Leading With Empathy and Compassion When Charged With Responsibility
Episode Notes
Johnny Taylor joins Paul on this week’s episode to share in a listening instead of reacting can make all the difference when an employee issues and needs need to be addressed.
About the Guest
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP
President & CEO
Society for Human Resource Management
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, is President and Chief Executive Officer of SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management. With over 300,000 members in 165 countries, SHRM is the largest HR trade association in the world, impacting the lives of 115 million workers every day.
As a global leader on the future of employment, culture and leadership, Johnny is a sought-after voice on all matters affecting work, workers, and the workplace. He is frequently asked to testify before Congress on critical workforce issues and authors the weekly USA Today column, "Ask HR." He is the author of the national bestseller, RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, which delivers a candid and forward-thinking vision for leaders to reimagine their company cultures in a time of global upheaval and presents data-driven strategies to make the necessary foundational reset of all things work.
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Paul Wolfe
Hello, and welcome to another weekly episode of 52. Humans the vodcast on stories of human first leadership. I'm your host, Paul Wolf. And I've created this show to inspire us to transform our workplaces by returning to humanity that binds us. I'm overly excited this week to be joined by Johnny Taylor to talk about human first and empathetic leadership. Johnny, as I'm sure many of you know, is the President CEO of SHRM, he and I had the fortune of working for him and with him back in the days of IAC, when we were there far too many years ago that I want to mention at this point as I get older, and he's also an amazing human being. If you haven't met him, you should meet him at one of the SHRM conferences. Johnny, first of all, thank you for being here, because I know you're a busy dude. And now welcome. Welcome to 52. Humans.
Johnny Taylor
So glad to be here. And frankly, there's no better place to be than now. I think you highlighted too long, how long ago it was. It wasn't that long ago, Paul. So-
Paul Wolfe
It feels like a long time. Everything feels like a long time these days. But you're right, I still maybe I'm still younger than I my age. I like to think that what's up in the world of SHRM? Like, tell us.
Johnny Taylor
you know, as we were talking before, the world has changed. So significantly since the pandemic, especially for HR, the world of work, and just trying to understand what is the future, heck, we're having a hard time trying to figure out what the present is, we're still feeling the Wake effect, I don't have to tell you, and I'm sure all of the folks who are listening, we don't know what the employer employee relationship is, heck, we don't know where work is going to be done, how it's going to be done, what is work. And so what I'm excited about is right now we're in this real spot of, I don't know, we're exploring it, we're learning we're driving and building the car at the same time. And it's fascinating to be in the world of, of HR and human capital.
Paul Wolfe
It is absolutely, I think that, yeah, I was doing a press interview the other day, and somebody asked me about like, the what is work now. And I'm like, I don't know that we even know what the future of work is, for the next few years, because the dust hasn't completely settled. And I think, you know, the pandemic was the pandemic. And for HR folks, it was hard, I lived through it. We all live through it, I manage helping the company through it, you help lead an organization through it. And I think they're what I look for now is what are those silver threads, we can pull through to the other side that the pandemic exposed us to in a good way. And that's working differently. And I think leading differently is, is one of those things and kind of pushing us. So, you know, that's the subject that I like to talk about. Now. Can you give us your example, where you displayed or you exhibit or Usai exhibited human first and empathetic leadership and talk to us about that experience?
Johnny Taylor
Yeah, you know, I remember when, when you posed the question to me my mind immediately, I knew exactly what the answer would be. We've had many opportunities of the years to, to show the human in human resources as a leader, but I remember 2015, my HR manager came in to tell me that one of our really talented executives, one of our colleagues, had been stealing from the organization had essentially taken the company's credit card and used it not to buy, you know, trips and vacations and expensive items, but to feed his family. And, but it was nonetheless a violation of company policy, needless to say, to use the company's money, to provide one's own living, food, housing, etc. And so the easy answer was firing. The other answer was Suspend him. And I actually had this moment, I can't exactly explain why Paul that day, but I said, Bring him in. And he came in and I said, explain to me why you did this. I didn't do what we normally do, which is kind of set people up with did you do this? How did you do? It was like, Why? Why did you do this? We can dispense with all of the stuff that I did in my lawyering days. You did it. Why?
And as I sat there and explained to me that he had adopted three young boys from a mother who had died of a drug overdose, he and his wife did, and they frankly overcommitted themselves and found that they could not provide for these children and two of the children had gone to school with shoes with holes in the bottom of it, because even though he was working in his wife was working, they could not provide for these children.
And so again, he wasn't using the credit card to on frivolous stuff he was doing it to provide and what I found most interestingly, is he was trying to pay it back bits at a time but ultimately it got out enough brunt of it. And I had to make a decision as a leader, a human decision, the easy answer is fire him, which would only make his situation worse. I didn't think I was looking at a bad person, I was looking at a person who made a bad decision and judgment under the circumstances. And then I gotta tell you, Paul, at that moment, I said, you know, under the right set of circumstances, might have done the same thing. It's easy for me to sit here and say no, but I don't know, if I had a choice of Feeding My Kid on the company's credit card, or my kid not eating what I might do. And so that was that moment where I had to dig deep within and sort of see myself and, and lean into my empathy. And say, there's a better way something to do short of just firing this person. And we did.
So that was my moment. It came to my mind right away. There were people around me who questioned that we were in a nonprofit business at the time, a charity and people question why you would do that for someone who wasted or took advantage of the charities, dollars and cents. But I said no, that there's this is a an opportunity for me to bring the human back into human resources.
Paul Wolfe
All right, that is a touching story. Like, you know, you can see yourself like being in that situation. The follow up question for you, because you are an attorney, like you went to law school. I've worked with you. You're an HR leader, an HR professional, what do you think like, what what is it that I was going to use the word snapped? What is it that in your brain that that caused you to like, I'm gonna look at this person as a human. And you said he's a good person. And I think sometimes as HR professionals, we think that the person even if we're terminating them, that sometimes they get treated like criminals. That's a whole separate vodcast. I want to point like, we'll come back to that, but like, what, what do you think it was that made your legal and HR brain like, stop for a minute, and really think outside the box about how to solve the problem?
Johnny Taylor
His story. And we talk about storytelling, a lot, the value of storytelling, I was willing to listen to his story. And I don't know what that day made me willing to hear his story. But once I did, I made a very, very different decision. That was a factor that I hadn't and wouldn't have otherwise taken into consideration, because of course, it was black and white, you violated the policy, you knew there was a policy, no one would blame us for letting this person go. I didn't even get to the point of how talented of a person he was, or how valuable he was to the organization. Because you know, as a leader, sometimes we've been to our tolerance for people break rules, if we think they're special. But this wasn't a really special person. Somehow, that day, I was willing to hear his story. And when he told me his story, immediately, I put myself as best I could have not been in the experience in his shoes. And that's where that was my first and most impactful empathy lesson, where I actually realized that I could make a difference in not just his life, but in his children's lives, because me not being you know, empathetic, appropriately. Now, of course, we took his use of the credit card, we absolutely asked to put it together, payment plan, etc. And we did the things you're supposed to do. But to answer your question directly, that day, I was willing, and I and I do this now, every day for I listened to the full story. I knew the facts. But there's a story behind the facts that if you don't listen to them, as a leader, you oftentimes will lose great talent. And more importantly, you won't allow human beings to do what human beings do. And that is from time to time make mistakes.
Paul Wolfe
Oh, absolutely. And your comment about storytelling is so true, because that's how we've, we've learned about history. That's how stories have been passed down from ages and ages and ages. And I think that the important part that you mentioned is listening. We need to listen and you might you know, if you sit and listen, I always I love this quote that is be curious, not judgmental. It's been attributed to Walt Whitman a lot, but it's on attributed. And it just sets the stage of just sit and listen, and I'm not suggesting we all have to agree at the end of the day. Politics is is an interesting way to apply that, that saying, and you don't have to agree, but just sit and listen to somebody else's perspective or their story about why they think differently, why they talk differently, why they look differently than you can be a really amazing human experience. I love
Johnny Taylor
the act. Exactly.
Paul Wolfe
I just have to stop and listen to each other. And I think the world like I'm gonna go on my utopian soapbox the world could be a better place if we just stopped and listened to each other and cared a little bit more. Because I have you and you are the president CEO of SHRM. I'm going to ask you a question. I don't ask my other guests. What is your one? Hope for 2023 outstretching and 20 What's your what you want to hope for the next like 18 to 24 months from from an HR perspective?
Johnny Taylor
Yeah, that we can find That's an easy one, because I've been thinking a lot about this. How can we play a unifying role in society, not just in our workplaces, but as HR professionals, our country is as divided. And, and as diverse as it's ever been. And that's really interesting, because you and I know having been at this for a little time, we thought diversity would solve a lot of problems well, at once we're diverse. And we're divided. And we've kind of figured out how to bring people back together. And I think you HR can play a big role in that it's easy to focus on what, what's different about us, we don't spend enough time focus on our commonality, which is the human experience. So I'm hoping and I know that may seem a little Pollyanna and everything else. But I really feel like there's an opportunity for all of us to focus on bringing people together, unifying and not further dividing. And that's really complicated as we talk about tough conversations around diversity, equity inclusion, because as you know, there's some of us who believe in in sort of focusing on our differences. And then there are others who say, Yeah, we got to get to that. But we should start and I'm of that ilk, I believe that you've got to start in our commonalities. But wherever it is, what we've tried to do for the last 2030 years hasn't worked particularly well, because now people are at each other's necks about everything. And we're just too divided. So I'm hoping that over the next 1824 months, we focus intentionally on unifying our society.
Paul Wolfe
I love that I don't think it's too Pollyanna. I'm there with you, however, I can help. I'm there. The one thing and I'll plug it, I've got a book coming out next week called human beings first. And that is the one thing that makes us the same. We all have blood through and controlling through our veins, we all need air, you know, we need air we need to breathe, we need food and water to exist. You think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so I love your approach of let's focus on the things that are common because I think a lot of times we have more in common that we don't know, or maybe that we don't want to know. And then you can start to look at the differences like okay, like we have all these things that ground us that make us the same. And let's think about those differences in in different ways in different perspective. So I love that I'm there with you. However, I can help. I would love to help, Johnny, first, thank you so much for taking the time to be on my vlog cast. I adore you. I appreciate you. I'm sure the audience is going to love this guy has loved this conversation. So thank you. Thank you so much.
Johnny Taylor Thank you, man.