054: Talent Management Executive Kevin Richie Interview Part 1

This week, I am sharing the first part of a two-part interview with Talent Management Executive Kevin Richie as I wrap up Season 6. We talk about Leadership, Team Culture, Recruiting and Hiring new team members, Setting Expectations, Performance Reviews, and Coaching.

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Transcript

Stephen McLain: 0:05

This week I am sharing the first part of a two part special interview with talent management executive Kevin Richie. Since I was wrapping up season six, Kevin was recommended to me because of his expertise in developing and leading people, especially regarding the topics I covered in this past season. And it was an amazing opportunity to speak with him. So please enjoy this special episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 54. I have interviewed my first guest on the finance leader podcast and I'm very happy to bring the first part of that interview today. I spoke with talent management executive and expert Kevin Richie. Kevin was a great guest to have on the podcast as I wrap up season six. During the season, I have talked about a lot of topics around your team culture, one that helps everyone be successful. I have talked about recruiting and hiring, onboarding, setting expectations, coaching, performance reviews, and the weekly team meeting, Kevin provided his perspective on these topics based on his experience and expertise. Now on the second part of the interview, which I will share next week, we talk about what it means to be successful. So don't miss out on that. The first questions I asked Kevin was what leadership meant to him. And then his thoughts about the difference between leadership and management? Now his answer was, and I quote, for me management, if you think of, for example, project management, that's about checking boxes. So I'm hitting milestones, I'm accomplishing tasks, things are done on time on budget. So it's really a checkmark, exercise. Leadership, to me is accomplishing all of that, but also inspiring the human beings that are on your team, and helping them develop and grow as individual humans. That to me, is the distinguishing feature between the two, end quote. Now that's an awesome answer. I believe that great leaders make everyone around them better. And that is what we should be striving to achieve every day. So please enjoy part one of the interview with talent management executive Kevin Richie. Today on the finance leader podcast, I have a special guest, Kevin Richie, who is an experienced executive and leader in the area of talent management. Kevin, you're an amazing guest to have on as I wrap up season six, where I have been talking about team culture, setting expectations, and many other topics that you are familiar with. Welcome, Kevin, and thank you for joining me today.

Kevin Richie: 3:01

Well, thanks, for having me. And congratulations on wrapping up your season. Terrific. Just for background, I've been in the talent management space for about 20 years, I consider myself a bit of a talent strategist. So what I mean by that is I help organizations get the most out of their people in terms of attracting them to the organization, developing them while they're there, and then helping them move on to whatever their next step might be. So do that through talent management work. So that's recruiting, that's training and development, that's individual coaching. I'm a certified coach through the international coach Federation, which means I have a whole bunch of hours of training. And I've sat down for three hour exam and had a lot of clients. So that's, that's the other piece of what I do. And then individually, I think, as someone who's managed others, really, the phrase I would use there as a talent farmer. So for me, my job as a leader in any role I have is to replace myself, ultimately. And so for me to do that, I have to get that brilliance out of the people on my team and grow them so that they can replace me at some point.

Stephen McLain: 4:20

Now that sounds great, thank you so much, you have quite a quite a lot of experience in this area. So so that's why it was really good to bring you on to kind of help me wrap up the season. So thank you so much for joining me and definitely want to jump in and really want to talk about leadership. And you don't want to finance leader podcast. I focus a lot on leadership, especially with finance and accounting professionals. Because what I believe is that we're already expected to know our technical side, but we're not so good on the leadership side. So let's talk about leadership for a moment. And what I want to ask you is why do you think learning leadership is important? Especially for that young team manager, you know, when we try to talk about the impacts of leadership and moving from just that managing perspective and into a leadership perspective. So tell me about what you think about learning leadership and why it's so important.

Kevin Richie: 5:19

Sure, you know, one of the, I guess, the backup, if I were to distinguish between management, and leadership, ever used interchangeably, there's tons of books written, using both words. And, you know, frankly, if it were easy and simple, there'd be no reason for all those books. If people could just show up on earth and do it, well, there wouldn't be a lot of books about it. So clearly, there's a need for us to do it better. For me, it's really important because ultimately, you're impacting other human beings by being in a management chair or leadership chair. The distinguishing and you'll hear arguments around Are they the same, are they different, ultimately, for me management, if you think of, for example, project management, that's about checking boxes. So I'm hitting milestones, I'm accomplishing tasks, things are done on time on budget. So it's really a checkmark, exercise. Leadership, to me is accomplishing all of that, but also inspiring the human beings that are on your team, and helping them develop and grow as individual humans. That to me is the distinguishing feature between the two. And for me, it's about serving those individual humans, helping remove obstacles for them, understanding them at a human level. So that when someone shows up to work, and you're working on a project together, and you've noticed that, you know, Susie is just really not engaged today, it's knowing her well enough to be able to a pick up the nonverbals, and then be asked her about it, and then see have enough trust between you and for her to tell you what's going on. Because clearly, something's going on. She's usually high performer, and today, she's just not showing up fully as herself. And that's impacting the work. So that would be the distinguishing feature. For me. And if you think about management or accomplishing tasks, you can use tools, whether they're digital tools, or physical tools, you know, building a house or whatever it might be, those things tend to wear out over time or become obsolete, whereas human being should be increasing in value over time for the organization. So to me, our job as leaders, is to facilitate that increase in value over time to help Oh, I completely agree, that sounds great. I think some of the, one of the areas that we tend to overlook or forget is what you had mentioned about that servant leadership, and especially about removing those obstacles, so that our team can succeed. And I think that's really the big piece of it is looking out for our team everyday removing those obstacles and setting them up for success every day. And I think that again, thank you, that's probably one of the major aspects of transitioning from that being that manager to that leader, particularly as in that first notch, in terms of leadership, so you go from an individual contributor to a manager of others, you know, what you'll learn is all the skills that gets you to that job, are 90% of them are irrelevant. They're only relevant in the sense of the questions to ask, or the right path to take. But it really doesn't equip you to manage the human beings in terms of how you grow them. How do you manage conflict, you know, how do you allocate resources, that's just a completely different skill set. And I'm not, you know, plug other things. But one of the things that really helped me was a book called leadership pipeline. And it talks about that transition. So individual contributor to manager of others, and then manager of managers and so on. Twisting through those turns in terms of leadership really gave me a great lens by which to think about it. And it's somewhat of a dated book at this point, but the lessons are really still relevant to how you manage how you work differently.

Stephen McLain: 9:43

Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Thank you. No, no, no, I completely agree with what you're saying. Hey, so let's get into some of the other topics, especially what I covered during the during the season. And let's talk about a little bit on the recruiting and the hiring. side. Now No team manager is always up against trying to fill roles on the team. And one of the things I've always been an advocate for, especially regarding, you know, the finance and accounting field, because we're so heavy on the technical skills, but one of the things I advocate is to consideration of soft skills. So tell me about what you think about recruiting and hiring consideration of soft skills versus hard skills? And how do you as a team manager, what can you do to kind of shape working with HR on the type of candidates you get? And then once you get a several candidates coming your way? You know, how do you get that? How do you get that out of the candidate? Um, you know, again, first, that's soft skills versus hard skills.

Kevin Richie: 10:50

Sure. So multiple layers, I think of questions there. So I'll try to hit him in the corner that would strike me as important I have been doing talent acquisition for 15, plus almost 20 years in some form, or fashion, either managing teams or doing it myself. So I'm about to do another role focused on it to help a company turn theirs around. So recruitment ultimately answers three questions can do, will do, and will fit. So can the person do the job, the technical skills, they've got their CPA, they've got five years of accounting experience or finance experience, or if they're in the finance space, they've got the skill set to come to the table and accomplish the role tasks? So that's one piece of it will do is are they motivated? Do they get fired up in the morning to come in and do the work? What drives them in terms of doing it? Well? So that's a motivation question, you know, what motivates you candidate a, about this work? And then finally, it's it's will fit? Are they going to add the team that I've already built? Or am building? And are they going to be a team builder? Or are they going to be a team detractor? And that's a fit question. So if I'm going through the process of a typical recruitment, let's say you've got an open position, you've got a team of five, one of those positions is open. Very first thing I'm going to do with you, as a leader and me, as HR professionals say, What do you tried to accomplish? Because you might say, Gosh, we've had some errors on some of the reporting that we've done, I need a really strong detail oriented person for accountant one. And then another scenario, you might say, you know, what, we had a really great person, it was a great accountant. But the thing that they did the best was keep the team positive and motivated. So I'm really after some that personality that's going to build trust in the team and have motivation built in the team. That's a completely different candidate profile than that detail oriented, technical expert. And so my first job as a recruiter is to ask you those questions. Often we call it the contracting conversation or that get to know what we're after conversation with the recruiter. So from there, then I'll be able to start filling in the gaps in terms of candy will do will fit. If I'm looking for that, to your point, that person who's higher on the soft skills and lower on the technical skills, because I really need that team motivator, an internal coach, then, hopefully, we've had that conversation. I'm going to go after those candidates. And when I'm screening as a recruiter, I'm going to listen to that. And then once I have the slate, we'll bring him to you say, remember that conversation we had you told me I was looking for this, this and this. And then I bring you those great team motivators. And you start screening out the ones that aren't very good technically. Wait a minute, Steve, when we talked about this, you said it was okay to be not the technical, introverted expert. So, it's just that back and forth partnership with with the hiring manager and the recruiter. So I'd say it's really important to have the conversation honestly, what you're really after, and why you're after it, what you're trying to accomplish. And then be a partner give give great feedback along the way as you get the candidates and say what was working and what wasn't. I've seen a lot of leaders, not just in finance and accounting, but in all spaces where they say, not a fit. Okay? What wasn't a fit? Well, it didn't have SQL database experience. Okay, but that wasn't in the top five things you mentioned to me when we had our contracting conversation. So be really aware of what you really want. And that'll help the recruiter bring you what you need.

Stephen McLain: 15:13

Right now, I completely agree with what you're saying. Because I, I talked about that partnership that you should have with HR, so you can communicate with what you're looking for. And again, you know, that soft skills versus hard skills, because I tried to encourage managers to protect the team regarding the over the top hard skills, because you can really bring on an Excel expert, someone who knows how to use the software, but can't get along with anybody else, you know, can really come on the team, and can actually destroy the team. And that you know, and that leads into my next topic of team culture, and you already hit on it a bunch in what you were just talking about. And that's the importance of team culture. And when you're bringing on new team members, you know, the consideration of how they're a fit within the culture. So tell me a little bit more about that about how you can, how that that's an influence when you're bringing on team members, and also regarding team culture, even with your team members that are still there monitoring and making sure you're getting the team culture that you want. Sure.

Kevin Richie: 16:26

So I think it would come to reality and a couple of ways. One, do you know your team culture so fundamentally, to me, and probably hit this and some of my answers over and over, so forgive me, but it's all about trust. And building a culture of trust, there was a study done by Meyer Sherman Davis, I think a couple of more out of Notre Dame, this is back in 1995. And they built this integrative model of trust. And then they look back 20 years after that, so yeah, mid 2000s. And they applied that model in multiple organizations, multiple functions, both at the individual human supervisor and manager level, with their employees as well as organizational levels. The model is built on, I'd say three pegs of a stool, three legs, not pegs. benevolence, integrity and competence. So benevolence, Do I have your best interests in the mind? integrity? Do I do what I say I'm going to do? And in some of the research, do we have a shared set of values? So if I value technical competence, highly and soft skills low, and you have the opposite profile that's going to decrease trust in our relationship? And then finally, competence to actually know what the heck I'm talking about? Or if I don't, am I smart enough to send you someone who does. So if you can, and you can use the Bic analogy, right Bic razors, benevolence, integrity, competence. That's how I remember, in evaluating any relationship in a team, they have to know that this person has my best interests in mind to kind of do what they say they're going to do, and that they're competent at what they're doing. So culturally, first, say Do you know your team, and the only way you'll know your team as if you have trust built relationships with all of them. Not bringing in a new person into that team is going to change the dynamics. One of the best ways from a recruitment standpoint is to have your team interview the candidates. I've been through both scenarios where I've been interviewed by the hiring manager and the the executive level, maybe appear to and then nobody on the team that I'm going to be managing. I've also been through the opposite model, or I started with the team I was going to be managing and then peers and then the executive team. I would say if you want your future peers for this individual to be bought in, have them as part of the interview process, or at least a couple of your high performers, because they're going to tell you things and see things that you won't see as a leader. And then also, let's say that person is selected. They say, Steven Suzy is great. She's a wonderful fit for our team. Well, Susie shows up and Suzy struggles a little bit. They're gonna have a vested interest in making her succeed because they recommended her to you and they don't want to look bad to you as a leader. They're going to buy in and help her succeed. I saw that in the healthcare world with nurse Seeing nurses be experienced nurses, you know, the 20 plus year nurse, sometimes the stereotype is they're a little a little stubborn and set in their ways. And you could apply this to any field. And when they weren't a part of the interview process with a brand new nurse out of school, they would say they would eat them alive. You know, put them through the ropes, make them go to the worst tasks, etc, etc. But once we started putting them on peer panels, and, and even those strong personalities, put them on a peer panel, they'll start to back off, they'll start to buy in and don't want that person succeed, because they don't want to let that.

Stephen McLain: 20:46

Know, that's a very good point about having the buy in from the team, I like that, that makes a big difference. That's a big part of it. So let's, let's talk about setting expectations, especially when we've talked about leadership, we talked about recruiting and hiring and partnering with HR, and we're bringing on a new team member, we're putting them in front of, you know, the various levels within the organization, the team members, the managers and the higher ups. And then you get this person on board. And then how do you communicate expectations, especially regarding what you would like to achieve within the team culture. And also for, for yourself, you know, and talk about your own behavior as the leader and manager of that team?

Kevin Richie: 21:38

Sure, again, go back to trust. So number one, start to build trust with that individual. The way one of the ways that I've done it, and I have used this questionnaire for years, I used to get to know you questionnaire with a new person on my team. You know, tell me about your recent experience. What are your goals? Where do you want to be five years from now? Even if it's not here? And how can I help you get there? And then really important questions like, what are your favorite snacks? What's your favorite candy? How do you like to be communicated with? Tell me about the best boss you've ever had? What were their characteristics? Tell me about the worst, what were their characteristics, because I don't want to emulate that worst boss you've ever had. So it's a you know, page and a half of questions, set up for 30 to 45 minutes with that new team member that says, hey, I want to get to know you as a human and a professional and what you want to be when you grow up, so I can help you get there. That will help you build some trust in the building some clear goals say, great, it's great to get to know you, Steven, thanks for sharing that information. You know, let's let's transition and talk about what we're trying to accomplish as a team. Here are some goals that we have. And then here's your part in helping us achieve those goals. Here's where your resources are, I'm here to knock down obstacles for you. But I need you to raise your hand, you know, think of a basketball player on the court. But my bad coach, I felt I needed to raise your hand when that happens. And let me know. And now that I'm here. And then a couple of the things I think for me that have been helpful over the years is having weekly touch bases with my direct reports. I have an hour a week with every direct report, no matter the size of the team. Sometimes that's consumed 20% of my 40 hours a week. That's okay. Because I know what's going on. They know they can have access to me, and I can get regular check ins on progress. So I'd see you build the trust, set the goals have regular check ins. And then culturally, I would say setting a tone of permission to fail. No, it's okay to screw up and make mistakes. We're all humans, we're all gonna do it, particularly a new employee coming into the organization Lord knows I have over the years and just giving that permission to fail permission to mess up just setting the expectation upfront, you know what? You're gonna mess up. And that's okay, what's not okay is not telling me about it or not asking for help through it or not learning from it. Just setting that kind of what would be called psychological safety in the literature these days, saying that safe environment where you can try and fail was really important, I think around meeting goals and meeting expectations. No,

Stephen McLain: 24:48

I completely agree. No, that's great that you mentioned about the one on one meetings, which I'm also a huge advocate for and I try to encourage team managers out there To do those one on one meetings, because that's really, I think, where you get to really talk about things. And one of the things, I believe in those one on one meetings is that that, that your team member can come and ask you what obstacles that they may be facing that you can help them with. So I think that's one of the key pieces of that those one on ones. So So with that, I want to talk about performance reviews, and talk about that annual look at and how someone's performing. So I believe that there's a trend, some of the companies out there, especially the big ones, are trying to move away from those annual performance reviews and going to the one on ones, and the monthly feedback. Because the research that I've done is that you know, as a manager, if you're going to do a performance review, you're probably only going to really focus on the last few weeks. So let's get out of that performance review. And do that one on one, weekly feedback and monthly feedback. So what do you think about, about the performance reviews and continual feedback?

Kevin Richie: 26:11

Yeah. So just for background, so I'm a master's in industrial organizational psychology. So I'm heavy psychology, heavy human behavior. I'm a data nerd. And performance reviews really evolved out of I mean, they go back to the 17 1800s, in terms of history, so and the way we've been using them today really goes back to the industrial age and manufacturing and some of the spaces and it's incredibly outdated, and terribly not helpful. So I'm a little biased. On this year, right? The trend has been with larger companies who are starting to actually look at research. They're moving away from performance reviews. So what you will find, and you mentioned the one on ones and being a fan of those I certainly am I even do skip levels quarterly with a layer below my managers so I can get feedback from my managers and how they can be better leaders. Really good leaders have been practicing feedback, more frequent than an annual review for many years. It should be an annual review, not an annual surprise, right? Because we're having ongoing conversations if we're effective leaders. So a couple of things that I've said over the years in front of audiences of 200 leaders are it's more about the conversation than the tool. So it doesn't matter if it's a five questioning or a few 100 questioning our view. Honestly, I would ignore the tool that the company is using, it's about having a conversation with the individual, which goes back to what trust having relationship being able to say, Hey, we're on, we're behind on this task, we need to get it what are the obstacles? How can I help? How can we get there? Who else do we need to bring in? Who do we need to talk to? That weekly conversation is the annual performance review? For me, it always has been so by the time I get with an organization that has those by the time I get to that review, there are no surprises. We have talked about this throughout the year. Furthermore, it's so often correlated with with merit increases or bonuses. And you're right, there's a host of biases built into us as human beings from a psychology perspective, such as recency effect, you mentioned that it's probably going to be reflective the last three or four weeks that I've meant to remember, and I've interacted with you and it's not going to reflect your performance six months ago, which may be good or bad. There's a lot of issues with performance reviews. So for me, it's about the conversation, not about the tool. And if you want to go to a deep dive on this topic, Alan Colquitt he's a PhD psychology guy he was with Pfizer for many years. He's got a really deep dive book on it and how old school and twisted our performance review mentality is here in the US and around the world really, for a less deep dive, but a lot more fun and equally valid from a research perspective. Nine lies about work. It's by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall. I've met Mr. Goodall. It blows up things like performance reviews, it blows up things like competency models and some other things that we just assume because we've done it for 50 or 60 years. That that's the way you manage performance. It's not it's having an individual conversation and relationship with your employee, helping them remove obstacles, facilitating the brilliance inside them to show up at work and make them more valuable to the company. So sorry for my soapbox, but I'm pretty passionate about. They're not terribly useful if you have to use them, make sure it's not your only conversation a year.

Stephen McLain: 30:26

No, I love that. That's a great answer. It's a great perspective. And a great reminder for all the you know, team managers and leaders out there, to try to maximize that conversation every week, more than just the one time a year. And considering what your what your team member has done. You know, over the entire year, I think we need to have that continual conversation. And those one on ones are great. And

Kevin Richie: 30:52

very often and HR is guilty of this, finance is guilty of this, lots of other functions are guilty of this, when we get busy, we start canceling our one on ones. And that's the worst time to cancel them, I would hold that time sacred if your employees come and need it, great. If they don't, great, but there needs to be that regular sacred time of check in, especially during stressful times for the organization or, you know, hey, we're, we're you're in we're trying to do close all those, you know, the pressures to give up the one on ones. And I think that's the absolute worst time to do it. So my

Stephen McLain: 31:34

you've got to keep them completely agree. And I also believe that the leader and manager needs to block off time for themselves to just think and plan, even if it's one or two hour block a week, just to kind of block out that time. So they can think about the team's workload, the priorities, what you're going to bring to your supervisor, and just making sure you're thinking about the development of your own team, I think it's so essential, block it off on the calendar. And so you can just have time to think and walk away from where the work area is go grab a cup of coffee, and just think

Kevin Richie: 32:16

I agree, I my practices, I do it for 30 minutes every day, I just block that as an held meeting across my calendar. That's for me to kind of start planning for the day.

Stephen McLain: 32:30

Yep, no, completely agree. So want to talk about one more tool that the manager has an asset, weekly team meeting, to talk about, you know, what the team is going through, especially, we've talked about obstacles a few times, you know, a chance for team members to ring up obstacles, a chance for the manager to talk about team culture and expectations and what's coming up in communication. And I, again, a huge advocate for constant and clear communication. And don't hold a lot back to yourself. Just move that information into your team. So let's talk about the weekly team meeting, and how to really make those successful.

Kevin Richie: 33:18

The main thing for me, let's assume the foundation of trust, right? is having an agenda. You What do you want to accomplish out of the time. That's the number one complaint I hear from poor meetings is there was no agenda, I'm not really sure what we walked away with. And we didn't identify the who, what, when and where, by the end of it. So I would just have an agenda going into it and have some standing items on it. And one of the things that I've learned, kind of in the more recent position from effectiveness around meetings is make sure we did what was called a check in. And this is a check in where you're doing an emotional check in. And you go around the room, it can take 510 minutes, at most on the agenda. And that's a couple of questions. One, how are you feeling? A one word emotional description. Happy, excited, curious, sad, nervous, whatever it might be. And then the next question is, is there anything distracting you from being fully present with us in this meeting? Yeah, my dog got hit bike last night. And I'm torn up about it was part of the family. Yes, my my kids graduations coming up. We've got a plan for parties. We're trying to get the caterer or trying to get the house set up. And so just get that out on the table so you know, how present people are. And then third, asking them what's your objective for this meeting? What do you want to walk away with in terms of a takeaway? That little check in exercise really grounds the room, it kind of calms the emotional and the distraction, it really helps them be more present. It's tough sometimes if you've not done an exercise like that. And I think in order to get people to really participate, you do have that foundation of trust at the individual level. But so that would be number one, have that agenda and have that check in as part of the agenda. Have you topics you're going to cover what you want to achieve, organizationally or team wise. And then that who, what, when, where matrix? Who's going to do what by when? What resources do they need? When are we going to get the next update? And just have it out there and publish it? After the meeting, send it back out to folks, at least that matrix piece and say, All right, everybody, here's what we agreed to. If you have any edits, let me know. I found those to be really effective practices with meetings.

Stephen McLain: 36:05

Not completely agree. No, I like that. Being able to have that agenda up front. So at least people know what they're going to talk about. Also the opportunity to address, you know, issues that they're dealing with ability to address obstacles, so you can help them. And also, again, we're talking about communication, you know, sending that team notes out to the team, knowing what people need to follow up on and what issues you need answers on, you know, so that the team can move forward. So

Kevin Richie: 36:41

you can always have that other category for any hot topics or urgent issues that you know, within that agenda so that if there is something critical that needs to derail what you plan to talk about, that's okay.

Stephen McLain: 36:53

Yeah, yep, completely agree. Now, that was amazing. Kevin gave some incredible insights on how we can build a better team culture through our leadership. I really enjoyed this interview. So please join me again next week for the next part of this interview, so don't miss it. This episode is sponsored by my course through finance leader Academy. It's called advance your finance and accounting career, developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart. To advance your career, you must set yourself apart from your peers, finance and accounting professionals are already expected to be technically competent. This course helps you establish your professional Foundation, and how you can set yourself apart from your peers. by growing your leadership skills and developing your executive presence. You can go to Stephen mclain.com. For more details on this career advancement course. The link is also in the show notes with this episode. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader Podcast. I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership, because it is leadership that will set you apart from your peers. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now, go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you