00:02

Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I am your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today I have Nenuca Syquia joining me from Better Organizations by Design, a consulting firm dedicated to aligning the people side of clients’ businesses with their strategies and goals.

00:31

to discuss the recent webinar that she presented with us, High-Performing Leadership: What the Best Teams Have and Do. And I’m excited to talk more about this topic today with Nenuca. So thanks so much for joining me. I’m super happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Sarah. And Nenuca, this was your first time uh doing a webinar m and podcast with us over here at HRDQ-U. So I would love, we got to learn a little bit about you.

00:58

during the webinar, but I would love if you could share a little bit more about who you are, what you do, how you got to where you’re at today. Sure, Sarah. So I actually wear a lot of hats, normally all in the same day, which can create craziness, but also I love it. So I am an organizational effectiveness consultant, like you said. I get to solve really juicy problems with very interesting clients, I think.

01:23

And so this can be such a range. It could be driving an enterprise-wide culture change or up-leveling leaders who were once maybe running a startup and now they’re running a multi-billion dollar organization, which is completely different world. And art could mean helping a team work through some really challenging interpersonal dynamics and could even mean taking the business’s strategy and translating that into the organization structure, the roles and their workflows. So it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of puzzles that we get to solve.

01:51

Apart from doing the consulting, I also get to be a leader of a really talented team. So who themselves, they are solving these types of problems for our clients, or they’re the ones who are running the business. So that’s really fun too. And then of course, I get to be a business owner dealing with all the joys and the heartaches and the headaches that come with running a business. And I live in the Bay Area. I’ve lived here now for over 10 years and I love living here. And our clients are all across the US. So I do get to see quite a bit.

02:20

Wow, that sounds like a really, you definitely aren’t bored, I assume, in your day to day. Never. I have never had a day that I have been bored. And so, you know, there’s always so much change happening, especially in today’s, you know, uh world where we have a lot of things happening with AI and everything like that. It seems like you could wake up and something’s different.

02:41

uh And I love to hear the different perspectives from the guests that come on to our podcast. What changes do you see happening in the L &D space right now as it relates to the work that you do? Well, that’s a really good question. So the first thing I’d say is we’ve already been moving towards customization versus off-the-shelf uh programs, but there’s been more and more recognition of that. And you really see the intensification of personalization. And so generalized one-size-fits-all training is no longer fit for purpose in today’s world.

03:10

Because every employee or every person is different. They have different backgrounds, they have different skills, they have different experience, and definitely different aspirations also. And so to get results, companies have to offer learning experiences that reflect every person’s situation, not a combined average of every person. And what this means then for the L &D space is that we have to do a lot of listening. We also have to help people develop deeper self-awareness of where they are at.

03:38

and what it is that they really need. And then we have to develop very rich, high context learning experiences that allow every person to draw something that’s really meaningful for them, given what they’re trying to do and make that game changing for them. And I would say that’s also really tied to the next change that I see happening in this space, which is that there needs to be an ever clearer through line between the business strategy and L and D activities. So we know like,

04:06

the budgets have been very tight and so is time. So time is not also an infinite resource. So as L &D people, we need to show that there is a direct support of the business strategy as we’re re-skilling and up-skilling people. And there’s much lower tolerance, I think, for vanity or lower level metrics like attendance or completion rates. And there’s much more demand to show that the learning drives people to think and act in the ways that the business strategy needs them to.

04:37

And as we’re working our way through this earlier part of the 2024 year, which seems like it’s already flying by, we’re already at mid February, which is crazy. What exciting things are you up to next? Well, we’re actually leading some, we, meaning me and my colleagues at Box, or Better Organizations by Design, we call ourselves Box for short, we’re actually leading a really large team building event for about 900 restaurant managers, helping them understand how to lead their teams to create a more consistent geth experience.

05:06

It’s going to be super fun. And then also helping a leadership team through some really critical transitions as their successors are taking over running the business. Wow. It seems like you have some exciting projects then in your pipeline that 900 restaurant managers, that seems like a really big uh undertaking there. Yes. And so we recently did this webinar together. It was on high performing leadership, what the best teams have and do.

05:32

For those, as a refresher for our attendees that joined us during that webinar, as well as for those folks that didn’t have the opportunity to tune into that recording yet, can you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants at that event? Sure. I’d say the first one is that high-performing teams or great teams aren’t just a product of great people coming together. So it’s not magic and it’s not luck. You can absolutely engineer it for your team. And the way that you do that

06:01

It takes intentional planning. So you have to make sure that the team has a really clear purpose that everybody is bought into. And that has a direct tie to the broader organization’s strategy and their needs. So the team is fulfilling a very specific purpose in its existence for the broader organization. High performing teams also have really clear roles and defined processes and how people work together. They also have a diverse group of people with the right skills and mindsets, again, based on the purpose of the team.

06:31

And they very effectively use the concept, the term that I call work enablers. So these are tools, ways of working, rituals that teams engage in. And when I did that webinar, I don’t know if I said this, but when I was working on it, I definitely was thinking, I hope that this gives people hope. Because it means that if you’re stuck in the less than fantastic team, you can actually change that. And the other message too that I would want people to walk away with is that

06:57

Teams are really crucial to the success of any company. It’s the unit at which work happens. It’s also the level at which people truly experience the company. So they’re really what make organizations and companies run. So they do deserve thoughtful planning and approach, whether they’re a day-to-day team, day-to-day full-time team, or it’s a special project team, and whether they’re co-located or distributed.

07:23

And especially whether they’re an executive team or a first line team, all these types of teams deserve attention. And so, you what happens when you have a corporate culture that is not healthy and you’re trying to create a high performance team within that culture? You know, that is not easy. One, I’ll say it’s supposed to be in that situation, but I’ll also say that it is not impossible. It is challenging, but it’s not impossible. And what I tell teams who are in this situation is first,

07:51

take the time to understand the bigger existing corporate culture, including its strengths, its weaknesses, and obviously the areas that you would want to improve. And then identify which aspects of that culture are hindering your own team’s performance. And then have an open dialogue as a team about which aspects of that culture you want to thread through from the broader culture and where you want to quote unquote, lead the rest of the organization. And I think

08:18

teams were in this situation, they can be the bright spot for the rest of the company. And then start asking the team, like, how are we going to do this? What behaviors are we going to engage in? What ah rituals and enablers are we going to put in place so we can be this bright spot? Asking the team to come up with that, that gets people really excited. And then if you’re the leader of that team, you will have to consistently model the behaviors and attitudes you yourself want to see in your team, including when you’re dealing with stakeholders outside of the team.

08:48

And you may often want to tell the stakeholders what it is you’re doing and why. Like why is your team operating the way that it is? Like what aspect of the broader culture are you trying to change? And the thing I’d say to is stay consistent even when it is frustrating. And so you remember how I said earlier, Sarah, sit down as a team and really paint a picture of what it is that you want to carry over from the culture and what it is you want to uh change about it through your own team.

09:18

Paint that picture in your minds as clearly as possible. The clearer that it is, it’s easier to stay consistent. Yeah. And this one is like, it’s so shocking to me to think about this, that this could be a problem in a professional corporate space. But how do you deal with hazing on some teams? I know. We got that question during the webinar. I was like, yikes. So I can’t believe that this still happens. One, would say hazing should never be tolerated. Never, never. Anything that harasses,

09:48

abuses or humiliate someone is an immediate no-go, no matter how long a tradition it is. In fact, if it’s a tradition, you might want to ask yourself what you’re doing at that company. Because what hazing does is you’re already starting that person’s experience on the team as feeling less than everybody. So what I would say is if you are seeing or you’re on the receiving end of hazing type behavior, I would call it out in the moment and name it for what it is.

10:16

So a dead giveaway of hazing is that not only is it meant to humiliate someone, but you’ll know it’s hazing because typically only the new person is being subjected to this. So an example of what calling it out would be would be saying, hey, none of us have to do this, whatever behavior, X, Y, Z, why does Sarah? There is no point in this other than to show that we have power over Sarah and we can make her do this.

10:41

The other thing I would say is obviously report this immediately to HR. This is not something you necessarily have to try to resolve within the team. Absolutely flag this. And then if you’re a leader of a team that engages in this type of behavior, this might sound harsh, but you need to take a hard look at the signals you have been giving to your team to tell them that this is okay. Like maybe you haven’t commented.

11:07

on it and that’s giving implicit approval therefore you might have laughed along. So take a look at the tone that you’re setting on the team. Absolutely and you know what advice would you give a leader that is coming in to lead a team that has been together for a number of years so if you’re that new leader that’s coming in to join that team? It’s funny you asked me this I was literally just having a conversation with a leader right before this podcast on it where

11:35

hosting an offsite with their senior leadership team and she’s joining on her first day during the actual offsite. And she and I talked about how before you embark on any changes to how the team is run, take the time to learn from the team themselves. So sit down and ask people questions. What does the team do? Why? What does each person in the team do and why? And what do they think is working well and what could be better?

12:01

and then also go talk to the stakeholders of the team to start hearing their perspectives. And then from there, you can develop a very thoughtful plan for how you’re going to engage with the team. Yeah, because I could imagine that being quite intimidating um to have to go in and… and if you’re the team who’s receiving this new leader, there’s automatic uncertainty because you don’t know who this person is, they don’t know how they lead. It’s especially challenging when the previous leader had such strong followership, right?

12:30

such a strong bond with the team, any change to the status quo is loss. Yeah, yeah. And Nenuca, before I let you go today, I would love for you to let listeners know where they can connect with you and learn more about your work at BOxD. Sure. Just come to our website. It’s easy. It’s www.boxd.us. And you can find me on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn handle is just my first name, Nenuca. Great. Well, thank you, Nenuca, for your time today.

13:00

Thank you, Sarah. And if you haven’t had the chance to listen to the and watch the webinar, make sure that you click the link below to do so and check that out. There was a lot of great information that Nenuca shared over there as well. And we hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms. If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five-star review. Thank you all for tuning into this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast brought to you by HRDQU.com.