The Secret to Retention: Why Relationships Matter More Than Salary

Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy.

Dr. Jim, how do you build an organization with leadership depth and capability? A lot of folks will mention that leadership success or failure will rely on the strength of relationships within an organization. So how can you leverage relationship building as an exercise in developing culture? Building leadership depth requires a strong relationship culture.

You can't have one without the other. Today's conversation will walk through how you build strong relationships at all levels of an organization that front end and ongoing work will set the stage for building an organization that has strong leadership depth and capability. So who's going to be guiding us through that conversation today?

y. So what's her story? Since: 2015

Superintendent [00:01:00] Osorio is passionate about strengthening public education by developing future leaders and diversifying her public school workforce. Much of her leadership work is grounded in the notion that students thrive best within a positive work culture where adults feel connected to each other and valued by their leaders.

Christine is most proud of her four adult children and her Many mentees who have moved into high school leadership roles christine. Welcome to the show.

[: 00:01:25

[00:01:27] Dr. Jim: Yeah i'm looking forward to this conversation Mainly because this is one of our first large school perspectives that we've brought on in the midwest now We've had a number of west coast large districts, and superintendents, hop on the show, but i'm Thank you Particularly interested in the hearing your story now, before we dive into the meat of the discussion and how you can leverage relationship building as a culture building exercise, but also something that allows you to have deep leadership capability and skill.

Let's dig [: 00:02:00

[00:02:11] Dr. Christine Tucci-Osorio: Thank you for having me again.

I think one of the big issues. This pandemic naturally has challenged us in ways we never even imagined. And I think we're in such a different labor market right now that we have to think so differently about how we approach recruitment, retention of all staff, particularly staff of color, and trying to help entice folks to come into the public education sector.

Something I'm so passionate about is proving that public education systems, particularly. Urban public education systems with diverse student populations can be excellent places. And I'm, it's a top goal of mine is to prove that this can happen and that we can do well and that we can thrive. And so that's been a big piece of this.

year [: 00:03:00

[00:03:09] Dr. Jim: It's really interesting that you mentioned that how the impact of COVID has led you and a lot of employers to rethink how they approach their talent strategy.

Tell us a little bit more about what that means in the K through 12 space, because one of the things that I've observed is that as soon as the pandemic started to quote unquote wrap, you saw a mass exodus of K through 12 educators from the profession. So tell us about how that's factored into your overall talent strategy.

[: 00:03:40

So we have lots of different areas within the workforce. [00:04:00] Accountants, architect, we've got mechanics, we have nutrition and bus drivers, all those kinds of things. And so something that's been really I've been thinking a lot about is how do we become the best employer? How do we make people want to stay here?

And we know that we're very social beings. Humans, by very nature, are social beings. How do we build on that connections and relationships? A real aha moment for me during the pandemic, and I'm sure people across the country experienced this, your local coffee shop was closed, even after things reopened, because they just didn't have enough employees.

They had to shorten hours. And I was talking with a couple of my adult kids about this. And I was asking them about their experiences and their friends experiences. And one thing that they have told me over and over, Some of their favorite jobs weren't the ones that paid the most. They were the ones they felt most connected to other people, right?

, that connectivity matters. [: 00:05:00

How do you create a relationship organization that's not entirely dependent on me personally having a relationship with each person? Because you can't when you have 2000 employees, but you can set the stage for a culture within the organization that fosters that. And I've developed a few strategies that actually help us.

Do that at a larger scale.

[: 00:05:27

That might make sense if you're emerging in your career, if you're early in your career. But when we look at the educator workforce, these are, you have a segment of new educators, but the vast majority are what we call mid career professionals. So the compensation has got to line up and. You [00:06:00] have all of the work factors that has to line up and the connectivity has to line up as well. When you look at all of that complexity You Before we dive into the core systems and processes that you've put in, how have you cleared the way to take stress out off the plates of educators ?

[: 00:06:17

It was about, 50 a day. It was crazy. My first year as a principal, and I remember thinking why do these teachers not want to invest in these kids? So I started this activity where I met with each teacher one on one. I was new to the site at the time, and I had a class list, and I had each teacher tell me, talk to me about this student.

he go after school? Who does [: 00:07:00

And it was a real exercise, and I went through it one by one down the list. And just without talking about their reading scores and their math skills, just how do you, what do you know about them? Excites them, what are they interested in, what are they good at, but also, who are they connected to?

That's a really key, important question. Trans, and I will tell you, in just doing that exercise, and I will tell you, There were a lot of overwhelmed teachers, many of whom were mid career, many who were brand new. And I kept going, and I will tell you, it was shocking how little they really knew, because they weren't taking the time.

ls, but like our director of [: 00:08:00

And Our head of the custodial group, I have our HR print off a list of every person who's in their department or their school or their program. And I do this activity, and I do it at least once a year, and I run through this random number chooser on a smart board, number 13, go down to number 13, give yourself a point if you know how far that person commutes to work every day.

And I do another one on number 27. Go to that person and give yourself a point. If you know where they worked before they worked in your department program building, right? Give yourself a point. If you know who that person is connected to inside of the organization, like who do they, have lunch with those kinds of things.

ding is, among staff and any [: 00:09:00

Now, I'm not suggesting that, Leaders and supervisors go have happy hour and go out to drinks with their staff. Know them. Know a little bit of what's going on with them. And have your ear to the ground because you want to know, first and foremost, who are they? What do they bring? What gifts do they bring?

Also, what else is going on in the organization? And I want to add to that by saying, and so I do this activity, and in a school setting, I do it first with all their licensed staff, so teachers, administrators, right? We do a score. We have a conversation. What did you learn about yourself as a leader, not, about these staff you're talking about?

Then we did it again with, for example, non licensed staff. So those who are working in the kitchen, custodial, bus drivers, paraprofessionals those. And I will tell you, I had them do the same activity. What did you notice? I noticed I don't know them quite as well as I know my English teachers and my math teachers, right?

iversity in the school staff [: 00:10:00

What gets measured gets done. So if we value relationships, we're going to start with the conversation. First of all, how well do you know your team, right? And so that's an activity that I've transferred from the teacher environment of knowing people to supervising staff. And I'll tell you I've actually talked about this in different settings outside of education, in leadership work.

And this applies to a lot of different places.

[: 00:10:37

So what I'm curious about is let's say you have a food service director and they have all of their things that they need to do. And probably a lot of it has to do with hiring and interviewing and maybe some of the HR related stuff. What were the things that you did that structure that you helped build that helped those leaders?

Bake that into their days Without turning their days into an 18 hour day, right?

[: 00:11:33

By knowing who your team members are, And [00:12:00] having an idea of where their interests are, it allows you to also tap into that. So when the pandemic hit, I'll give you an example. Remember at the very beginning where nobody could get masks, right? And everyone was sewing them. People were, learning how to sew and all these things, right?

So we actually put out a message. Hey, is there anybody who among us. Knows how to sew and would like to take a couple of days off their regular job and come help us get everybody masks Right and that was before you could go buy them everywhere, you know those kinds of things another example we have had if you've got someone especially who's been in a job for quite a while I always push our team to make sure we know Every one of our staff members, where do they want to be in five years when people realize I care about your career pathway?

I if you have something that you'd like to have on your resume that you don't currently have or you want a different experience I had a Administrator say, I'd really like to sit in on the negotiation process with the teacher union. I'm like, You're signed up. Great. Let's bring you in, right?

be in that room, but it's an [: 00:13:00

People are hopscotching around. The tenure in one place is not as long as it used to be. Even if they're staying in education, many times they're moving because of all kinds of different reasons. The offers keep, one upping each other. And so if people know that by my leadership here knows what I care about, what I want to learn more about, what I want to do more of, we can create space for that and we can blur the lines of roles and responsibilities.

And I don't mean in a sloppy way, but like in an organized way. Another example is, it. We had for a while, I had a finance director. We had an opening for a district finance director, and we went about seven months without somebody, which wasn't easy. And I was doing the job myself as well as running the organization.

schools, the beautiful thing [: 00:14:00

I had a couple of. long term experienced school principals who've been in their positions well over a decade, and they're brilliant, smart, and really good at this stuff. And I went to them and I said, how would you guys like to, if I pay you a stipend, and again, a finance director, and I would probably spend a couple hundred thousand dollars a year on, I paid them like, I don't know, maybe five thousand dollars each to spend four weeks in addition to their day job helping me build the staffing model and budget allocation.

And it was Super transparent because they're part of the people getting the resources, right? But it was formulaic, but they loved it. In fact and then I signed them up to get trained in the school finance organization in Minnesota, Masbo, and got them into some workshops and they were feeling like, this is amazing.

think I want to be a finance [: 00:15:00

[00:15:13] Dr. Jim: I like how you've you've embedded the career path in conversation across the organization as one of the ways that this relationship heavy approach helps build culture. But I want to dig in a little bit deeper on that. So from my perspective, this still seems a little ad hoc in terms of you're waiting for the right opportunity to have those conversations.

How have you built more structure into the career path and conversation in particular? So that's 1 question. And the 2nd part of it is. When you look at your level of the organization and you look at all of these conversations that are happening underneath you, what have you done to build a coherent talent map that shows you how the team can be leveraged across the organization cross function functionally?

[: 00:15:59

With folks. Anybody that I directly supervise, I have a template of some guiding pieces that will always be present in those meetings. And we develop those together, but then everyone in the organization ends up then also having a template of some structured items they need to talk about. Another example and I always say people quit, don't quit jobs, they quit bosses, we've all heard that before, right?

en and among folks Then they [: 00:17:00

And so one of the things I talk a lot about with our different leaders. And I'm going to say this again, because I think it happens a lot in education. People put professional development opportunities. In front of principals, right? School principals. But we have others, and to be a school principal, you have to go to school and get a degree in administration, and you get a lot of classes in that.

Lots of other areas, people like an HR director in Minnesota, there's not a license requirement, right? You have to have a background and whatever, but a lot of people come up through the organization. I've even done this work with police chiefs, right? You come up through the ranks, you maybe didn't get leadership training.

as well as figuring out who [: 00:18:00

So we work a lot on things like we've had absenteeism with students and quite frankly with employees as well I'm sure that's in a lot of industries right now But if I miss work and nobody even calls or texts, but if I have teammates who say hey, where are you? We missed you today. What's going on? You okay?

That is what really matters and so I feel like I want to get back to work because I have people who care about me and I care about them. And making sure that we're intentionally paying attention to I've even gone so far as to draw a sociogram on a whiteboard as an exercise with leaders. Okay. Now, these are the people that you're working with right now.

f my, Cabinet level leaders, [: 00:19:00

And they each oversee lots and lots of people, right? They, in turn, with each of their people that report to them, do the same process, right? Looking at what are the things that, how are people feeling connected, and how are people feeling organized in that way. Another, I'll give you another example, like our school bus drivers.

I've been on a mission, bus drivers, if you think about how isolated the job is, right? You're with kids all day, but you're not with other adults. And people need, and I think that work from home culture is feeding into this issue of social isolation, that we need to have social connections. And one thing we've worked on is every single school site, when the buses pull up, whoever their point person is, whether it's an assistant principal or somebody who's the coordinator of the buses.

Make sure we know every driver's name, greet them by name. Names matter. Not only do we do this at every site, know the names, and we actually ask each driver, How do you want to be referred to by the students? And then we make sure every student gets on that bus, addresses Mr. So and good morning.

y before and you noticed it, [: 00:20:00

By measuring it and structuring that, when I go visit schools and I pop in and out of, I've got about 20 sites, I go all the time. My staff knows. If I'm standing out at the buses, I'm not just saying to greet people. I'm watching to see that names are being used between drivers and students and staff.

I am looking at that culture. They know I have my clipboard and they know I'm going to conference with you about what I observed. What gets measured gets done. So if we value that, we have to actually. We call them walkthroughs, right? So roundings, however you want to think about it. You need to show this is what we're going to focus on right now.

And we're going to talk about this every time I come out to visit you.

[: 00:20:55

[00:21:10] Dr. Christine Tucci-Osorio: I use this analogy a lot. There's this old Indian proverb about the blind men and the elephant. If you've heard about it, like blind men are standing around an elephant and they all touch it and they have a different perspective on what that elephant, what an elephant looks like because they're blind and they can't see it.

The guy in the back says it feels like a snake. Someone else is no, an elephant is a wall. These different perspectives when you're overseeing A larger organization, you cannot possibly see everything yourself. But the way you get a better measure of how things are going is by getting lots and lots and lots and lots of perspectives.

And so this is where not only do we we don't just wander around and do these things. We actually keep notes on it and measure progress, right? The next meeting I have. So I have at the next leadership meeting. Okay, I went through all these sites. I did X number of visits. And here's what I observed.

e all compare notes. We also [: 00:22:00

Reviewing your quantitative data in an organization like a school's, right? It's attendance, it's suspension data, it's achievement data, graduation rates, all these things. It's also the qualitative data. And that's through surveying and focus groups and discussions. And we do those. Literally, even with kindergartners, high school students, to say, I'll say, you feel at school?

mpiling that qualitative and [: 00:23:00

And we do big data dives to look at these things about organizational culture, not just academic achievement. So how do you measure organizational culture? And we actually have the conversation every year. And I would say that I'm interested in what it's like to work with organizations, what it's like to work with leaders who then have them with each of their departments and teams.

How are we going to measure if this has been a really strong year for us, what will that look, sound like, and feel like right. An example of this also in particular, because, as in education, we're really trying in any industry. We're trying to work on recruiting and retaining diverse educators and anyone who's in our schools working with kids.

And what a lot of organizations will do exit interviews. right? Somebody's leaving, let's sit down and talk. We're really focusing on stay interviews. You're an African American woman who's been teaching third grade for the last 20 years. Why do you stay? What? What fills your bucket? Why are you still here and really taking time to go around and have those conversations?

everything, but by measuring [: 00:24:00

[00:24:04] Dr. Jim: So when you look at all of these different touches that you've put into place, you And we're looking at, what we open the show about building leadership capability, building leadership skill, and also using relationships as a culture driver, tie it all together when you, what have you seen in terms of the people underneath you being much more effective?

How have you seen this? Empower the people underneath you to be much more effective leaders

[: 00:24:33

All of a sudden, we pulled everyone together. And I will say that's a key element. And the other thing I'll tell you is that as we've [00:25:00] moved forward and making sure we see here and value everyone and what they want to learn and get better at. I have lost a number of staff. Particularly. I'm very proud of because they've been promoted out of this district to other organizations.

And I always say that's a badge of honor for us. And I'll tell you how it's paying off. We just had a principal opening because one of my principals got promoted and got a promotion in another district for a higher level leadership role. We didn't even have to consider. We had veteran newbies coming into the role.

We had veteran principals years under their belt coming to apply for us because they've heard that this is a place where we're going to value them and figure out what they need, help them define and develop their career pathways. And even those late career teachers, many of them, we need them post retirement to the extent that they're willing to come back and consult and mentor and all these things by helping people practice.

e bit outside of their role. [: 00:26:00

And some people need just that. Something different to do, some added things. What's paid off is we've been getting very highly qualified and experienced people coming over to our team. Because that word is getting out that this is a place that we're going to value you and care about your growth and development.

And what's happening is it's reducing turnover for us. Which is exactly what we want.

[: 00:26:31

What have you seen?

[: 00:26:49

But also I can learn from you because you've had different experiences that are different from mine and you come from some different other experiences. And those are things that dramatically shape the development of those underneath them. And yeah. I can't tell you how many times I hear people saying, this is a really great place to work.

It's such a supportive environment, especially when you think about racially isolated employees, right? So we know that for students, that's why a program like black men teach, we're very clear about, you don't just put one aspiring teacher into the program. You put a few together. So there's connectivity and a peer relationship because that matters so much more than just, right?

Good bosses, right? So helping people to feel connected and I think that part of it really makes a difference in people feeling excited about a new year. Hey, I've got this project who's interested, right? And then they it fills their bucket, gives them energy to keep going and try something different.

. And try new things and new [: 00:28:00

I would say that the biggest impact we're seeing is that The diversity of our staff is growing, the retention of our staff is improving, and the quality of leaders that are coming into this organization are stronger and more experienced. One of the things that I say, because I'm really passionate about public education as a whole, everyone who's been in this environment and done this work with us in recent years and has gone on to be perhaps a superintendent of their own, we've had a number of those come out of our organization, they're also doing that work.

way that we're growing folks [: 00:29:00

[00:29:01] Dr. Jim: Really interesting conversation so far and I think one of the things that i'm thinking about when you're describing this Is, yes, it's important to understand and know your team and know all sorts of different stuff about them.

When you're building that capacity, or when it comes down to actually being able to coach and develop those people, that's still a skill that needs to be learned. What were the things that you put into place to. Add that into the mix so that you're being highly effective in terms of the development strategy that you have.

[: 00:29:30

They're not coming to work on time or they're not managing a classroom very well or they're not prepared or there's different kinds of things. The more challenging ones are somebody who's just really negative, for example, in a team meeting or, affecting the culture. And so part of the other thing we have to focus on, and sometimes even [00:30:00] veteran leaders, are not super strong at this.

You have to practice that. And so I do, a lot of activities I've done, I've actually taken out of the teaching environment, right? There's a template, there's templates in all kinds of settings, and I encourage our staff, take what you would do with students, a lot of it applies to adults. In responsive classroom, or responsive design there is a template for something called a social conference, that you have with a student, right?

And, the template, the gist of it is, okay, I'm You know, you're having a hard time focusing during math time, you're not getting your work done, you're talking to your friends, or you're blurting out, or whatever. Whatever the issue is, right? I sit down with you and I say, Jim, I'm concerned, I'm seeing these things happening, what do you notice?

Are you seeing that too? And you say, That's not true, I don't do that. Oh, then we're not on the same page. Why don't we pause and let's pay attention for the next day or so and come back to this because I really want to problem solve with you how we might get to this point. So you do this with a student, right?

ive them some data back. And [: 00:31:00

What do you think is, why is that happening? And how might we improve that? What are some ways I can help you and you can help me? Because the impact of that is you're not learning and your neighbor isn't learning either. And then we come up with some strategies that'll work together. And then we make an agreement to try it.

Okay, let's check back in one week and see how our plan is working. And if it's not working, we can modify it. Or if it is working, we can keep moving forward. The same structure works with adults. You know what I mean? I noticed at, that I'm picking up a real negative communication style from you during staff meetings.

And I had a guest presenter, and I, are you noticing, are you feeling frustrated in staff meetings? I don't do that. I don't do anything like that. Oh, then let's pause and collect data. So the same structure you try with a student can work with an adult, right? Okay, did you notice that this happened and this happened?

Now they're paying attention to it and they're noticing it, right? So then you work on it together. What are some strategies that might work? What things can we agree to? It's so fascinating how many times we think, Oh everybody knows that teacher's difficult or doesn't manage their class well or whatever.

d my number one question is, [: 00:32:00

I always say don't mention this person by name. Don't talk about your employee to another. Leader of a different department. Don't do that, but talk about what you need to practice as a skill. I haven't, I need to talk about this. I need to run this through. How can we practice? A lot of times structuring those conversations can offer so much progress forward.

So often people, and many times I will add, especially if there's racial differences between a supervisor and this employee, You'll find bigger gaps in communication sometimes. So you really have to practice it and provide structures. And there's many structures that work for that type of thing.

led Talk Sense. And it gives [: 00:33:00

Or somebody tells, I say there's three ways we can handle that. One. I can go talk to that person. They're probably gonna get ticked off that I'm talking to them because I'm not gonna speak vaguely, about what's happening. I gotta give them examples. And they're gonna be upset that you did this without talking to them yourself.

Two, you can go talk to that person, and we can practice together how you might have that conversation. Or three, we can go together. But ways you structure things can help people get over that fear. We're inherently conflict avoidant. We want people to like us and you can do it in a caring way Hey, I noticed things aren't going very well.

are and compassion, but also [: 00:34:00

And that's the part about bringing relationships into feedback structures.

[: 00:34:10

And what you're doing in that relationship or in that conversation is making the person sitting across from you problem aware, at least going through the exercise to get them problem aware, because if you're actually going to present a problem or an issue, and they're not at a place where they even admit there's an issue going on, you're going to end up butting heads.

doing the same thing within [: 00:35:00

[00:35:06] Dr. Christine Tucci-Osorio: One thing I would say is really understanding and getting a good handle on what relationship rich organizations look like, sound like, and feel like. I think one of the things, and I talk about this with leaders too, you can't lead the work if you can't picture in your head what it should or could look like.

You have to have a vision. Even if it changes over time, you have to have something you're working toward. And sometimes the way you start that is in a roundtable. Let's all talk. How would we make sure this happens, right? And how do we, first of all, organize ourselves? There's lots of ways to look into organizational leadership, relationship rich cultures.

an idea in your head of what [: 00:36:00

And then find templates and structures that you can Operationalize, because just talking about it, lots of people throw out lingo, right? The, the phrases of the day, the research of the day, the leadership concepts that are out there, right? And yet don't have a structure to operationalize it.

And I often tell folks, it doesn't even have to be a structure I suggested. But find one, right? And find some structures that you can lean into, and I, like I said, a lot of mine have come out of things that teachers do with students, and they're teachers that do with college students or high school students or elementary students, but a lot of them can work with adults.

So find a structure that works, and work together with your team to develop what should it look like. When all this happens, Thank you. The other crises that erupt during a regular work week or what have you are handled so much more quickly because we know each other better. We have some really good practice communication styles.

solve a problem and handle a [: 00:37:00

[00:37:07] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Christine.

If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

[: 00:37:11

They can also go on our district website and find me that way. It's ISD622. org.

[: 00:37:17

You either have an issue with person that you report into, or you find yourself in an organization and there isn't much in terms of growth. And what's interesting in terms of your approach that you've operationalized within your district is that it tackles both of those issues. If you want people to feel like they belong in an organization, those employees need to feel like they have.

re and what they care about. [: 00:38:00

So the act of building really strong relationships within any organization. And having that embed as a culture building exercise allows you to solve both of those problems. It helps you build better connectivity between your leadership and employee tier, and it also should fuel the information that you need to develop to build your talent pipeline and your development pipeline.

So I appreciate you walking us through that because I think that's a really important. Two piece element of the story that we just told for those of you who've been listening to this conversation. We appreciate you hanging out. Make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so, make sure you join our community.

And then tune in next time, where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.