here's reality, here's what's changed or what's changing and here's what's not changing. And then what are the barriers and obstacles that we have to overcome?
Stephanie Crowe:
I actually had a conversation and a post recently on this and it's available via LinkedIn if people would like to take a look. The idea of using a change management tool that I like to use called a gains and losses grid. So the whole idea is that you want to create a positive conversation or a progressive, I should say, that has forward progress with it that's also transparent. So when we talk about transparency, we want to really talk openly and honestly about what's really happening. It takes some vulnerability. Not all leaders are comfortable with that, but it's something that you can do.
Stephanie Crowe:
So this tool that I've introduced is sort of a simplified version of the gains and losses grid, which allows you to just draw a T-grid and say, what's changing and what's not changing. And this can allow people to really bring to the surface the realities that we're going through. I actually did this with my family and I encouraged my children and my husband to say, okay, well, what is really changing in our lives, in our environments, for our friends, our family and that sort of thing. And then what's not changing. What's interesting is people focus a lot on the change because they feel like it's being done to them, but they forget about the stability. The things that aren't changing. Who we love. Who our friends are. Who we are. Why we work. All of these things are not changing.
Stephanie Crowe:
Then what we did is we put pluses and minuses next to them. Again, it was a family thing. So keeping it super simple, but you can do this with your team at work too, and say, all right guys, we're in the new world, at least for now. And let's talk about what's changed, what's changing and what's not changing. Your commitment to your customers. Why you exist as a company. What your job is. Why you do it. These are all things that are not changing.
Stephanie Crowe:
We might have to go about doing it a little differently. Maybe we can't catch up so easily in the coffee area, near the water jug, but you know, still, we are who we are. We're human beings. We're working for a reason, and we have great teammates. These are all things that aren't changing. So this tool or similar change management tools is what I would encourage leaders and HR directors to use to really bring to the surface, this transparent conversation that we're trying to have.
Intelifi Host:
I like that. I love that. And now I definitely want to provide that link for our viewers at the bottom of our email and also on the Intelifi blog. But I do want to stress that things right now are not 100% rosy. How do we stay positive in light of all the difficulties and frankly, some really harsh realities?
Stephanie Crowe:
I think that the transparent conversation is what I would encourage people to have. And I'm not saying that a workplace isn't about work, but it's also about where we interact with others. For me, I think the new normal needs to have a positive future vision where the leaders can say, here's where we're going. We're getting back to where we're meant to be. And creating that future vision.
Stephanie Crowe:
I also would stress that for leaders describing that positive future in as vivid detail as possible is going to help make it real for people who are in a state of disconfusion. One of the things that people go through during change is they are first shocked by the situation. And they have a sense of loss or letting go. There's a lot of conversation early on about people trying to recognize what's going on for me, when we had a shutdown and when the pandemic reached each country around the world, and finally, we were able to identify it as grief. It's loss of how things were. And so that loss is real and grief is real, and we actually need to go through a psychological process to let go.
Stephanie Crowe:
I'm actually referring to a method which was introduced by William Bridges in his book on transitions, Managing Transitions because the change is momentary. We'd like to think it, it's lasting but there was a change that occurred at a certain point and it changed our lives. The transition is our psychological process of moving from where we were to whatever the new normal is going to be. And he calls it the new beginning. So the challenge is we have to go through this mental process. Think about any time you've done anything different. If you've moved your house. If you have changed jobs. If you have gotten married. If you've gotten divorced. If you've had a child, that's a big change. Any of those things are big changes, but the change, the momentary change is then followed by this experience where we first have to let go.
Stephanie Crowe:
And then in the middle, we're in this very confused, weird state that he calls the neutral zone. So this neutral zone, we do silly things. I tend to lose my keys. Or people forget, and they go the wrong way to work because they don't work there anymore. Your normal things that you do every day, you lose track of them even if you're not naturally a person who would do that. It's a confused state and it's normal because here's how things used to be and here's how they're going to be. And you just need some time to get into that new way. So this transition process, it's fast for some, slow for others.
Stephanie Crowe:
The leader's role is really to help people through that process. Help people do things to let go. You've seen the classic breakup burn all the pictures thing. That's a letting go ceremony where you can say this part is over and I may be sad about it. I may be grieving about it. I'm going to be glad about it. Maybe I'm glad that we're no longer in confinement. I can let go of that because it's a change after a change after a change. First, we had to leave and be confined. Lose our work. Some people lost how they were making their money. And now they've got a new thing to change. So start the process again, let go of the old, be in that confused state and get as quickly as you can to the new beginning where you have your new habits, your new way, your new vision.
Stephanie Crowe:
So are things difficult? Yes. Can we have conversations to let go of some of the things that we're unhappy about that we have to let go of, or that we wish we didn't have to let go of that's a grieving process? And then it's the leader's role and quite frankly, you can involve the team in this of envisioning and creating, what is our joint future look like together? How can we co-create where we're going, how we want to be, how we want to act, how we want to keep each other safe and supported in this new way? Even if we're wearing masks or social distancing and not shaking hands and things like this. So that new way to me is positive, but you cannot get there without letting go. And that's where the ability to talk about those difficult things that are, in some cases, harsh realities, it takes a moment. It takes empathy, it takes listening and it takes some time. And that's I guess the point about, hey, it's not all rosy.
Intelifi Host:
Definitely. Oh, I love it. Thank you so much. You've given us so much information in one little sitting. So I'm really appreciative. I do want to give you an opportunity to tell us how others can connect with you if they'd like to. And anything else you'd like to leave our colleagues with in closing.
Stephanie Crowe:
Sure. Thanks, Cassady. You can absolutely find me on LinkedIn. I'm also connected with a couple organizations in the area. I work with Georgia LEARNS who's really all about helping connect learning leaders with nonprofits and learning types of vendors to be able to move forward social and economic progress. And so that's Georgia LEARNS and then also I'm connected to a group that's really focused on moving, learning leadership forward called the Academy for Advanced Learning Leadership or AL2 for short.
Stephanie Crowe:
So any of those places you can find me and I'd be happy to continue this conversation. I have a passion after this area, helping people to make progress, to be able to work successfully through change and do that with their very best gifts and talents. The thing I would really leave people with today is yes, we have some tactical lists. Yes, we absolutely need to do things like, and I don't mean to belittle it at all, we need to keep people safe. We need to support them, whether it's making sure we've got good hand washing techniques, we've got masks, we've got social distancing. We're taking care of each other and demonstrating how much we care by doing those things.
Stephanie Crowe:
I also think that now is the time as a leader to double down on your emotional intelligence. Proceed with empathy. Recognize what employees are experiencing. Listen and support them because arguing and telling is not going to get us there. Listening and supporting will. And I think people will be really surprised how much of an opportunity this is to show people your leadership capability.
Stephanie Crowe:
No one has really done this before. There is no template or book or checklist on how to do this. So we should all proceed openly and transparently and figure out how we can be great teams in our new environment.
Intelifi Host:
Thank you so much, Stephanie. I really appreciate this discussion. Again, we're going to provide links to the resources Stephanie mentioned, and this email and also on the intelifi.com blog. Thank you so much for listening in with us. And until next time, we'll see you soon.