Embedding Diversity and Development Mindsets are Critical to Building Elite Teams
Summary:
Rebecca Tipton joins Dr. Jim on the HR Impact Show to discuss the importance of diversity in building elite teams. Rebecca emphasizes the need to go beyond surface-level diversity and instead focus on diverse skill sets, backgrounds, and experiences. She shares her experiences in talent acquisition and highlights the value of looking for what's different in teammates and leveraging their unique skills to improve the team as a whole. Rebecca also discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a leadership role and provides insights into effective team development strategies. She emphasizes the importance of ongoing professional development and tracking employees' skills and progress to ensure continuous improvement.
Key Takeaways:
Building a diverse team requires looking beyond surface-level diversity and valuing different skill sets, backgrounds, and experiences.
Transitioning from an individual contributor to a leadership role requires effective communication, feedback, and respect for team members' perspectives.
Ongoing professional development is essential for building high-performing teams and should be tailored to individual skill gaps and goals.
Creating a culture of feedback and providing multiple avenues for employees to share their perspectives can foster inclusivity and ensure all voices are heard.
Intentionally mapping out development plans and addressing skill gaps within the organization is crucial for sustainable talent management.
Chapters:
00:02:00 Challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a boss
00:05:00 Attracting diverse talent by expanding recruiting sources
00:07:00 Succession planning and tracking skills for individual development
00:12:00 Creating space for introverted employees to voice their needs
00:15:00 Splitting one-on-ones into structured and open forum conversations
00:17:00 Eliciting feedback from employees and implementing ideas from diverse perspectives
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Transcript
The person that is going to walk us through that conversation is joining us today. She's an HR services manager at BMSS Advisors and CPAs, a business advisory and accounting firm serving over 7, 500 clients with their business needs in this role. She helps clients with all of their HR needs from compliance to personnel management strategy.
Prior to this role, she has served as the HR business advisor in a separate HR consulting firm and practice HR directly in a number of different roles. She's been in town acquisitions, she's been an HR manager, she's been a generalist and a recruiter. She holds a certification from SHRM and is a graduate from Athens State University, Rebecca Tipton ,welcome to the show.
Rebecca Tipton: Thank you for having me. It's a great topic to talk
about.
ally looking forward to this [:Rebecca Tipton: Where I really get my team building experience from, it's definitely from back when I was in talent acquisition, where I was working with a team of onboarders, sourcers and other recruiters. And during my time there, I went from being a recruiter from being 1 of the sources, being 1 of the onboarders to being then the director of the talent acquisition team, and I quickly learned that.
n learn something from their [:Dr. Jim: When you described your background and experience, you talked about starting out as a sourcer, transitioning into a role that had more responsibility and eventually becoming a director. Tell us a little bit about the challenges that you encountered in that situation and how you navigated that transition from being an individual contributor to their boss once you got promoted,
Rebecca Tipton: so I'm not gonna lie, it was difficult, I, cause you do go from being part of the team to all of a sudden everyone's wondering whether, your personality's gonna change and all of a sudden you're gonna become more of a dictator.
And I tried really hard to keep that in mind and understand how I would feel about one of my peers being put in the same situation. And changes that I made, I just made sure to communicate with the team, let them know exactly what I was thinking, and ask for their feedback along the way. I had already gained a lot of respect for these guys, so I really valued their feedback, and I think that's just...
Very [:Dr. Jim: Let's talk about the core topic that we're going to discuss. For those who are new to the show, we talk often about what are the game changing realizations that leaders have had that helped them build high performing teams. You've.
Been in a number of different roles within the HR function between TA and the HR side. So when you look at your career progression, what were the big game changing learnings that you had that really supercharged your ability to build a high performing team?
Rebecca Tipton: For starters , definitely the fact that you really do want Diversity amongst your team, as far as their skill sets, their backgrounds and experiences, what they what kind of perspective they can bring to the equation.
g upon their skills or their [:We had a pivot all the time based on different needs, the supply and demand of different skill sets and having the ability to just. Quickly come up with a new concept or a new process to get where we were trying to go was just absolutely necessary. So we're constantly trying to find different seminars or classes, or just learning opportunities in general, whether it was small projects that we could work on and build those skills.
element that you're talking [:So let's tackle the composition part of it first. And this is going to be informed by a lot of your experience in talent acquisition. It's important to have a lot of backgrounds, a lot of perspectives, a lot of viewpoints represented in your team. If you're trying to achieve that goal, where do you start and what are the things that you should be doing from a talent attraction perspective, that's going to position you to have that kind of team.
Rebecca Tipton: What I really wanted first and foremost, cause we worked primarily with education staffing. I wanted someone with an education background who could share with us, The mindset of the typical candidate that we're going after someone who could communicate on their level, understand everything they had to go through to get to where they were at that point.
e geared towards educational [:You don't want to just rely on indeed for everything. If you want to also be getting a diverse pool and from there, I was honestly lucky. That I had a lot of applications to sort through and be able to look at their experience, but it's just a matter of Looking out for what they listed on their resume and looking for different opportunities where, oh, that's a very interesting experience that they had.
I wonder how they could apply that bringing them in for the conversation and. So often that you just have a really great conversation. They already know exactly how they're good. Apply it to your field and you'll see that perspective that they're bringing. That's so different from anything else you're seeing on your team.
ecause one of the challenges [:You have hiring managers that have a set of ideas in their mind on what the ideal candidate looks like. From your perspective, it sounds like, you have to be able to be flexible and look at where is there potential for this non standard quote unquote candidate or non standard background to fit.
What's your advice to recruiters who are. Facing the challenge of hiring managers or position descriptions that spell out exactly what something should look like and how do they bridge that gap and building diversity into that candidate pool by, coloring outside the lines a little bit.
riences I'm sharing with you [:transferability of the skills between the background and what they're looking for. Generally speaking, the hiring manager is going to be more into the concept of trying it out.
Dr. Jim: Let's tackle the other half of the equation. We talked a little bit about what are some of the things that you can do from a talent attraction perspective. What I gathered from your response when you're talking about broadening that talent pool, it's critical for recruiters to ask about what's possible. What if this happens? What if we find this? What if we find this profile? And that actually allows hiring managers to think a little bit differently about what are they actually looking for out of that candidate.
on that you mentioned, which [:Creating a path or creating a vision for those folks. So they stick around. So tell us a little bit about what some of those best practices were that you encountered that helped you do that within the organizations that you've worked in.
Rebecca Tipton: So probably the best practice, at least for how I'm applying professional development has been.
Basically, like a succession plan concept into it, where you are looking at each of your employees and doing an honest assessment over where they are in each of their skill sets, maybe some bonus skill sets that aren't really required for the position, but just tracking all of that and identifying where they are in that grid so you can better target.
kind of skill you can think [:If it's not helping them at all, then maybe it's not worth the cost, but if it's helping them greatly, all of a sudden you've got a star person over here who can be maybe moved over into other projects to support their coworkers. And further develop that.
Dr. Jim: I like what you described there from a succession planning perspective and if I'm understanding what you're describing correctly.
a one on one in the context [:Rebecca Tipton: So one on one means are fantastic. I actually promote them quite a bit with my clients and having them regular is very important. I actually use mine for developing a specific set of KPIs.
Everybody knew upfront, like what their expectations were. And what the agenda was for each of the 1 on 1 meetings where we would start off with by just talking about, okay, here are the numbers and here's where you're at. Here's where you're excelling. Here's where maybe we need a little work and then the very next topic would be.
uld help you to improve. And [:But it was always very effective at getting that answer just very directly, even from my more introvert employees who don't like having to be confrontational, that they feel like they're missing something to be successful. They would just end up feeling more comfortable being very direct about what they need.
And then I'd turn around and work on trying to make it happen.
Dr. Jim: You mentioned, there are occasions where people are on your team where they might not want to have that direct conversation. What are some things that leaders can do to create space for those people that are less forthcoming to advocate and voice their needs?
Rebecca Tipton: I'm probably one of those, if I would be honest with myself, I just try to fight it. And so I do feel like I can be very honest with this one.
not waiting for them to come [:I just want to know what you think I could do better for you. And that helped a lot. With my employees, give her a little quieter. The other options, of course, you can do anonymous surveys or just having some kind of solo feedback mechanism where they don't have to feel like they're on the spot in a large meeting or in front of their peers.
So they can just. Get their view across and if it's anonymous, they don't have to be called out on it. I preferred when they are willing to talk with me directly, just because then I knew exactly who to help. I found that the best method for me has been the direct question in a private meeting with an employee followed by an anonymous survey, just in case they still weren't.
Feeling all that forthcoming.
Dr. Jim: You [:One is that performance update or status update and the other one is just an open forum, open door sort of conversations. What are your feelings or have you tried that version and if so, What have you observed about splitting those up so you don't turn your one on ones into just a pure status report,?
d goals first that we didn't [:We actually would schedule a full 30 minutes and get through the first part in about 10. And then the rest of it really was for, okay, let's. Talk about other issues. Do you have questions about, the new process that came out or the new software that we're learning how to use any kind of thing that could come up?
Maybe they're having issues at home that they wanted to discuss by just left that to them a sometimes they had such a tight schedule. They just asked me, I really don't actually have anything else to say. Do you mind if I go ahead and get back to it? Absolutely. I just want that time to be theirs at that point.
Dr. Jim: Really good stuff, Rebecca. I like this conversation in terms of not only attracting a wider candidate pool, but also developing them and how you can leverage one on ones appropriately to get the most out of that talent attraction effort and development effort that you're doing.
t surface level diversity as [:How do we take it? and make it meaningful versus the surface level stuff that we see at a lot of organizations. Share with us a little bit about what you've seen work well, and also what you've seen work poorly when people are trying to execute that.
Rebecca Tipton: All levels of diversity are important, but when you're really trying to implement something to encourage and foster diversity. Whether it's amongst your entire company or your team, I think it's really important to elicit feedback from the other members, whether they're your employees from the team or all of your employees from the company, if it's company wide, I have seen some great committees come together.
ve, what they've seen, maybe [:And so 1 of the suggestions there was opening it up for submitting ideas, written. comments so that people can't just be talked over and so that everybody's feedback is reviewed. And then the person reviewing the feedback would then respond to each person who had written in the feedback directly so that they knew that their feedback was being heard and implemented, if possible, whenever it was other ways that I have really seen work, I would be.
you know where the gaps are [:And make it feel whole
again.
Dr. Jim: If I understand what you're describing correctly, there's a combination of things that people leaders should be doing. One, they should be pretty disciplined about creating all sorts of different avenues for people to have their opinions or voices or perspectives heard.
But the other part of it in terms of building a cohesive people strategy, especially when you're talking about embedding diversity throughout all levels of the organization is that you need to have an eye towards what are you missing within the organization from a capabilities perspective, from a representation perspective, all the different sort of dimensions of diversity, and you need to be intentional about putting those things forward.
about the conversations that [:What are the key things that you want the listeners to remember when they're trying to build this on their own?
Rebecca Tipton: First and foremost would be to not shy away from team members that are different from you, if they have a bit different. Backgrounds, or they just took a different journey to get where they are, or they have a different love or emphasis in your field.
skills where they were maybe [:Always be willing to improve.
Dr. Jim: Last thing before we close everything down, where can people find you?
Rebecca Tipton: You
:Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us. When I think about this conversation, I think the one big thing that stands out to me is whatever your talent strategy is that you have to be intentional, both on the attraction side, the development side, and the retention side for you to have meaningful diversity across all levels of the organization, it's not enough to.
nt pool perspective once you [:So you're building a sustainable talent engine versus creating this scenario where you have a revolving door of talent, which is where a lot of organizations end up falling. So I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing that insight. For those of you who have listened to this conversation and like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review tune in next time where we'll have another leader coming on the show to share with us their game changing realizations that helped them build a high performance team.
