The Power of Talent Stewardship with Susan Salomone

“They really don't want to spend their time in training as much as we love training. That's not what they're here to do. They're really here to take care of our patients. So [when naming our department], the word stewardship kept coming up. We have to be great stewards of our people’s time because their time is precious.” 

• Susan Salomone, VP Talent Stewardship

Are you and your organization currently spending energy thinking about the post-pandemic work environment?  What does a hybrid workplace look like?   How do we need to shift now that the status quo has been turned upside down?   If so, you need to listen to this episode.

My guest is Susan Salomone, who is Senior Practice Leader at the Canadian Management Centre.  In this role, she spends a lot of time researching and speaking to experts working in Talent Management regarding what are the best practices, the next practices, the right practices and then sharing and integrating these with clients.

In today’s episode of Talent Management Truths, you’ll discover:

• How to streamline a learning management system to keep your people happy
• Ways to have difficult conversations while preserving motivation
• Susan’s top 3 tips for building buy-in

About Susan Salomone:  Susan is the VP for Talent Stewardship at Amedisys. She has over 20 years of experience in learning and organizational development in the non-profit, academic, government, military, and corporate sectors. Susan earned her SHRM-SCP and recently earned her Associate Certified Coach credential from the International Coach Federation. She also has a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Georgetown University and a Master’s of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin. 

Looking for a Team Coach or dynamic Keynote Speaker/Facilitator?

Book a call with me to explore how we might partner (serious inquiries only please): 

https://calendly.com/lisa-mitchell-greenapple/clarity-call

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Transcript

LM Ep 5
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[00:01:56] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Hello, welcome to the talent management truce podcast with your host Lisa Mitchell. I'm joined today by Susan Salamone, who is the VP of talent stewardship in a large health care organization in Nashville.

I'm delighted to have Susan with us here today. Susan has been in our field of talent management for over 20 years. She started her career in benefits and eventually became an education services. specialist I think, was the term and discovered her passion for developing people. Overall, Susan balloons.

That there's a place for learning to be embedded in daily life. And that's what she is seeking to do with her team in her role. So with that, I give you Susan Salamone. Welcome. 

[00:03:39] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Thanks, Lisa, it's great to be here. 

[00:03:41] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Great to see you. So as we know, I'm, I'm podcasting from my best friend's office here. She currently let me come. So I've got a bit of a different background from usual, cause there's guys doing some hardwood flooring installation at my house and it's pretty, pretty dreadful noise wise.

So it's been an interesting morning. We've been chatting in the green room about the setup and the tech issues, but I think we're good. 

[00:04:02] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah. 

[00:04:03] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So, tell me and our listeners a little bit about your, your path to where you are now as VP of talent stewardship.

[00:04:11] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah, it's been an interesting path. I'll say that. So you, you had mentioned that I started as an educational services specialist. I was working for a state agency in Texas and 

had actually recently gotten passed over for a supervisor position. It was just so frustrated about not getting that opportunity.

Cause I thought, you know, that was the next step in my career. That's where I needed to move. Then the, the agency had this education services specialist again, terrible title come open and I applied for it interviewed for it. And honestly, if you can believe it, I really enjoyed preparing for the interview because one of the things they wanted me to do was you know, to give a little bit.

of a class.

Facilitate interactions between a panel and it ended up being a blast, putting the training together and then actually doing the interview, which interviews are never fun. So I got into that role and, just fell in love. I loved being in the classroom. I love. Seeing the light bulbs turn on for people.

I, and I love the research part of it too, because I was having to design courses as well. So I'd have to go what I didn't have to, I'd get to go read about subjects and pull them together in a way that made sense. And just fell in love with training from that point on, and really stayed in that space.

Most of my career, my husband was in the military. And so we had the opportunity to move, not just around the United States, but around the world. Such a wonderful experience. We're very, very lucky. So spent about 20 years, you know, doing that. And then I took a role. We moved to new Orleans, which we love new Orleans, fantastic city.

And I took a role with a large healthcare system there. And shortly after I arrived, I had the opportunity to apply for different roles in human resources because they were restructuring. you know, stepped back and looked and I said, I've spent a lot of my time. Human resources in the organizational development space, leadership development training.

And I really felt like it was time to do something. we had a great vice president who was really interested in bringing organizational development skills into the human resource business partner role. And so I had the opportunity to move into that HR business partner position stayed in that for several years.

And actually when I came to the company that I'm within Nashville. That's what brought me here was a human resources, business partner role. But my role has morphed over time since I arrived, you know, as first I became the senior director for our organizational development team then I, you know, had some business partner, employee relations and organizational development reporting to me.

And just recently we restructured my team to focus really. Tightly on learning and development. And so that's really what my, you know, what my role is now is that VP of talent stewardship. Interestingly, I ha also have the employer relations team reporting to me. And initially you might think that's, doesn't make any sense. Why would you have employee relations in your learning space? We've really started to create a culture within our employer relations team.

Being coaches to our leaders. So when a leader reaches out to them about a performance issue, they're not just coaching them through the performance improvement process. They're really talking to them about how can you better work with this person? Are you getting the most out of them? And so they're, they're really helping us advance on an individual level, that leadership development.

So we're really excited to have them as our partners. 

[00:07:31] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, that's really a progressive model. And I it's interesting because I relate to the. HR business partnering. I did that role myself and previous to that though, I was the learning and development business partner, because we had sort of a more straight up split between that role. And we partnered with the HR business partner.

So they, you know, handled everything that was kind of on the employee relationship. And we overlapped on certain things. And then as a management team, we decided, okay, when we evolve to the next stage, we're going to have super HRBP that had that ODI kind of experience and sensibility built in.

So it sounds like you're continuing with that trend. Even now with 

[00:08:09] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah. 

[00:08:09] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: relations, really trying to bring that human side of business into logistical stuff that they often are seen as taking care of. 

[00:08:16] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yes. 

Yeah. 

[00:08:17] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Excellent. Excellent. So another thing I'd love to, to hear a little more about is your fascinating title, VP of talent stewardship, tell us a little around how you landed on.

[00:08:32] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Well, my team and I when I originally got. My team came together. Several teams came together at one point. And when we all came together, that was one of the things we did. We had a, an offsite meeting where we were really thinking about what, what's the purpose of our team. We're, we're a team. We're going to have a shared purpose.

We, we wanted to really be able to articulate that to other parts of the organization. So we spent a lot of time wrestling with what our purpose was, what we were bringing to the business what our goals were going to be for the next year or so. And then the last piece was really, so what, what should we call ourselves?

And we, you know, we talked about talent management. We talked about just a variety of different roles. But what I kept coming back to what we kept coming back to is it's our job to make sure our people. Can do what they're here to do. They can fulfill their purpose and we make it as easy for them to do it as possible.

And so it's, you know, it's not just about us providing them the right learning at the right time, but we also make sure want to make sure that we're making the best use of their time. Because as a healthcare organization, our nurses, our therapists. That we have chaplains that work with us, social workers.

They really don't want to spend their time in training as much as we love training. That's not what they, that's not what they're here to do. They're really here to take care of our patients. So, you know, keeping that in mind and, and the word stewardship kept coming up with, we have to be great stewards of our people's time because their time is precious.

And the time that they do have. The majority of it should be out taking care of our patients, not sitting in front of a computer or in a classroom learning. So that's where we came to that title 

[00:10:17] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, it was very compelling the way you describe it, right. It makes so much, so much. Good sense. So when you went out to the organization to say, here I am, here's my team. We are talent stewardship. How much of that context, that backdrop for how you got there? Did you share.

[00:10:35] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: I didn't share it specifically around the way our the way we came to the name of the organization or of our group. But what we did share was we were building a learning strategy and how did we want to move from where we were as an organization to being a learning organization. And that was like late 20, 21, we presented the strategy.

And so a large part of that strategy is giving people the right training at the right time, in the right way. And making sure that we're making the best possible use of their time that we can, we were talking about it a little earlier that, you know, training, learning, isn't an event when you're a learning organization, learning isn't an event, it's what you do all the time.

And so that's where we're really moving towards this model where. It's not just about people sitting down and doing a class online or doing a class in a classroom. It's how do we embed that learning and opportunities for learning in their everyday work? You know, the things that conversations they're having with their leaders, our clinicians again, drive because we provide care in people's homes.

So our clinicians are on the road a lot. So how do they take five minutes while they're in the car from patient one to patient two and reflect on how that patient encounter. What did I do? Well, what could I do better? And then what am I going to do differently next time? So how do we start to embed that?

Learning everywhere? 

[00:11:56] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. And reflective learning really is the way forward in terms of practice and continual progress. Isn't it, it's reflective learning, not just, oh, I took the course, you know, gonna throw the binder on the shelf and it gets dusty, you know, you're never, you're never done. So I really appreciate how you're bringing that to the organization and helping your team kind of get behind that too.

And I would think too that, I'm making an assumption. So you tell me if I'm wrong. That it was, it was quite well accepted. I would think by the field, because you know, you're saying to them, we value your time so much so that we see ourselves as stewards of it and want to make sure it's used well 

[00:12:32] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: And I definitely think there's more marketing to do on that front. So, you know, marketing internally of course, but one of the things that we have done is take a really hard look at the orientation and the content that we were delivering to people. when I first took the team over. When you were a new person here? Oh, my goodness. The first time you opened the learning management system, it was daunting. You would have a long list of classes that you needed to work your way through 

[00:12:59] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: The mandatories I used to be in 

[00:13:02] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: mandatory compliance. 

[00:13:06] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: compliance 

[00:13:06] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yes. Yeah.

I'm like I could teach the hand-washing class now, and I'm not a clinician, but I pretty sure I could teach the hand-washing class without, you know, without any help.

I had to watch it so many times. But Yeah.

so there's those mandatory ones, but then there's also things about how we deliver care to our patients our model, our values, all of that is also there. And we recently got a new learning management system and one of the benefits of the new system was it allowed us to deliver training over time instead of.

Everything having to be assigned to a person on day one, we could drop it in increments over the course of the person's first, you know, 90 days. And we also built in different activities. Right. So you would take a course, but then you were supposed to speak with your peer mentor and you're a leader was supposed to have a conversation with you each a week to say, like, what have you been learning?

This is what you've been talking about. You know, let's talk about what you've learned. So, and that that process had been built and was in place. The issue was our technology didn't really support it because everything just got assigned on day one. So with the new learning management system, we were able to drip it, like you were saying, we were able to drip it over time.

And my team has also really taken a microscope to all

of the content that we were assigning people to say, What do people absolutely have to have in order to be successful so that they're competent and confident to do their jobs. And then what content is, is nice for them to know, but. Necessary for them to know.

And so my team has done a fantastic job of really parsing out the necessary and the nice, and now we assign the necessary and the nicest there if they want it, but not mandatory, not something they have to take as part of their orientation. And we've made a significant cut. I want to say the numbers were, One of the roles.

Cause it depends on what role you were coming in. One role, I think had 72 hours of training when they would 

[00:15:06] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Oh, is that all 

[00:15:07] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah. Two weeks worth of training all on day one. and again, it was all there. So they could sit down for literally two weeks straight and just plow through. A bunch of online courses, and we've now broken that down to, I think they've got about 40 hours now.

And again, it's dripped over the course of several weeks instead of all on day one. 

[00:15:25] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: a much

better experience 

for them, right? 

Yeah.

[00:15:28] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah, but the are new people who are having that experience don't know that it's different from what we used to do. So that's when I say we need to market a little bit. I think we need to go on a bit of a road show to say, you know, here's what we've been doing.

We still have a lot of work to do to continue improving the learning experience. Well, we've done a lot 

[00:15:46] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: I agree. I think that would allow you, you know, cause people need to, it's one thing to say, you have a strategy, but for people to understand what's the strategy and action, right? The why's the impact. So it's interesting. Cause it sounds like with this whole review of that content, that heavy stuff, right there was all there.

72 hours, it's been very thoughtfully sequenced and then pre and sequenced. So it's interesting. I love the drip method. I use Kajabi for my website and my CRM, but also for my online classrooms. So I'm doing uh, an online. Group coaching program. That's, that's actually starting next week. So the classroom is set up.

So the, you know, the module pre-work and so on, goes into week one and then the video for the class goes up and then there's nothing else until the pre-work for week two, because I learned too much too soon. It decreases focus and motivation, I would say, do you, what do you think of that?

[00:16:40] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah.

I mean, we would hear so many stories about people sitting down and logging into the learning management system for the first time and just being overwhelmed. And even, you know, someone was telling me the story of a leader. She was new and she was leading one of our agencies. We call them care center.

She was leading one of our care centers. And she was in tears because she was looking at the list of courses that she had to do. She wanted to take great care of the new team that she was going to be leading. And she just didn't know how she was going to get all those classes done, have a personal life and take great care of her team at the same time.

And so, 

to know that we've, we've changed that model and now it's a much more. It's just much more digestible. Right? You can take it in. And it's not that overwhelmed feeling when they first look at the list. So 

[00:17:25] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. 

[00:17:25] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: very proud of the work that the team has done. 

[00:17:27] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. It's it sounds tremendous. I would be proud if I were you too. You know, what also is interesting what's coming up for me is my 15 year old son in grade 10, went back to school yesterday really weird the way they're doing the semesters and everything now because of COVID.

So he was assigned 76 math problems on day one due by Thursday. 

[00:17:45] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Oh, my

goodness. 

[00:17:46] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: was, you know, ever since he was a little boy, we've worked on. Chunking stuff out from big, scary to small manageable, right? So you can just stay present one thing at a time. So funny how you see your work at merit in your personal life.

So last night the conversation was around. How can we chunk it out over three days? That's really how many per day, you know, 25 and a bit. And then it was like, Once he kind of wrapped his head around it, it felt much better. So as far as the teacher, I think the teacher could probably could have drip that as well, but that's not done so much in school.

I think he was teachers known for I'm going to deliver a message that this is going to be a lot of work. And yet we know, I think in a lot of ways, often adult learning is ahead of pedagogy. It's not always, but I was a teacher way back in the day. But with adult education, I think we are more cognizant of how reflective learning and drip method is, is needed over time because we're trying to work around people's jobs 

[00:18:42] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Okay. 

[00:18:42] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: it being all education all the time.

so, 

so, I mean, I, I'm not trying to get into a philosophical argument with anybody listening about the differences, but it, but it is interesting. I've often noticed that there is a bit of a difference 

[00:18:54] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah. And adults are so practical too, right? They need to work at and around the rest of their lives. And they also want it to be applicable. they learn because they need to learn. Usually you have those people who are just voracious learners, their whole lives. But typical adults, I think learn because they need it.

Whereas, you know, children are learning because we say, well, you need to know how to do this kind of math when you become an adult, whether you ever use it in. 

[00:19:20] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. I always say to, to Patrick, you know, it's, it's, you're in school to learn how to learn. So there's the discipline, the practice of it. I do think though, there's a little. Key techniques like kids, adults need to know why they're being put in a class or told to do something. They need to know the why.

Right. That buy-in piece is so key. I think it's equally key for our kids. That's 

another day. another Another, story. I'm sure. So, all right. So talent stewardship is, is well underway in your organization. And you've been working with your team. It sounds like it's relatively new. You're about, nine, eight months into seeing this come to life, your 

vision and so on.

And there's some internal marketing you still want to do tell me a little bit about the strategy, cause I know you have a lot going on at all times. So in terms of you move from strategy to what you implement first, where did you start? Like apart from the onboarding piece you described.

[00:20:15] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah, well, there's, there's multiple streams. So, you know, when I think about it, there's the big part of it is the leadership development piece, because. We're creating a small part of people's opportunity to learn. You know, if learning is not an event, it's what happens every day. Well, we're usually not around our people every day.

They're not interacting with the talent stewardship team on a daily basis. They're interacting with their leaders. And so a large part of our work and that's really underway and has been getting underway. And we, again have a lot more to do is, is how do we help our leaders? Because. Developers have people, coaches for their people so that they can have those conversations when something goes terribly wrong.

How do you stop and say, let's talk about this. You know, what really happened? What are you taking away from it? What can we, you know, what can you learn from this? What can you share with your colleagues about what you've learned? So that people see 

even those, 

failures, when they do happen, people are seeing those as learning opportunities and not as things that need to go wrong.

And part of the benefit of having the employee relations team. underneath talent stewardship is they're very much promoting that attitude when an employee does something wrong instead of it just being automatically, well, that was a policy violation. You know, we've got to deal with that.

There's a conversation around, What, how did we get here where the person violated a policy? were they aware of the policy? Did they know how to do what we were asking them to do? Did they have the Right. support? and so really looking at that as an opportunity to assess the person's intent really, and then make a determination about, you know, what was the. Consequence for that. We've been looking at a model that's used, started, I think in aviation actually. But if you know, it's used in hospitals a lot it's called just culture and that's really what the just culture concept is about is how do you look at, you know, these mistakes people make and determine?

Was it just human error? Right. Was it something the person did deliberately to bypass a safeguard or to do something or where they knowingly or intentionally doing something wrong. And I'd venture to say, 90% of people it's human error, right? They're not, there's not a lot of people 

[00:22:33] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Oh, I think it's even higher. 

[00:22:35] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: deliberately trying to Do things wrong.

Do people take shortcuts and bypass things? Yes. I think we also have to look at ourselves and say, well, did we give them an incentive to bypass? Like, did we set them up to do things 

[00:22:47] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Do we unintentionally reward them for that, right? Yeah. 

[00:22:51] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah. So we've been using that model as not formally, but the whole employer relations team understands that model.

And those are the conversations they're having with leaders, as things come up with. 

[00:23:02] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So what kind of impact or feedback are you getting as a result of this shift?

[00:23:08] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: It's interesting. We have a, we do a pulse survey once a quarter on, you know, how our employees are feeling. And we were going to ask some questions around just culture, not specifically calling it just culture, but asking questions around, you know, how people feel. If something goes wrong. is that used as a learning opportunity?

We had some other questions that we wanted to ask. So we're, holding on the just culture, but I do think we're going to have a conversation with some of our leaders. We've also implemented concept called solution sessions, and it'll be a topic that we want to discuss with a group of people. We put the word out and say if you're passionate about this topic.

For example, I have one on recognition later this morning, if you're passionate about recognition and you'd like to contribute and advise the medicine leadership on how we should do this, better, throw your hat in the ring. And the first 50 people can come to this solution session. So I have one later this morning on recognition and we're going to do.

They got just culture with our leaders to start with, to say, you know, are you seeing a difference in how the employer relations teams interacting with you? How is that impacting your team? When we're having different conversations. So we'll learn that I just don't have 

[00:24:19] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, no. And that's fair. Cause it's still, it's still new, right? It's still early days. So I am fascinated with this concept of solution sessions. So this is bringing in. Business leaders in, is it for leaders mainly or 

employees. 

Okay. So how, what's the structure of that? How do you facilitate those?

[00:24:38] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: It's we usually have five or six questions because there's a lot of conversation. So you don't have a lot of time for a lot of questions. And it's, you know, it's probably what most people would call a focus group. I think we started with the idea of an employee advisory board and then the conversation was, well, there's going to be topics that those?

people aren't passionate about. Right.

The dress code policy. 

I'm sure there are people passionate about the dress code policy, but not many. And so the solution session was an alternative to having a standing group of employees who were to, whose purpose was to advise us. And it was really to tap into people who were passionate about topics as they arose.

So that's how we've been using it. We've done at least one a month for the last. Four or five months or So and they we, again, we get great participation in them and they always come up with great ideas that we can implement right away. that make a 

difference 

[00:25:31] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So they see the impact. Yeah. They see that their, their contribution is making a difference. 

That's huge, right. Again, so I'm, I'm feeling, you a common theme when I work with talent management leaders is. Like a challenge that we often have is building buy-in right. Both with the employee base employees and leaders that we serve.

And then the leadership teams that often hold the purse strings and, you know, want us to do massive transformations with very little time and resources. Right. It's just, it's just the nature of the game. Not a complaint, just acknowledging it for what it is. so I'm hearing very clearly that you are a leader focused and really smart about building buy-in with the people that you serve through, the stewardship piece, right.

We're stewards of your time. We get you're super busy. We're trying to make. Manageable and useful and helpful. And then I'm hearing it also in what you just described, right. In terms of engaging them in these solution sessions, would you be able to speak a little bit around, how do you build buy-in going up?

So, cause we've been talking about down and kind of sideways. What 

[00:26:35] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yes, Data?

you know, being, yes. So, we were very lucky here to have a great team that really understands how. Gather and analyze data and use it to tell a story. so, I would say that's probably not a strength of mine, but I've got great colleagues who are really good at that and have, are really helpful in, in shaping the stories when we're trying to influence up.

And, it is a balance of stories and also anecdotes being able to share quotes from people. So just recently we had launched a leadership development program and, I had data that showed. What the employee satisfaction was for this particular group of leaders, you know, what it used to be.

And now that we've launched this new program, you know how it's shifted, very positively. We had turnover numbers. We even had metrics like How their budgets were doing, you know, how they were doing financially with their budgets and the impact of, having much more hands-on very personalized learning experiences.

So I had that data and then I also had a slide with different quotes on it, from the people who are participating in the program and people who were. Mentors to new leaders. Several said, I wish we would had a program like this when I started it, because they're seeing how much, how structured that new orientation is and how much we're providing support for a new leader to make sure they really have every chance of being successful before they graduate from the program. 

it's a balance. 

[00:28:05] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: congratulations on that. Right. You know, to get that kind of acknowledgement really says a lot, you know, that people see the value in it. Oh, I wish I had it for myself. So if you were to give sort of over 20 years, experience your top three tips for building buy in, like say you're going to go and propose something to the senior management team.

And there's, there's some money involved there's times resources needed beyond your own team. Right. What are the top three things you would advise somebody you were mentoring that they need to take into account?

[00:28:35] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: That's a great question. I think the first thing I would say is really understand what matters to the people you're trying to influence. So. If it's, a business metric of some sort, if it's turnover, if it's employee satisfaction, you need to know the metrics that matter to the people you're working to influence.

And then you need to be able to put the data together that shows. You expect to be able to influence that number in the right direction. That's not always easy. And one of the things we often do here as pilots, so, we have an idea. We think it's going to work. we don't always go whole hog and.

Right off the bat start, you know, with a hundred percent of the team, we'll often start with a pilot and then see how the pilot works, work out kinks. Cause there's always going to be 

kinks, right? You get a chance to work out the kinks and then, you have that pilot population where you can look and see what results did we get.

And then that is very helpful. So I would say, Don't undersell, right? Like if you think it's going to work and you want to go whole hog and you think that's the right thing to do by all means, sell it, go for that, right. Say, this is what we need to do and put your competence behind it and just conviction and say, this is what we need to do. But if it is something where you feel like I'd like to see this in action before. Go for the whole go for the Gusto, as it were, then figure out how to build a pilot. That's going to let you demonstrate, that it is going to have a positive impact. And then, those are pilots are much easier to get buy-in for. 

[00:30:05] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Cause, cause it's, it's really it's Like agile development, right? It's about let's, let's what, we're, what we're looking for is to try something on for size, get input. Right. Make it even better, are you willing to give your support for that? And then we'll circle back with the results and then we're going to say, here's what we're going to adjust as we move forward.

Hopefully with your approval. 

Yeah. 

[00:30:25] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: We've tried things that haven't worked and we've been very public about that. As you know, to me, It's 

part of being a learning organization. We were, we were having. Some orientation. And we were for a large group of clinicians and we wanted to provide a kind of a concierge service.

And so it was a hands on, you know, they were, they were touching base with the new hires on a frequency. They had specific questions. They were asking, checking in to make sure that technology was working. And we did it for a few months and then we stopped and we assessed and we said it didn't really make that much of a difference. 

So, we ended. Saying that didn't work. And we, we share that with our team and our whole HR team, because it was something that we had said, we're going to try and do this to see if it'll help it didn't work. So we said, you know what, let's show that we've we failed at something, but we're using it as an opportunity to learn. 

[00:31:12] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Okay. I just want to re rewind that. So we failed at something, but we're going to use it as an opportunity to learn because, you know, that's something that I walk around and see all the time was I fully believe it. You know, there is no failure. There's only learning now hard to say, healthcare, particularly it's fraught with life and death stuff.

Right? So, so the repercussions of, of a mistake can be huge. At the same time, most mistakes are not late life and death. And I think we tend to give them more weight than they deserve. it's around. How do you prevent the majority of them in the first place and how do you help people get up once they fallen?

You know what I mean? It's sorta like what your, what your you've been doing through your employee relations team, right? Like this is not about it's. How do we have the difficult sometimes. Tough conversation around performance while preserving the relationship. Because if you destroy motivation, they're not going to want to change the behavior anyways.

You know what I mean? So 

it's a fine line. Yeah. Such a fascinating thing. So could you maybe tell us a little bit about what's the biggest lesson that you've learned personally during your years in our.

And it doesn't, I'm not saying what's your biggest failure. And how did you learn 

[00:32:24] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah, no, I want to tell people that one. No. I want to share that one. I don't know. Well, that's a great question. Lisa biggest lesson over 20 plus years in this field, I think it goes back to what I was talking about always keep the learner at the center of what you do. If you're focused on getting the learner, what they need.

When they need it in a way that they can consume it. Then I think you're going to be successful. 

[00:32:52] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Hmm, that's powerful because, in a lot of cases that there's this thing called band-aid training, right? Like, an abdication of leadership, know, that I hear 

about from my clients. And I've been in that situation myself. Right? It's like you fix them, you train them. There's I remember years ago being told this entire team of supervisors has no sense of urgency.

And anyways, in the end it was how, because they weren't responding to particular email requests that would come out weekly for 

for data. Because when we looked into it, the leaders language was, if you have any feedback, please let me know by when, by Friday at four, if so, all of these crazy busy supervisors.

Okay. It's optional. I don't have any. 

right. But anyways but it, but it's interesting because I think in that case, the solution was let's let's think about what is the learner need. They need clarity of language and clarity around what the expectation is. So that led us to. Really doing a workshop with the leaders.

Right. And then taking it out to the, to the, the rest of the team to say, here's, here's what we're going to adjust on our end. So it's really, really powerful. So I appreciate, you know, that learner, like we say, learner centric often in the, in the talent management world and yet what does it really means with start with what they need?

It's not 

about throw something at the wall, we're doing a three-day conference, right. A one-hour keynote, that costs 10 grand, but what's the actual impact. Like that's 

that's not actually learner centric. It could be provide a moment of inspiration for 10% of the room. Might everybody might enjoy it.

A hundred percent, only 10% are actually going to sort of pull the thread a little bit on what they 

heard, 

[00:34:31] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yeah. 

[00:34:31] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: know, and I'm throwing out percentages. I don't know, but I, but I think it would probably be fairly low.

[00:34:35] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Yes. Well, and it's funny that you say that because my team has heard me say many times, If you're familiar with human performance technology, it's this concept of, there's a lot of things that influence performance. It's not just, does the person know how to do it.

It's have we incented them, right? Have we incented them the right way? Are we being clear with what we expect? If we're not getting what we expect, have we given them feedback to let them know we're not getting what we expect? And all those things influence performance. And so there's, multiple things that influence whether someone's performing.

Or not. And my team has heard me say a million times, cause Gary rumbler, who was kind of a thought leader in that area of human performance technology. I think he's the person who said, if I put a gun to their head and they can do it, it's not a training issue. I know it's shocking when you say that, but the bottom line is If you really put someone to the test and say, you have to do this. Now you have to perform this and they can do it. They don't need training. Something 

[00:35:32] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. 

[00:35:32] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: in the way of them 

performing. 

[00:35:34] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: yeah. There's a willingness issue or motivation of some sort. 

Yeah, 

[00:35:37] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: Or we've not set them up. Right. Right. The system doesn't work the right way for them to be able to do it correctly. So again, I know it's shocking to say that, but my team knows that again, stewards, it's our job to defend people's time. And if we think that the training is going to be a waste of people's time, because they already know how to do it, then it's our job to defend and say like you did with your, with your client, we need to dig deeper and understand. Because they know how to do this and they're not. So let's figure out why they're not and then put a solution in based on that. 

[00:36:09] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: yeah.

Excellent. So we've covered a lot of ground, including the big buy-in question, right. 

Which is, which is, so huge when we're caught in the middle as talent management folks tend to be right. You're in the middle of the people you serve, the people you answer to. Right. And it's, sometimes a little, little tough being there.

It sounds like you're managing and navigating beautifully just to end off our conversation. one last question for you, if you think back. So the very beginning of your career, when you're starting out after school, what's one piece of advice you would give young Susan,

[00:36:41] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--guest31770--susan-salomone: I would say take chances.

one of the great opportunities of my life has come because I mentioned, you know, my husband was in the military and we had the opportunity to, to live so many places and It forced me in a way, I was just talking to a colleague about this this morning. It forced me to change jobs relatively frequently because we were moving from place to place and I'll date myself.

But it was before remote working really was a thing or an option because there wasn't an internet back then. Well I think it w there wasn't internet back then, but not 

many people. Yes, It was baby internet. And so I, I really had to start over a lot, so. I'd worked someplace for two or three years, build up and learn that role.

And then, because we were moving, I'd have the opportunity to live in a new place. Look for a new job, work in a new industry That was sort of forced upon me, but in retrospect, I think it's probably the best thing that happened to me career wise, because it gave me such a broad exposure to different industries, different cultures, different countries that it really, I think it's been probably the most important part of my career overall. 

[00:37:50] susan-salamone_recording-1_2021-09-08--t01-58-16pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: yeah, you were kind of pushed into that courageous mode, right? Courage over, over comfort as with. Yeah, that's great advice. Thank you so much for sharing. Well, thank you again for coming on the show. It's been delightful just to catch up with you earlier and to have this conversation. I know our audience will really appreciate the nuggets of wisdom.

thank you. Susan. Excellent.