Welcome to the HR Minute podcast by All Voices. I'm your host, Jeffrey Fermin, and we're here to talk about an issue that exists in offices around the country. That's the disconnect between HR and leadership. We have a guest that manages to combat issues like this as a consultant. Her name is Wendy Sellers, and she's also known as the HR Lady. Wendy, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself?

Meet Wendy Sellers: The HR Lady's Journey

Sure, hey everybody, Wendy Sellers, the HR lady, and by the way, I have two trademarks on that, so don't mess around with it. But yeah, I have been in an HR career, and then I think it's been like 11 years now, I decided that I wanted to help a lot of people instead of just one company.

And I went out on my own and became an HR consultant. These days, a majority of what I do do because of the demand is management training and train good old regular human beings how to be a manager. I also do HR consulting where it's usually smaller companies that may never have an HR department still need HR functions.

So I give them all the resources, all the tools, all the forms. And then I'm the, I'm the 9 1 1 phone a friend when crap hits the fan which I'm. been doing a lot since, you know, the beginning of the pandemic. So yeah, it's a little bit about me. I'm also an author and I have my own podcast too.

That is awesome. , I actually want to know more about your book. So do you mind telling us a little bit more about it? I have two books that I've written and the first one is called suck it up buttercup. Be a leader. People will follow. And you know, I wrote that book for The title is one that a manager or a human being that says, Yeah, suck it up, person. It's your fault. And then they read it, and they go, oh, I might be part of the problem.

Ha ha ha ha. So we talk a lot about assumptions in there, and I give real world advice, and honestly, Ugh, a history about all the things that I screwed up, but how I've learned. through those mistakes. And I think that's important for people to know, whether you're dealing with children, teenagers, young adults, or just people who have never been in your company before.

It's like, we learn through making mistakes. And if you don't let people make mistakes, they're never going to learn. So that's my first book, and then in my second book I have another book about dealing with crappy leadership, jerks at work, and tips to deal with it, and a lot of true, true stories in there, too.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure everyone that's listening to this has had some issues with jerks at work or some kind of communication issue with someone else at their office. I guess it's a good segue to discuss this next topic, which is the friction that could exist between leaders and HR managers and how it can be alleviated.

Root Causes of HR and Leadership Misalignment

So what do you think are the most common causes of disconnect between HR teams and company leaders? So first, I want to say that I don't like the word  leaders and it's because it's not a title, right? Like you could be a leader if you're the, the maintenance person, if you're the receptionist, if you're the HR assistant. So folks, please be careful about just automatically assuming only managers can be leaders.

But the biggest thing that I find is there's not at all line on an alignment on the company. The vision, first of all, so usually the C suite and maybe sales knows the company vision and really lives it every single day where the rest of the company is kind of left out in the dark. And so we have to consistently remind leaders and I air quote.

They're really the management shrink team and then employees. What is our goal? Where are we going? What's our vision? What's our mission? And what's our values? I talk a lot in both of my books about company values and they're often created by a marketing and sales team to appease to a customer, but we forget.

HR should be involved because that's how we hold our employees accountable for the behavior that we want or don't want, aka fact, which is usually most people's company values. What does that really mean? And are you going to train your managers what that means? Are you going to train your employees?

What that means and what's being held accountable. That's usually where the disconnect comes in. Managers have one expectation over here and leadership has an expectation over here. And they're not aligned at all. Although they're usually in the job description and the reviews that we don't talk about, you know, 11 and a half months a year.

So, Wendy, great point , a company leader isn't necessarily a title or a job title or a person with a specific job title. It is the individuals that really make up the DNA of a company.

Redefining Leadership Beyond Job Titles

Just want it to be really a reminder. It's, it's something from the past that was like, Oh, this org chart is leadership. Us that are not on that org chart are looking at it going like, really? That's the leader?  No way. So good points. When you think of a traditional model of a company, it's hierarchical. It's that typical org chart where it's like triangular and you know, you report to the person that's above you. Now, when you think of an alternative way of leadership, there's the flat method where everyone has a say in the company.

Everyone's able to really help make decisions that benefit not just individuals, but the company as a whole. So I wanted to know what you think of that style of leadership.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's great if everybody everybody involved, not just the, the C suite or management, but everybody knows what is the role, what are the expectations and then also what are the. Boundaries, you know, can you just speak up in every single meeting or is there a time frame and if you get a minute, you get five minutes, you get an hour, you get to take over the meeting and then nothing gets done, you know, so it's all about setting boundaries, whether you have a traditional org chart, whether you don't, you know, it's about saying, okay, this is when we're going to meet.

Transforming Workplace Conflict into Learning Opportunities

This is when people can talk. This is when people can speak up respectfully, not just screaming and throwing a tantrum in the middle of a project meeting. But, you know, it's really about setting those expectations of, hey, we want you to know that this is our style here. And guess what? That should be also discussed in interviews so people know exactly Exactly what they're walking into if they say I don't want to work with that style Why don't you let them know in the interview or better yet?

Even the job ad or a careers page on your on your website so people can look at and say yes This is what I'm looking for or no, absolutely not. I don't work well like that. So Transparency from the beginning is super important and setting some kind of rules I know I've worked with companies like we don't want policies.

So going back to the issue of, you know, disconnects between HR and leaderships, managers, directors, whoever, uh, by job title is a leader at a company. have you seen any success stories where HR teams and leaderships were able to just let bygones be bygones, like have that friction and be able to solve their problems and just move forward and live in harmony, so to speak.

The Human Element in HR: Communication and Understanding

Yeah, absolutely. Like, listen, we're human, and humans make mistakes. And like I just mentioned previously, it's actually vital to make mistakes in order to learn, so you can get that feeling going, oh, I never want to do that again, right? And so, first of all, we have to let people make minor mistakes so that they can learn and feel the pain from it a little bit.

Situation, because you put more than one human in a room, you already have some kind of conflict. Conflict could be good. It's how the management team Reacts to it. So instead of like jumping on top of somebody who was has been late for work for the past 3 days, but they've never been before. How about the manager go?

You know what? Something's going on with Wendy over here because she's never late and she's been late 3 times this week. It seems. Disheveled and stressed. How about you just ask them a question and then shut up and listen, you know where you're like, hey, Wendy What's going on? You're normally really on time and you don't seem yourself.

Is there something I can help with they may end up Saying nope. I'm good won't happen again and hide whatever's going on or they may say Oh, my manager actually cares about me. I'm going to tell them I'm sick. I'm ill. Somebody in my family's sick. I'm going through a divorce. I need help. Oh, by the way, we have an EAP program.

Let me help you with that. I didn't know that. Now, you're still going to hold that person accountable for breaking policy. You're not going to let them go just because they gave you a sob story, whether it's valid or not, but That person could say, all right, yep, get it. Thank you for the help. Won't have it again, and it won't, so it doesn't matter that I got held accountable because it's going to be kind of erased or fall off my record.

So, it's all about how you act to it. Are there times that a manager, a director, a business owner have acted so severe, and they're apologetic for  it later, and then The employee says, no, I'm never going to trust them again. Yeah, I mean, that's human nature and you're probably not going to get that trust back.

Does that mean you're supposed to fire them because they don't trust you? Not necessarily, because if they're doing their job and they're doing it well, you might be able to slowly build a slowly build that friendship or that, that trust back. As long as they're not destroying the rest of the organization, you know, causing drama because of what happened between you and them.

It's okay for that. I, I use the word friendship to kind of, you know, get less and less friendlier and more and more just business. So we have humans and we have to understand that, you know, life itself is hard and we should really ask questions and then stop talking and actually listen to the answers before we jump in and make another, another decision or make another statement that might hurt somebody's feelings or make them walk out the door.

Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense. I think you did a great job of addressing communication and listening in your, your response there. And it's something that in this field, in HR, in leadership, it's something that we need to do and, be effective at doing it, at communicating, at listening and making sure that we could, for lack of a better term, let bygones be bygones and understand each other.

Yeah. It it, it is though. This, this h in HR is the hard part.

You know what? Let's talk about that some, the H in HR, being human, understanding somebody. Elaborate a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so, in order to be a good HR person, or just a manager, because many of your listeners and my listeners, too, don't even have HR, so they are HR. So I wanted to clarify that, too. Everybody in a management role has a a little bit of every function in them, probably marketing, sales, IT, operations, right?

But they also have HR. And so, you know, just because you have an HR department doesn't mean that you're not responsible. responsible for the HR functions anymore. You still are. Your employees if you're a manager, your employees are going to come to you, the supervisor or the manager, first before they go to HR.

Navigating Culture and Employee Disconnects

It, usually, in a, in a good company with, with a decent culture. If your employees are skipping over you and always going to the HR department, then you might want to grab that mirror because you're probably part of the problem. Doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, but maybe you're just not listening or communicating in a manner that the So we just always have to remember that, you know, everybody comes to the table with their own their own emotional, I don't want to say drama, but just everything we have lives outside of work.

We have just had a worldwide pandemic that is still affecting many, many people. It's flu season now and COVID's back and everything. And we just need to learn that anything that you learned in management pre 2020, I would say 50 percent of it needs to be thrown away. I just made up that number, by the way, on air, but I really do see, you know free pandemic and this is something that's been coming for a very, very long time where managers now need to know, no, I, I can't say, I don't care about you.

Just do your job because some other company does care about them and they will go do their job at that other company. What we're seeing on the news lately is like. It keeps being predictions of the economy crashing and more layoffs and everything. I'm sorry, in most businesses, I'm not seeing that. I do see people, companies, you know, taking the opportunity to get rid of poor performers, and that's something you should be doing year round anyway.

And then I also see a lot of large companies who overhired because they were Taking advantage of the pandemic good for them. And now they're saying, okay, we got it. We got to write the ship because the sales of X, Y, Z service or product that was needed during the pandemic is no longer need it. And it's shifting.

So my point of throwing all that information in is. Don't believe just the news because they're there for ratings and know that yes, employees do have the upper hand right now, especially the good employees. And if you don't treat them in the way that they want to be treated, which begins with transparency, trust, respect, and a lot of communication, then they're going to either quit or quit and stay, right?

So they're going to quit and go somewhere else, or they're going to. That I don't really like to say, you know, they're going to do the bare minimum because that's what we hired them to do, but they may say, well, you're not doing anything to my co workers over here and they're doing the bare minimum. So that's what I'm going to do.

So I can get out of here at 4 o'clock and go pick my kid up or go to happy hour or whatever they do on their spare time, which is none of our business.

Now, Wendy, what about in a situation where there's a disconnect between the employee, whether it's, you know, a manager, IC, whatever the case may be, there's still kind of a disconnect, not just with HR, but with the culture in general. How do you alleviate some of those problems that might persist? is there anything that could be done there?

So, like I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast today is, you know, it's really saying, Hey, John over here doesn't seem to be following, know what our vision is, our mission is, our values, he's disrespectful, doesn't know the policy.

I want everyone to step back and say, why? Why doesn't he know this? And it's probably our fault, management's fault, HR's fault. But, you know, it's not usually the employee's fault. Initially, they may have signed a handbook. Jeffrey, guess what? Nobody reads the handbook. They just read it because it's part of an employment package, and they say, in order for you to start, you have to sign this.

So how about we do training on our company policies? How about we do training to all employees, not just new hires, but all employees on what our company mission, vision, and values are, what our culture is. You know, how do they take time off? When do they take time off? What's the expectations of respect and transparency in the workplace?

Or whatever other words you have in your company values. And then how are we going to hold you accountable? Is there a point system?

Is there, you know, three chances and you're out? Let people know what's going on. I see all too often management and HR, and then HR and the corporate, you know, the C suite.

All of them are disconnected because there's all these conversations in silos and we never actually teach our managers what that conversation was from back there in the C suite room. And we just expect them to magically understand everything we're talking about because we rolled it out in an email that nobody reads that either because we're too busy.

So it's really about, you know, dumbing it down, taking, taking a step back, coming up with a community communication plan of everything from your company values to your policies and One last thing I did want to say is for your new hires, onboarding is not just day one. It may be 30 days, it may be 6 months, depending on the company and the role.

So if you're just throwing all this stuff at people at day one and have them watch videos and sign papers and all this stuff, it's going in one ear and out  the other, because day one is incredibly overwhelming for most people. people. And the managers want to yank that new hire into their department as soon as possible.

So HR or whoever's acting as HR is left you know, moving things along very quickly. And then they don't understand why nobody read the handbook. You signed that, you read it. So slowing down, again, coming up with a plan, asking questions, surveying your current employees, surveying your new hires, and then listening, and then, you know, making changes and repeat.

Thank you so much. And do you have any other last words of encouragement? Uh, perhaps just like the best way to reach you as well.

Sure. I think the biggest thing that I wanted to inform everybody of is just that feedback is so important and don't, please don't wait 12 months to give somebody feedback. For new hires, you should be giving them feedback on a weekly basis and then eventually a monthly. And for employees, I don't care if they've been there 1 year or 17 years.

You should be talking to them on a quarterly basis. It does get easier. You know, it doesn't have to be a 4 hour conversation. If you're talking to them on a regular basis, even quarterly, although bimonthly or monthly referred, you can literally grab a cup of coffee with your employee and or your manager to get their feedback on what needs to be changed in the HR department.

So communicate, follow up, And then repeat, and then repeat, and then repeat. With that said, if anybody needs anything at all, feel free to shoot me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn. My email is Wendy at TheHRLady. com. My website's TheHRLady. com and you can find me on LinkedIn. Wendy Sellers.

Thank you so much, Wendy. We're going to put all that information on the descriptions to the podcast. That's an amazing show and we look forward to having you on again. That concludes this episode of HR Minute. See y'all.