Rea Rotholz: We can start with some introductions. So, Stacey, would you like to go first? Sure.
Stacey Nordwall: Hello everyone. My name is Stacey Nordwall. I am currently the VP of People Strategy at Pyn, which means because we're a small company, I do some of the hr. Our product is an HR tech product, so I'm working on the product as well.
Before that, I was at CultureAmp, so again, another HR. Tech product. Been very in that meta space of HR and HR tech for a while now. Have a background, have a degree in counseling psychology, so I have bring that kind of wellbeing and mental health background as well. And yeah, I'm excited to be here.
I, I told Rea and the team, I have not been feeling well, so I'm going to be a bit of more of a sidekick to re's main character today. She's gonna be doing the heavy lifting for me, and so I'm excited to just have this conversation and be here with you today.
Rea Rotholz: We so appreciate you being here today, Stacey.
I let her [00:01:00] know I'm fine with chatting about this topic. I can chat about it all day. So, we will get Chace Stacey's perspective as well. But I'm Rea Rotholz. I lead Hones Learning Solutions team, so anything related to how our customers get the most value out of home, how they design. Learning journeys that drive behavior change and how we measure the impact of that is what I really specialize in.
I've been with Hone for three and a half years now, and prior to that I led learning and development at Dow Jones Parent Company of the Wall Street Journal, where I hired Hone as a vendor to do our leadership development, and then I came over. To the dark vendor side which I love because I get to consult with so many of you and I see so many of our customers on the call.
Love seeing you and looking forward to hearing your perspectives for today's conversation. So, Stacey, you wanna give a quick what is Pyn?
Stacey Nordwall: Yes, what is Pyn? So we are an employee experience [00:02:00] platform. We have kind of two main parts. One is the designer part where you get to build your employee journey map, from beginning to end.
There's templates there so that you don't have to start from scratch. And then the other part of that is then taking that template, the communications and automating it so that you can. Send needed information to employees, managers at the right time. Make it personalized and really create this very like, supported employee experience.
And we're actually gonna be launching a new version of that soon. So if folks wanna get a sneak peek, find me on LinkedIn, send me a message and we can try to get you that sneak peek.
Rea Rotholz: Also find Stacey on LinkedIn anyway because she's becoming a bit of an influencer. I told her and she has amazing posts and a podcast, so definitely follow her.
Follow me too, but follow her for some good content. And I mentioned that I am dialing in on behalf of hone. So hone is your [00:03:00] all-in-one employee development platform. We specialize in learning at scale, and we're powered by both live instructor-led experiences and hone ai. We are there as your advisors and partners.
That's really what my team does and we're so passionate about it because we want you to really be able to support, especially for this webinar, your managers through this. Crazy time that we're in. So of course if you are not a home customer, you've never heard of us, definitely check us out and we would love to chat more about how HONE could support your upskilling needs.
But now that's out of the way Stacey and I are really excited about today's topic. And full transparency. We picked it. We were like, we wanna do another webinar together. Many of you were probably on our first webinar, which was maybe like a year ago now. And we had so much fun and we were like, let's do another one because we're both so passionate about these topics.
And what do we think is most important to talk about today? And this is where we [00:04:00] landed. So, we're gonna go into some of what are the changes that managers are facing. We're gonna pull, if I didn't make it clear, we're gonna want your oPynions too. So be ready to chat in and participate. 'cause we know learning from each other is really helpful.
And what are the skills they need to thrive? Then we're gonna talk about why do we care? I'm sure many of you already care, but like, why should our businesses care? And then how can we better support managers through psychological safety? AI needs to scale all of that good stuff. We're gonna, we're gonna dive into, and then like I mentioned, we have dedicated q and a time, so please.
Even if there's something on your mind that's not related to this, but related to managers or what your organization's going through, feel free to put it in. Like, we just want this time to be together and talk about what's going on in our orgs. So that's the plan for today. So our first question, and this is for all of you, and then of course we'll share our thoughts, but we want to hear from you.[00:05:00]
Put in the chat. What is the most significant change that your managers are facing today? Maybe it's something all employees are facing, maybe it's something specific for managers, but when you think about all the changes happening, what are the most significant things that your managers are facing? And we're gonna give it a couple minutes so I don't have.
Cute music to play as background music while you're reading what people are putting in. So sorry. And I certainly won't sing because no one wants to hear that. But we can start reading through what some people are saying. So let's see.
Stacey Nordwall: I think this is one. It's always good to have like the Jeopardy music on hand.
I know, I wish.
Rea Rotholz: We'll make a note for our next webinar, Stacey. Okay, so virtual, hybrid, remote. Scope increasing. Lots of player coaches right now where you might lead a team, but you're also doing [00:06:00] individual contributor work. I think Rebecca, that's like spot on ai. Definitely gonna talk about that economic downturn.
We work with so many different companies across our two companies and certainly. The ambiguity of the environment we're in and the economy that we're in plays a huge factor. Restructuring the unknowns, not enough time. Who feels like they have enough time in their workday? No one raises their hand, right?
Like we all could use a few more hours. Change management, doing more with less, not enough resources goes back to that timing. Hiring. I. Retaining employees. We talk, yeah, tariffs. If you're a product company, you're building a product like in the global economy, you don't know what that product's gonna cost you and what those margins are gonna be.
And I hear that. From our consumer [00:07:00] products, customers through our food provider customers. Right. That's a real, that's a real thing.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah. Well, and I was talking to a friend who works HR at a manufacturing company, and she was saying, also you're talk, you're thinking about, you're building a product that.
Takes months to go from beginning to end and how many people do you need, what is it gonna cost you? All of those things are completely in flux and really influence how you're thinking about hiring and scheduling and all of these things with, really uncertain information. A hundred
Rea Rotholz: percent.
I like Lauren, I'm gonna read what you wrote as a highly emotional intelligent team, which often. HR people. Teams are the ones that really care. Our team has a lot of empathy for happenings in the broader country and the globe. And this makes it hard to find balance and focus as work at work. And we'll talk more about this tends to be a burden that managers carry.
How am I supporting my direct reports through whatever hard time they're facing, their [00:08:00] family's facing, the emotions, et cetera. I thought that was really well said Lauren. So I think we're seeing some specific themes. I encourage you, please keep putting in the chat. We're gonna leverage the chat so you can learn from each other.
We have so many different industries, so many different countries on this call. And so again, we definitely wanna hear from you and not just me and Stacey. Okay, so it sounds like we've covered a few of the themes and of course, Stacey and I pulled out what some of the research is saying about those themes.
So, if we go to the next slide, we did a little then verse now and decided to use COVID the most kind of world changing time period in certainly my life. As the then, so like what happened in like 20 19, 20 20 versus now in 2025? And you'll see some of these themes probably familiar to what you all [00:09:00] called out.
So the first one is around the remote hybrid workforce. I'd like to think that this is slowly becoming old news, but it is certainly not. Like it is still in the news every day. Companies choosing to force employees back to work, companies that are appreciating back to work and more productive the pros and cons.
It's interesting because Gallup came out with this study and these are all Gallup's stats that were sharing here. Not hone stats, but they came up with this idea of, look, it depends in like newsflash, if you're learning people, it's like, it always depends on how someone prefers to learn and all that stuff, but like.
It depends on your employee whether going back to work is going to work for them. And they came up with two terms I wanted to share that I thought was just interesting. The first one is splitters. I don't know. You can put in the chat which one you are. So splitters. Prefer clear [00:10:00] boundaries between work and personal time.
And so the idea of commuting, going to a different space, et cetera, is actually really helpful because there's a preference for that. That's a splitter. And then they talk about blenders. So blenders, I'm thinking about like my Vitamix. But blenders prefer to move fluidly between work and life throughout the day.
And blenders tend to appreciate the at home work because it's easier to blend. Like, Hey, if I have to throw in a load of laundry, I have two small kids. So like certainly sometimes that happens. They prefer that and are more productive because they might be working throughout the day. They're more flexible, et cetera.
Put in the chat. Are you a blender or a splitter? I'm curious. I'm curious here.
Stacey Nordwall: Oh, what are you? I think, so this is the thing I think I've changed over time 'cause I only knew the splitter life for a long time. Right. But once I started getting into the blender life, like, I don't know that I could give that up anymore.
But I think like, to your point in highlighting this [00:11:00] like. This means that managers have to figure out ways to manage people who are both right, because pro both are probably gonna be in their team, or they are trying to, they were trying to figure out how to communicate clearly when people went remote and now they're trying to, which by the way, always has to be intentional, right?
And bringing them back to the office still means you have to figure out intentional communication. But. They're managing all of these different ways of working, ways of communi, tools of communication. And before it really wasn't that way before. Everyone was just generally in the same space, and that's, they weren't worried about splitters or blenders.
Right. Totally.
Rea Rotholz: It's one extra thing on a manager's plate to consider. Yeah. The makeup of my team are they. Appreciative that we're back in the office, are they appreciated that we're not back in the office. If you're flexing into your non-preferred way of working, it's simply gonna take more [00:12:00] energy.
Yeah, it's gonna take something from you and managers are the ones on the front lines dealing with that and the performance implications, right? There's no right or wrong way. I think there's pros and cons to both, and I think the research is always flip-flopPyng as to. Who is more productive. But I like this idea of, maybe it just depends on the person who's going to be more productive.
And I love seeing in the chat, like we have a mixture, right? Because everyone's gonna feel a little differently about this.
Rea Rotholz: I, okay. So the next one was engagement. We talk a lot about engagement as a outcome metric and as being tied to. Discretionary effort. So how much someone's willing to work what their performance is and their intention to stay, right?
Like we know that engagement and if someone feels engaged. That's gonna lead to those things which we want for our businesses. Well, I thought this was interesting because engagement has been in bluffs since COVID. I [00:13:00] feel like every year, sometimes people are more engaged, sometimes they're less engaged, et cetera.
But we know that this has huge implications for our organizations, and so I wanted to share some of those metrics here. So today in 2025, according to Gallup, we are at a 10 year low. 36% to 30%, which might not seem like a huge change, but six points when it's something this important for your business can have a humongous impact.
Right? You remember Stacey, that like great resignation and then the quiet quitting this idea of. You might not quit, but you're not really being press productive as you could because you wish you could quit. I personally think we're still very much in that quiet, quitting with the economy and people not wanting to change jobs, et cetera.
But curious if anyone in the chat wants to share like what they've seen with their engagement at their [00:14:00] personal organization. Has it gone up since COVID has settled down or gone down? What are you all dealing with? We'd love to see in the chat so we can. Yeah,
Stacey Nordwall: and I think, this is something I've read a lot because of the podcast that I do, tutor, boot where the, this, it's not even just that people are.
Not engaged, it's that they're becoming more and more actively disengaged. And as someone said in the chat, like not shocking honestly, and right, it's not right. Like how engaged if you have been going through rounds and rounds of layoffs, how engaged are you going to be if you're seeing, so much uncertainty in the economy, you're worried about, oh, now someone's bringing in this AI initiative that I don't understand.
Right? Like how engaged are. Is someone really gonna be? And so I think it's looking at this, it is that like almost validation of Yeah, I, that's what I've been seeing. That's what I've been hearing. It's not surprising. [00:15:00] And I. Yeah, when you're in a really, it I think it would be odd if it engagement was going up when we're in a really volatile, uncertain time like that would almost be odd.
But
Rea Rotholz: yeah and seeing in the chat, which I think is really important to understand, engagement has gone up because our business is doing well. I think it's much easier as a successful company
Rea Rotholz: up engagement. And certainly there are quite a few companies that are very successful right now, obviously, but there's also a lot of companies that are feeling the hurt because of the economy or the uncertainty, which makes it even more challenging to keep up engagement when your company's not like.
Winning at the moment. Right. I'm curious that we see a few people here who are saying like, engagement has gone up. I also think we're at a time, five years post COVID, or it depends on when you think COVID ended. If it ever ended. Yeah, that's another topic. But. A lot of companies have become a little bit more settled, especially in their like, remote [00:16:00] work policies, et cetera.
I'm curious for you all in the chat if your engagement has gone up. What are some things you've been doing, like chat in ideas? We always wanna hear from you. I saw like, hey, we have a smaller team so it's easier, we're closer to leadership. Anything like that, feel free to put in. And then Polly, you put a question.
Does that mean 65% are disengaged often? This me is a good question. Often this metric is on a scale and they consider agree or strongly agree to mean, engaged, and then neutral or disagree to be disengaged. So yes, if you are neutral, then you are not engaged. So I would say that means 65% are not engaged.
I appreciate the asking about the metrics by the way. Okay. Feel free to keep putting ideas in the chat and we'll go to the next one here. In terms of the then verse, now, wellbeing I know this is something Stacey is [00:17:00] particularly passionate about but essentially. We're talking about wellbeing at work way more than ever before, at least in my experience and many of our customers experiences.
And it's because I think this is my oPynion. I'm sure I could find research on it, but. Gen Z, someone was talking about generational, wanting to see the data by generation, I think Gen Z is much more comfortable and willing to talk about things related to mental health, et cetera, and it's forcing managers and companies more than ever before.
I think millennials started it, but forcing companies to really address wellbeing as part of their strategy, as part of their manager support.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah, I think I always wanna try to Yeah, look at the larger context as well. And I think, obviously COVID was a massive mental health crisis, right?
Like we talked about loneliness. It became something that was like a national kind [00:18:00] of initiative. And so I think when you have that cross. All kinds of demographics boundary breaking experience that's gonna be like, okay, we, yeah, we need to talk about this. We are experiencing it. Young to old everyone was really feel a lot of folks were really feeling it.
And so I think you know that also when you don't have other places to necessarily. Talk about that. Like it's going to come into work, right? Even if you are, a splitter, right? It's probably going to make its way into the workforce because you can't just shift your mental health when you walk through a door, right?
So, I think there really was this big push to. Really address it within the workplace, which landed a lot on hr, but also landed a lot on managers, which is, what we're gonna talk about more so is that this was something that all of a sudden it felt [00:19:00] like managers. HR really needed to start addressing, and many had little to no training.
I saw for one of the workshops I did a stat that was the 70% of leaders said they had received no training about how to talk to employees about mental health. So you have a big group of people that are. Now that front line of trying to help employees and create safe spaces and they have no training to do it.
Rea Rotholz: Yeah. And that's scary. That's so scary, right? Yeah. And especially, and then we get into the situation of like, well, what's the role of HR in that and what's the line? You know what I mean? We're always worried about legality compliance, like the right of the employee as well. And so this is where like the line gets really blurred honestly, as to what the manager role is here.
Totally agree. I did pull one stat that I just thought was interesting. [00:20:00] Sting two out of five Gen Zers regularly attend therapy.
I think that's amazing. But also just show that's like almost half of people thinking proactively about mental health and seeking mental health resources. 53% have received professional mental health services at some point in time.
And really the idea here is they're breaking down the stigma associated with mental health. That's certainly. Our generation and the generation before us. You would never, you, my parents would never talk about mental health at work. That just felt like very off, off base. Right. And inappropriate even.
And it's becoming more and more of the expectation.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah. Well, yeah, to your point, they wouldn't talk about it because. Yeah the stigma there was too much risk involved in talking. Right. And I think, yeah, it has, it not that risk doesn't exist anymore because it certainly does, and people, it obvious depends on psychological safety, depends on the environment.[00:21:00]
Whether or not people feel that they can disclose or want to disclose and feel that will be, held as kind of confidential information or treated appropriately, but I think in the past, like the, you just wouldn't even feel comfortable saying that because there would be, you would feel stigmatized.
Rea Rotholz: Yep. I don't know when the term burnout was coined. I'm literally Googling it 'cause I'm curious. It was quite in the 1970s, but I feel like that's surprising 'cause I thought it would be maybe sooner because we talk about it so much more now as like a risk to our businesses. Right. And we see that it's a problem that people are facing.
I, someone put, Kevin managers are extra busy right now. We have bigger teams. We have more people that we're managing. And someone said earlier, we're player coaches too. We're doing IC work and we're managing anyway. Wellbeing is a very big theme. We could talk a little bit more about it, but the next one, [00:22:00] to keep us moving.
Retention. So similar to engagement, retention is always a goal, I would say, of most organizations, right? We know the cost of turnover. No one's like trying to have high turnover, even if you're. Hourly workforce, right? And, high turnover is gonna be a thing you still don't want, that you have to retrain, you have to hire, et cetera.
And so, while we're in this sort of quiet, quitting, great resignation, now the economy is, not as hot and people are getting laid off, et cetera it is a certainly a distraction when your employees are actively looking to leave your organization versus actively thinking about ways to stay.
Right.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah. And I think, it's interesting too, again, this is one of those things where if you look at the broader economic climate, right? And you talk about quiet, quitting, when the job market is slow, people are going to [00:23:00] stay in their jobs. Right. I mean they're going to probably move around a bit less.
And essentially like when the pendulum swings, 'cause it always kinds of swings back and forth. Right now we have a lot of people really sticking into their roles, whether or not they're engaged at some point when they. Economy takes off more things. Companies that are feeling more successful wanna hire more.
I think we'll see another one of those big exoduses where people do feel like they can move jobs and end up moving. So I think it will be, it will become an interesting time when that moment starts happening. What managers do to try to keep their teams intact and try to keep their teams feeling engaged and wanting to stay and, career development, growth and development, all those things that we're talking about. So, yeah, I think that's, that is definitely one of those things that is on the horizon, I would say.
Rea Rotholz: Couldn't agree more. I honestly have nothing to add. I think that was you. Like you nailed it. You [00:24:00] nailed it.
So let's move on to the last one, which I know is. Top of mind for everyone, which is ai, right? Artificial intelligence is changing the way we are working. And I thought it was interesting that, in 2020 this wasn't something Gallup was mes measuring, frankly, right? Like that wasn't something that was top of mind.
Not only 'cause of COVID, but just like it wasn't top of mind in. In most industries, albeit I'm sure it was in some right, but we're generalizing but now today 45% of white collar employees have integrated AI into their workforce, and I would say probably even more than that, have integrated AI somehow into their personal lives or using AI in some way.
Just from. Being part of the l and d industry, it's been interesting to see that, January we were talking to customers who were not allowed to have AI at work. I can't tell you how many insurance companies, et cetera, were like, Nope, too risky. [00:25:00] We're not allowed to use it. And now it was just at the training industry conference and some of those really older school, high risk, companies were allowing ai, approved, vetted, like you have your tool that is approved at work, but like pretty much everyone I spoke to had an approved tool at work. And I think we all know that this is just going to become a bigger and bigger part of the workforce.
But where the uncertainty is where it becomes a burden on managers, right? Because it's one more massive. Piece of uncertainty to help their teams navigate.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah. Well, and I think, it's interesting, so my perspective both from for eight. It mainly for hr, but really applies to managers as well, is there's this kind of like push of how do we bring AI in?
How do we use ai? How do we, become more efficient, more productive? All of these things. And it's really been dropped in hrs lap in a lot of situations of like, you figure this out. [00:26:00] And the thing is, one, it's like an evolving thing, right? As you said, right? Even at the beginning of the year, people were thinking about it differently, so it's this evolving, moving target.
That a lot of people don't really have fluency in, right? They don't understand how the tools are built or exactly the kinds of questions to ask to vet the tools. They're learning those skills. They're learning how to use it. They're learning how to bring it into their workflows, so they have to do all of that at the same time that they're helPyng other people do that and helPyng that change management.
And helPyng people understand like the right and the right ways to use the tools and the tool, the ways that we shouldn't use it within the business. All of these things are happening, at the same time people are building the plane as they're flying it. And that's another thing for managers as well where they're having to do all of this learning and teaching simultaneously and develoPyng this fluency around it. So it's a really it's a, that's a big ask. It's [00:27:00] challenging. It's actually
Rea Rotholz: a crazy ask. Like, here's something you personally might not know anything about, but figure Yeah, figure it out. Figure it out. Because it's now our top strategic priority as a company and you are gonna lead it.
I would love to see in the chat, so. Put in the chat, open your chat. We have mostly HR L and Z leaders usually on these webinars put in the chat a yes. If you have a key role in the AI strategy or the AI upskilling teaching your employees, put a yes in the chat.
Stacey Nordwall: It's already giving me anxiety. It's,
Rea Rotholz: This put a yes.
You could also put a No, by the way, feel sorry. I like led, that was very biased. I like led you to say yes, you can absolutely put a no as well. Of course. But it's a lot
Stacey Nordwall: of yeses.
Rea Rotholz: It's a lot of yeses. Y'all. And we are all in this together, right? As the l and d HR people. We have done [00:28:00] this before. I think about COVID, when I was leading learnings Bement Dow Jones, no one knew how to handle going suddenly remote.
Yeah. And HR had to figure it out for our businesses. And you know what? We always rise to the occasion confidence that. Putting HR leaders, people-centric leaders at the forefront, whether it's AI strategy or AI upskilling, like we can only support in a positive way, in my oPynion. But really interesting to see the number of yeses and a few nos, which makes sense too.
But thank you for participating in our casual chat polls. Okay. So now that we know the state. Of the, I don't know, world, it feels like the state of the world and the impact of that this might have on our organizations. How have the skills that we are requiring of managers changed?
And the question we'd love to hear from you in the chat is, what are the top skills people managers need today? [00:29:00] What are those top skills? Maybe they're the same skills they needed five years ago. Maybe they've changed, but what would you say is like the top skill? If you could focus on it, what would that be?
And I'll give you a
Stacey Nordwall: minute to put in. I'm really, this is one I'm very excited to see people's answers for,
and Oh, well, I, oh, I have, I wanna wait. I have something I wanted to say, but I need to see people's answers first. Okay.
Rea Rotholz: Yeah. We'll give a, we'll give 'em a minute. Lots of similar things here. Yeah.
Stacey Nordwall: I the thing that I was thinking about before the past couple of days, prepPyng for this, when it came to this question was, and the whole kind of now and then was that. I have [00:30:00] had so many conversations over the last five, 10 years about the importance of the quote unquote soft skills, and I think because of the environment that we're in the world, that we're in the rise of ai, it is not surprising to me to look at this list and see.
What people are saying are needed are so many of those supposed soft skills which I think is great because I think for so long it was very much like soft skills were written off. Soft skills weren't really valued, and it's. It's just fascinating to me to see in this moment, this shift of like the importance of soft skills and how that's really starting to be something that maybe is gonna end up being a differentiator for people in terms of if they are successful as managers, if they're successful as leaders, that they have these soft skills, which, you know, from the like gendered perspective.[00:31:00]
Soft skills were never particularly valued in terms of the definition of leadership. So I yeah, I just find that really interesting. It's an interesting time.
Rea Rotholz: At the conference last week, the training industry won. They asked companies, they surveyed 500 companies, and they asked, what is the number one skill that you're working on at your organization?
And it was. Pretty specific. It was communicating through change.
That was the number one thing. And I think all of this empathy, communication, I. Fall under that. Okay. We can recoined it. By the way, I'm looking at the chat. There's a lot of there. There's a lot of like, it's not soft. And we agree.
Actually at home we coined it as universal skills, which Yeah, like, but then sometimes people are like, what are universal skills? So we defaulted to soft. But yeah, let's like all together, recoined. Yeah. We've heard power, skills, hard skills, human skills. I [00:32:00] say coin it, whatever makes the most sense at your organization.
But certainly they're not soft. I agree. Yeah. And let me, I would love to share my personal reflection on this. We keep hearing about AI saving people time and being more efficient. And it is my hope and dream that if. Again, don't come at me 'cause this is my hope and dream. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but like my hope and dream that if managers are able to be more efficient and offload a lot of that automatable work and have AI agents, et cetera, they will actually have more time and more expectation of them to focus on the human skills.
Yeah, it is my hope that the excuse of, I didn't have time to have that one-on-one, or we had to cancel this meeting, or we haven't been able to focus on your career growth because, it's just so busy right now and I'm strapped thin. I hope and pray that becomes less of a thing because manager's key job will be managing [00:33:00] people and supporting their growth and less of the player coach mentality.
Again, this is my ideal thing. Yeah.
Stacey Nordwall: But I love that and I think we'll get into, when we talk about some of the examples of how AI can be used to help managers I have some ideas for that exact. Thing of like, if you keep getting into your one-on-ones and it's all about tasks, and you're having those kinds of conversations so that you're never having those career development conversations or those, the, those other things like, can AI actually do exactly what you're saying and take away some of those manual task conversation so that it opens up that space for the growth and development and those human skills conversations.
So I think that's exactly right.
Rea Rotholz: A hundred percent. And so on the next slide, we basically took some research and turned it into a word cloud. And the idea is many companies have competency models, right? Capability models where your managers are held to certain expectations. It's used for [00:34:00] promotions, it's used for, having that career conversation.
And what's often not included is the sort of unspoken. Tasks and responsibilities of a manager, right? So things like managing mental health and burnout on your team. Things like navigating through change dealing with emergencies. It's the hybrid remote work, right? Like, I don't, I haven't seen many capability models that call out like.
Managing a hybrid team effectively in a way that's inclusive of everyone, right? It just hasn't necessarily made it. And so what happens is managers have all these unspoken expectations and then. The leadership development or the support that they receive doesn't actually help them navigate mental health challenges on their team.
Right. Like you were talking about how people aren't trained as managers to do that and it's high risk, but people are doing it anyway and this adds to the burden, right. That managers are facing and they don't always have [00:35:00] the support 'cause it's unspoken.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, to your point, that's where it's also where if you have this kind of.
The, this whole bucket of things that you need to do and you know that you're only being evaluated on these things or people are on the senior leaders are only looking at these numbers If you have to make a choice and you're prioritizing what to do, the things that are maybe those unspoken things.
Start falling away. But those, it doesn't mean that they aren't needed or aren't important or aren't maybe even more important Right. Than some of the other things that you're, you end up prioritizing. So, yeah. It's really it's a real challenge. There's a lot that's being put on manager's plates For sure.
Rea Rotholz: Yep. Kevin agreed Culture. Culture is what happens when you're not looking. You could say all day, you could tout what's important. You could have your capabilities, but if that's not truly [00:36:00] what's required or what's happening, it just makes up the real culture. I think that's so true, Kevin. Okay, so last stats slide.
Also, we like to share these stats slides so that you can leverage them, by the way, like when you're pitching programs or talking about the importance of whatever. Is important to your organization. Like we think it is really helpful to talk to C-Suite in terms of numbers and how it's impacting your business.
So we like to include those in these webinars. But someone was talking about the Gallup people leave managers, not companies kind of idea. And so we did wanna share some of these because this is where, what is the company's role in all of this? Like, what can we do to support these managers?
Leaders are 50 per 56, excuse me, percent more likely to experience extensive disruption in their organization versus ICS leaders are often the ones that are shielding their direct reports from the chaos that happens at the top, right? I'm sure many of you can relate. And so they're also sharing this burden of like, how do I communicate [00:37:00] this?
What do I share? How do I translate what's happening at the org? So that it's productive for my direct reports. Right? And 56% of leaders are more likely to do that than ics. I'm not gonna read Allison's out loud, but like feel free to go in the chat and read what she put because Yes. Love that.
So, 44 of the world's managers say they've received management training. That means a lot, haven't. A shocking number of people get promoted to management positions because they were fabulous, individual contributor. And then they have this new role sometimes on top of their individual contributor role, and they're not trained.
They don't know how to have an effective one-on-one. I know that was a theme that came up already. 15%. This is so low. 15% say managers have helped them build a career growth plan. And we know that career growth is so important for [00:38:00] engagement, retention. If your direct reports don't see a future at the organization or see additional opportunities for learning or whatever it might be, they're more likely to leave.
And only 15% of employees say that their managers are really working with them on that. I think that's like a key role of being at someone's manager, right? Is understanding their career growth aspirations and helPyng them achieve that. I'm sure we can all agree. And then someone alluded to this stat, 70% of team engagement is attributed to the manager.
It really is an outsized impact that managers have on the entire organization. It is an outsized impact, which is why so many companies are focusing on manager development and enablement 'cause they know that. But I would argue we are still falling a bit short given the realities of being a manager.
Yeah. Okay. So. We highlighted in the description of this webinar, this idea of psychological [00:39:00] safety. And that was really what Stacey and I determined as a key factor to the success of managers and how managers are leading their teams and their direct reports. And so would love to hear in the chat.
How do you, as supporters of your managers, or in the l and d function, HR function, et cetera, how are you supporting psychological safety in your organization? And for those of you who might not be as familiar with the term psychological safety, which I'm sure most of you are, but if not, is this idea that.
People feel safe, they feel they belong, they feel they can speak up about what's really going on. And so is there anything in your organization that you're doing that's really supporting or addressing psychological safety head on? We'd love to hear from you all. We can learn from each other as well as people have ideas.
What are you doing to support psychological safety?
Stacey Nordwall: And while people are [00:40:00] putting some things in the chat, one of the things I wanted to, because you were talking about that whole idea of a shield and of, being this kind of like buffer between the communication that's happening within the company and their team was this article that I had read and I thought this was very interesting, where they talk about that.
Managers, a lot of times they want to be that shield, right? They want to be that buffer and they really try to present this very like positive case to their teams because they don't want to really acknowledge, some of the negative things that are happening. And they were calling this, they don't wanna call it toxic positivity 'cause it has its own kind of framing and what people think of it.
But they were calling the behavior glossing, like glossing over things. The idea being that, when managers do that, it actually starts to erode trust and erode psychological safety because if. They can't acknowledge the elephant in the room and everyone's looking [00:41:00] around like, okay, are we not gonna, are we not gonna talk about this?
Are we not gonna acknowledge that things are challenging? Or, that there's this uncertainty that then ends up just starting to make people feel like, okay, well I. They're not talking about it, so we can't talk about it. And or they're not talking about it. So do they not see and hear the same things we see in here, which erodes that trust?
Right. So I think it is, there are sometimes things that I think we can end up doing as managers or as HR that we feel like is good and helpful and putting on the best face, but sometimes. The what you really need to do is actually step back and say, okay let's make space. I don't have the answers.
You don't have to have the answers, but let's make space to have the conversation and to name some of the things that we're seeing and feeling because otherwise like that, it doesn't feel like there is a psychologically safe environment. So that's one of the things I just wanted to highlight as people were putting in their answers.[00:42:00]
Rea Rotholz: I love that and it's honestly a common theme that we hear. We work with a lot of customers who are doing leadership development, and one of the key themes that comes up is we're all just too nice.
Rea Rotholz: We're too nice to each other. People aren't having the real conversation, so they want to support people in having real feedback, conversations and certainly.
Upskilling and knowing how to have that conversation plays a huge role in people's willingness to do it. But also, Stacey, to your point, the role modeling of it. Yeah. Are leaders sharing, are they glossing? I love that term by the way. Are they glossing or are they being authentic? And managers play a huge role in that.
We had some really good ideas in. Chat, by the way. So definitely check that out of how people are really focusing on psychological safety in their organization. One thing that I, I don't think is as associated with psychological safety, but an important piece something we do [00:43:00] in our lead psychological safety class is actually having leaders audit themselves on what they think the level of psychological safety is Truly.
Their team. It can be anonymous, it could be like a self-audit, but thinking about the behaviors of are people willing to chime in when something's going on in the team, are they willing to bring it up? Are people sharing kind of the cultural reality? What's happening underneath the unspoken things with the manager?
Right? Those having a sense and an awareness of like. There's usually more that a manager can be doing to support their teams, I think is really helpful. And also having not only like a an audit of psychological safety, but having giving leaders the opportunity to have a external kind of self-awareness, building experience, I think is really.
Helpful. So whether it is a 360 that's anonymous, or [00:44:00] we like to use disc at home, right? Which is like a completely unbiased, like here's how you might be perceived by others and how that might impact how you're working. Can provide managers with a little bit of an aha moment and also can provide their managers with an aha moment, right?
Because if we're supporting our frontline leaders, and that's what we're talking about today, those leaders have leaders. And Right. And they need to be, the ones also role modeling. So it is a bit of like a cascaded need.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah, absolutely. And I think too to your point that they're managers and are also employees, many of them are also, I, ics are playing both functions.
And it is also. Their psycho age, they might not feel psychologically safe. Right. So there is also a component of, trying to. Check in with yourself, check in and think like, do I feel, am I modeling good behaviors? Am I modeling boundaries and emotional regulation and [00:45:00] things like that as well?
So it is important to acknowledge that the manager's not like a blank slate, right? Like they have their own things that they're experiencing and dealing with as well. That they have to maybe even create psychological safety when they aren't feeling it themselves sometimes.
Rea Rotholz: A hundred percent. And I just posted in the chat someone put in the q and a, they can't use the chat. So, I'm posting it for you, Ian, 'cause I, we do love hearing from you all. Okay. Conscious of time. Our last sort of topic that we wanted to hear from you all is specifically around AI and how we can use it to the benefit of supporting managers.
Where does it fit into manager development? And then I also wanna touch on where does it maybe not fit? Into manager development given some of the themes that came out. So curious to hear from you all in the chat please. And if you can't use chat, feel free to use q and a and I'll read it. But curious in the chat, where does AI fit or where could it fit in helPyng your managers, develoPyng your [00:46:00] managers, providing additional resources to your managers?
Or what have you been doing at your organization? Even better leveraging AI to support that would be super curious to. To hear from you all where that plays a role.
Stacey Nordwall: I'll, I can start with some examples that I've seen recently. I, so if people follow Lenny's newsletter, there was an example there where, and I think this is very much to your point, Rea, that someone, one of the functions that they regularly did apparently was to review kind of documents, right?
Review PowerPoints, review documents, and give feedback. Okay? That is a task that. It's a pretty good one for ai. It what you can do in order to like really start almost automating that in a way you can start when you are giving feedback, give that feedback to the ai. Here's the thing here's the feedback that I gave you.
Do that a few times, then you can ask it, Hey here's the feedback that I gave. Can you create a rubric around this? And here's the way I like to give feedback. So this is, I want it to be direct, right? You give it some [00:47:00] instructions. You can create a custom GPT with that. That's now your first level of feedback and interaction that a person can use that instead of coming to you.
That frees up some, those kind of next level things. And it frees that up for those conversations around career development, right? So you can think about what are those tasks that they do regularly that maybe they can turn into a rubric through a GPT or that they can automate. So I think that's one that I found is pretty pretty useful.
Another thing. Is if your organization has a bunch of like, skills matrices managers are trying to help people move up the, from one level to the next. Sometimes it's not always clear like, what do I need to do to help get this person from one level to the next? What are, what is the difference?
What is the co, how do I coach them? You can take those skills matrices, put it into a GPT and say, Hey, I have. Somebody that I'm trying to coach from this level to the next level, what are some things that I could say to them? What are some communications that I could send, or coach me to help coach them?
Right? So there are [00:48:00] ways that you can start using ai to really, help you think through those things or help you take, help, take away those first round manual tasks that you do often that aren't necessarily. Adding a lot of value to the team or to a direct report's growth, but are, needed, but could be automated.
So I think those, there are definitely ways to start thinking about like, how can I get rid of some of those low level tasks that aren't necessarily, they're needed, but not high value, and start working, spending your time more on the high value things.
Rea Rotholz: Yes, my dream managers can all do this. I totally agree.
Stacey. I met a woman last week who was sharing that she and her l and d function has actually encouraged their employees to upload. And I think they use Gemini [00:49:00] associated with Gmail. But certainly other tools can do this. Send all your weekly update emails or status emails that you sent to your manager.
Put it all into ai, have it summarize your key accomplishments and use that as the baseline for your performance review. It takes away the stress of recency bias of, having to think about what you wanna highlight. It's that first pass that's gonna be more thorough. And she was like, instead of fighting that and being like, no, you have to.
Write your own. She was like, let's just embrace it and let's like, let's make it easy. And then people won't be as stressed during performance review season, writing their self reviews and they can focus more on having a compelling and helpful career conversation. To your point, Stacey, 'cause that's really where the time should be spent, not like remembering everything you accomplished over the past year.
Rea Rotholz: I thought that was a good example. Thank you for all of you who are putting examples in the chat. I think the other thing, Stacey, and I just wanna touch on, I know we have three minutes, is where does AI maybe not fit in [00:50:00] to manager development? And I think you all, based on the skills that you all said were the most important now.
Empathy, emotional intelligence, communicating through change, et cetera. These are all of the human skills, the interpersonal skills, the how we talk to the people we work with and collaborate skills. And I think there is a time and place where AI can support with awareness or practice, et cetera. I still firmly believe that people need an opportunity to try something on with other people, right?
They need to be able to have a conversation, and that's where sort of the live aspect, the live coaching, the live learning opportunities still have, I think a really important piece to make sure managers are upskilled in that area.
Stacey Nordwall: Yeah and someone had mentioned, you can use [00:51:00] AI to help you think through a conversation or, things like that.
And I agree. The important thing to think about also though, is like context, right? Because AI doesn't know, the person doesn't know the situation unless you're, giving them a lot of this information. So if you just say, Hey, I need to have a conversation about X, it gives you a script, and the script really is not.
Going to be tailored to the person that you're having the conversation with, right? So I think that, again, that's where it might help in certain ways or it might help you refine your messaging to make it clearer or things like that, but it's not necessarily going to do those human skills for you.
Hundred percent.
Rea Rotholz: I know we're up on time. I thought we'd have more time for q and a, but I love that everyone was very engaged in the chat and that was really what Stacey and I wanted, and so we so appreciate your engagement involvement. We do have one last slide with some additional resources for you all.
So I put the link in the chat Pyn has a library of resources that can be [00:52:00] helpful for your managers. Hone developed an entire manager training playbook based on our experiences with hundreds of customers. And so definitely check that out. It could be helpful for your manager development. Huge.
Thank you, Stacey. I know you weren't feeling so hot, but you were amazing to co-host with, so I really appreciate it. And thank you to all of you who spent an hour with us today. There was over a hundred people here and you're willing to share, and that means so much to us. So big. Thank you to you all.
Thanks everyone. Check out the links in the chat before you go to your next meeting.
