Human Resources

167: Heather Younger: I think I found exactly this place

Intro:  Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because I get to talk about one of my passions which is one of hers and that’s the employee engagement aspects of serving customers. Heather Younger was born in Columbus, Ohio but was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. She’s an only child from an interracial and interfaith family. Heather’s mother is white and Jewish and her father is black and a non-practicing Christian. Her parents divorced when she was 20, growing Up in this type of family was challenging to say the least. Heather often felt like an outsider like she didn’t have a voice like the black sheep who was not important. She was excluded from family gatherings because of what she looked like. Her presence was a constant reminder of her parents’ marriage that type of struggle at such an early age created resiliency inside of Heather, a key leadership skill.

Heather’s career progression is anything but linear or even expected. Heather attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for political science and then went on to attend law school. While her family wanted her to be a lawyer, Heather practiced for just two short years she left the practice of law to work for Mary Kay Cosmetics where she would learn much of what would become her leadership style today. Following her time with Mary Kay Heather worked alongside her husband in their mortgage company leading sales training and account management. After almost five years of working with her spouse, Heather decided to move on to a position with healthcare staffing company leading an account management team and large strategic accounts. With the upcoming birth of Heather’s third child she decided to transition to her own coaching practice and spend more time with her kids.

Heather is the best-selling author of “The 7 Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty” and the founder and CEO of Customer Fanatics. Her organization’s mission is to inspire and train leaders to put their employees first. Heather fulfills her organization’s mission through her inspiring keynote speeches, leadership development training, coaching and facilitation, employee focused moderation and consulting with organizations all over the world on strategies to improve employee engagement. Heather currently lives in Colorado with her husband Luis and four kids Gabriella, Sebastian, Dominic and Matteo. They enjoy long walks together, cuddling on the sofa to watch a good movie and focusing on their faith. Heather Younger, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Heather Younger:    Yes, I am.

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given our Legion a little bit about you but can you share with us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Heather Younger:    My current passion is really helping leaders understand the power they possess to really change the lives of their employees in a positive way, improving the experience and ultimately engaging them and keeping them longer. 

Jim Rembach:   Now you and I had the opportunity to talk before our interview and both of us have a strong focus and background on customer experience and we talked about how that whole employee engagement component, I even mentioned for myself it says when I knew of my employees were engaged and focused the customer was just kind of taken care of was just kind of quid pro quo scenario it was just done, so when you start talking about the work that you do now and what clients are interested in do they see different outcomes? Or what do they actually have as goals for their outcomes by doing the work on the employee loyalty and engagement side?

Heather Younger:    I think ultimately all the companies obviously want to impress the customer and grow the customer base and maintain the customers and grow revenue in the end the end goal is that if we’re successful business we take care of the employees, our hope, our goal is that will impact the customer in the end and then drive revenue.

Jim Rembach:   So when you start looking at the lens that they’re looking through and what they’re seeing on down the road and when they come to you and they’re talking to you and they’re asking about how you can help them what typically did the discussion entail?

Heather Younger:    Well it’s interesting, I have really focused my efforts on the engagement and the engagement metrics. For example if they’re doing—a couple clients I’m working with they’re doing best places to work and so they have a survey and there are findings verbatim and qualitative/quantitative type of look and I’m able to help them dive into that. And then from there we usually move into employees focus groups where I’m able to facilitate those and we do those ongoing and we dive into what the big themes are from the surveys as the focus groups employees are empowered to do more. In the end through the empowerment that happens to getting the voice of their—do the survey but also to the focus groups and continually communicating back to those groups what it is the organization is doing and committing to do to change in the areas that they’re requesting to be changed, that’s what moves the needle for the employees. Again if we go to those employees and then we ask them to do something that may be unique or different or make them go outside their zone they’re going to be more willing to do that because they have been heard they have been empowered and then we have responded. We notice in the customer experience I had the same thing on the employee experience life.

Jim Rembach:   That’s interesting. As you were talking I started thinking about a lot of the conversations that I have about change. There’s a lot of different methodologies associated with change, we talked about inside-out, top-down, outside in all of these things, but what people have come to find is that you kind of need both. And so when you start talking about some of the things associated with employee engagement and activities that typically rotate around those a lot of times it’s like, what is the company doing for me? And the reality is that it’s the employee themselves that oftentimes has to go through a change in transformation process and  really understand what the expectation is and know what’s the purpose and so they have to take ownership for their own engagement. When you start talking about the work that you’re doing with organizations, how much of it focuses in on that agent change process?

Heather Younger:    The majority of the work I do is with leaders and what I’ve found through the different surveys, focus groups over the years is that in many cases it starts with leaders and by the way I agree I believe this is the same for customer experience. If we point to happiness, I’m not happy to see kind of thing, happiness to see you with the customer experience side and the employee experience side it usually it’s because if they’re not happy it’s a failure on the part of some decision that was made by leaders. 

What I mean by that is, for example, let’s say it’s a software company and there was some big changes made to the software tool and let’s say that was the VP of product and let’s say they never got feedback from customers related to how they want that product and look. Maybe they even never got feedback from employees who actually speak with the customers every day and so they made a change without asking. What I mean by that is I look at—almost like the root cause for me and I wouldn’t say a hundred percent of time but about 90 percent time is going to be the leaders. The decisions they make or fail to make the way they communicate or fail to communicate the actions they take or they fail to take those are the things that can end up driving a lot of the things that happen on both the internal and external side.

Jim Rembach:       That’s interesting. For me as you’re talking about that I started thinking about I’m certified in emotional intelligence I’m like, Okay, they need to improve their emotional intelligence skills how they’re actually affecting and impacting others by what they do or don’t do in their behavior and all the things that are interpreted as either trust builders or eroders. 

Heather Younger:    Absolutely, that’s exactly right. You encapsulated it perfectly. It is an emotional intelligence play here. We’re not talking about people who are really effective and amazing on the spreadsheets we are talking about what it is you’re doing with people. One of the things I say, we stayed on the customer side or on the employee side is exactly the same. Ninety percent of employee experience is about emotions and leaders have the power to control which emotions they unleash from within their people they make the choice really. You are right though, Jim, I have to say that there are those employees who will always be victims and no matter what it is that emotionally intelligent leader or one who’s looking grown in that area can do there’ll be those who’s just never good enough, and I’m not talking about those employees. I think that those are really a minority in all of it and overarching people come to a place because they want to do good work. They want to be a part of something bigger and they want to feel cared for, listen to and respected. And so this is what my work is about.

Jim Rembach:   That’s a good point. If you’re talking about a couple of those employees through the course of my years of managing others I could probably name them.

Heather Younger:    Exactly, but that’s because they’re few, it’s not like you have a hundred of these. It’s like five or six that I really didn’t get it no matter what I could have done for them they just really didn’t get it but again, overarchingly that’s not the case. 

Jim Rembach:   That is true. For me it was one of the situation that I needed to do a better job of identifying those people within the screening process and not ever letting them in the door.

Heather Younger:    We all can use help in that. None of us are perfect even with our higher emotional intelligence. I always tell people my IQ is about average my EQ is above average but I still have room to grow, I need better. 

Jim Rembach:   I still remember there’s one time arose going through the interview process with this one person and we started talking about a conflict that she had had at work with another co-worker I could tell that she was holding back on some certain pieces of information so I essentially tried to circle around the wagon to get her to tell me what was the ultimate outcome and she got frustrated because I kept asking questions around that issue. And she finally said, well you know what, I just invited her to go outside and I was like, Okay, I think there was a telltale sign of whether or not you’re going to have the next interview. 

Heather Younger:    Yeah, exactly. Who-ahh-ahh 

Jim Rembach:   And if you have some—sometimes where you’re surprised. I remember this one guy who was just blazingly beautiful through the entire process of going through the interviews. We had multiple rounds and I’ll be darned if like within three months of hiring him we had to call security to keep him out of the building and away from us, you just never know. 

Heather Younger:    Oh! Wow. Again the emotion intelligence is key but you’re right there are blind spots that all of us have.

Jim Rembach:   Without a doubt. 

Heather Younger:    They push a certain button for us.

Jim Rembach:   Within the book, The 7 Intuitive Laws of Employee Engagement, you actually have named these laws. I think we should just take a quick run through them and then go back as I have a couple of questions if that’s okay. Do you want to go ahead and tell us what those seven laws are?

Heather Younger:    Yes. They are:  Give them great support of managers, Recognize your employees often, Give them a voice and do something about it, Grow and promote their talents, Foster deep connections with them and in them, Make teamwork the focus,  

Pay them equitably.

Jim Rembach:   Okay, as I went through this list, for me part of this is probably my bias in what I’m bringing to the table, I’m certified as an even better place to work expert as an employee retention specialist certified in emotional intelligence, for me I look at this list and I’m like, well of course these are all just so much common sense things. Why do you chuckle? Why do you chuckle Heather?

Heather Younger:    That would be why the book is called, The 7 Intuitive Laws. It didn’t say there it was the 7 rocket science laws. You’re absolutely, they are very intuitive. This is not new it’s just that in common practice we find a lot of gaps. 

Jim Rembach:   And I think that’s the key. For me, when I did go back I’m like, Okay, Jim, remove yourself from it it’s not about you. And I was like, Okay, but these are like mindful things and that we can just get so caught up in what we have to do in our tests and our responsibilities and meetings and just go on and on and that including work, we forget these things.

Heather Younger:    And that’s exactly what it was. I always tell people it was kind of my attempt to whisper in the ear of leaders kind of remind them these are the things you need to do and most of the things don’t cost a dime. I can tell you right now that the people that I have managed, I’m not saying I’m perfect so let me just be real clear about that, I have some stories when I was not a perfect leader. But I would say 85% of the time I was pretty darn good and the ones that reported to me when I left the thing that they said about me had nothing to do with money it was the fact that I took the time to listen to them. I truly cared and I showed it even when I had to call him on the car. And these kind of things people like—they’ll write to me and say, you were just the best manager ever I just love this and that, it’s like thank you it didn’t cost a thing. And this is what I try to get in their minds it’s very intuitive this is basic guys but let’s do it let’s be consistent.

Jim Rembach:   I would dare to say based off what you said and I was just reflecting upon my own experience is that, if we have done a good job of keeping these items in the front of my mind and I executed on them that fifteen percent of the time where I wasn’t so good at it I kind of have given some grace.

Heather Younger:    Yes. And the other thing is I apologize. The times when I wasn’t great I went back and said, I was kind of a jerk or you know what I did this particular thing and I apologize. I think by doing that I was transparent I showed them a piece of my humanity they just grew to respect me more. And that’s exactly how I would feel with leaders that I worked with or for, right? The ones that I would say I had a great deal of respect for and there weren’t many, it’s because—and I say that not really on a joking way, there were two that I can think about in all my years of having someone manage me. 

In both situations they really seemed to be interested in what it is we were talking about no matter what it was. Even if they had to say it well and make me go down a different path or made me course-correct they did it in a way that still made me feel like they cared about me and it wasn’t about them looking good or that I was making them look bad so I better do this right the next time it was not about that even if it wasn’t, I didn’t feel that way.  So they made me feel heard. They made me feel cared for and they made me feel important by their actions and their words, those are the ones I remember.

Jim Rembach:   That’s a good point. You said two keywords there, that’s actions and words, I can probably name two people right now within my circle of people that I know who are having frustration just in that issue. There’s someone who that they report to that they say those things but then the action is not congruent with that message so there’s an integrity component. So therefore the whole trust just isn’t there and therefore the whole loyalty thing is lost.

Heather Younger:    Absolutely. Absolutely, you’re speaking my language. I’m feeling it here so I definitely agree. Trust is the foundation but you don’t just get trust when you walk in the door I mean some will do you get distrust and walk in the door, usually i’s earned. Usually you’re doing things that people see, I remember working with a person he was not—he didn’t report to me I didn’t report to him, we had to work together a lot this is on the external customer side. It took two and a half years for me to gain trust with him I went on my way, it’s kind of my emo I go on my way to gain trust I want to prove that I’m worthy and so with this guy it took a while, Towards the end I remember him I’m finally getting to the point where he saw that when I would advocate for those customers or for anything to happen even internally with employees, that I was doing all of it so that he could be his best he could look good it wasn’t about me it was always about like let’s meet the customers’ needs let me make sure that your team is really shining in all of this and I think he just didn’t believe it. I think he didn’t believe it for the first couple of years he thought it was really me trying to get over on him or something. So it was interesting in the end, I think in the end there was trust that spill because of all the efforts put in there. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s an interesting point that you bring up because I do think that when you start talking about the whole 85% time of getting it right and 15% of a failure that we find a lot of the middle ground people get it half right or people only get it right 15% of the time. That’s kind of like the majority of the population to get a little bit more enlightened and to have the humility and the authenticity and to be able to be one that actually creates and develops trust versus erodes it and tries to be that—and can be that person that can help to separate the difference between the company responsibilities and the employees responsibilities and where they are in that. And then in regards they’d say, hey, I don’t have control of this however this is what we still need to do that’s a lot of things to ask people to do from a leadership perspective in order to earn that trust and get to that point of loyalty. Therefore when they’re dealing with a lot of people in the environment now, in the workplace now, a lot of them just haven’t had exposure to that so it’s a little bit harder to get over the hump. What we’re talking about, hopefully everybody can kind of feel this is it’s just loaded with a lot of emotion and passion. One of the things that we use on the show to help drive that are quotes, is there a quote or two that you can share that helped you? 

Heather Younger:    Well I think the quote that drives me and kind of defines everything I do is the one I mentioned earlier which is, Ninety percent of employee experience is driven by emotions. Leaders get to choose which emotions they unleash from within their people, that’s it. So pretty much everything because when I frame out everything else I do when I’m talking to the employees and I feel their emotions, when I hear all their things and their focus groups when I do their interviews, I hear them I feel that because like you most emotional intelligent leader I can sense that. And then I’m able to take that and also convey those emotions to the people. So that quote is a North Star for me and I try to make the folks that I speak to or work with make that their North Star too. That means they’re constantly considering what their actions do to the people around them. 

Jim Rembach:   We’ve talked and looking at your bio and your background and talking about finding that passion and really honing in on that, there’s a lot of humps that we have to get over in order to be able to find that that point by which we know of the star or the point that we’re following is actually our true North, maybe you’re going in a particular direction we’re not quite sure where it’s going. Is there a where you have gotten over the hump that you can share?

Heather Younger:    I went to work for a company that was going through a big merger and I knew that there could potentially be a layoff in the in the future but I took the risk because in this particular case I was going to be able to oversee the whole client-facing team so that it wouldn’t just be one portion of it was the entire client-facing team. I wanted to be able to have a more consistent and aligned delivery of experience for customers so that’s why I took that role. It was great but probably about a year into that merger things started to not go well and the culture really took a dive. What it was is really about a lack of trust amongst people inside of the main Denver office, but there were other offices around the country in the world, and it was just a lot of mistrust, like what’s going on? Who says that there are going to be layoffs and it was just all of these questions inside of everyone’s mind. And so the trust was a problem. What happened is no one was really paying attention to the people through all of it. And I went to the head of HR and I guess I really think we need to do something here. It may seemed weird to most that I was leading customer experience and going to HR asking about employee engagement and the things that were happening in a culture. But it made sense because over that time there and really my previous job that was always the one who really would go out of the way to recognize team members, co-workers, colleagues, executive team members, I would just be constantly being met that force. 

And so when I went to her and I said, we really need to do something about the culture the engagement. And she said, you know what? You are right. I think you should lead that, she told me. I went, what? I’m leading customer experience I’m not an HR. I was kind of talking to you. So, she just said, I think you should do that. And I did. I took it upon myself to create an employee engagement committee there. We start to work together and we are getting the company over a hump even that office was coming over a hump we we’re building some connections between people who would not nearly talk and we were doing all kinds of fun activities and things that would bring people together but what happened is there was a layoff and they laid off probably in total to over 200 people, and I was one of them and it was a problem when I saw the CEO and the head of sales go, there was a layoff and in that do that layoff though again there was that aha there was an epiphany that—you know, I’m having g so much fun in this process and even though I’m being laid off I think I found exactly this place after all these times I’m kind of squiggling and wiggling around a career knowing I needed to be the voice of the customer I see exactly what needed to happen. And it was like, Okay, I need to be focusing on—at that point it was the customer and the employee and of course I got to the point over time that I decided to really focus on my efforts internally so that I could really direct myself towards the leaders of the organization. So yeah, that was epiphany, that’s where I realized this is it, this is where I actually—my entire working career. I’ve been an employee advocate recognizing employees whether they’re on my team all over the place just sending notes to leaders about how great they were in their leadership things like that or it’s like, this is not my role this is who I am and do this crazy time of layoff, I found my home.

Jim Rembach:   I have to ask you and I hope you’re open tactic pondering or replying to this because I actually grew up where I was with white minority and so for me when I started thinking about my ability to connect with people of different race, different creed, different ability or disability it seems to be different because I had that background and experience. You’re talking about your family upbringing and all of that, do you think that you have actually found some of the connections with the work that you’re doing now that you were unable to get when you were younger?

Heather Younger:    It’s interesting that that’s a great way to think about it and to bring it full circle for me. I do think that the work I do is directly related to my upbringing in my life so the whole interracial, interfaith, being an outcast not having a voice not feeling important, all of those things absolutely drove me to exactly where I’m at today which is trying to help those who are voiceless who don’t feel important feel that way through my work with leaders. Because if I can help to increase their awareness and improve their emotional intelligence then they will then hopefully give it back right to their employees and those people will feel, not like I felt when I was a child, but better. So that part goes as a direct connect. It’s an interesting connection you make and I love that you’re saying, I’m kind of being filled up now in ways that I wasn’t filled up before. That’s so true, Jim, I really never hundred percent made that connection for myself. I think that’s a good connection to make and the work that I do feels so good and I think there’s a level of empowerment that I just didn’t have as a child. And now I feel so empowered and I feel like I’m always helping others become empowered employees, are empowered because they can use their voice and leaders are empowered because they know they have the power to change all of this. It’s really kind of cool to be kind of this backwards position now. I would say yes. 

Jim Rembach:   Listening to your story and getting to learn more about you, I’m like, Okay, we have so much more we’re brother and sister from another mother. It’s like, wow! Because I feel like I’m finding my place more so than I ever have before and being able to get some power and control and centering as well true pointing that I just couldn’t get as a child. When you start thinking about where your course is going, there’s a lot of things going on pretty large family, got a husband who got his own business that still going on, you’re trying to grow your practice in writing a book, but if you’re to say you had one goal of all of that, what would it be?

Heather Younger:    One goal of all of that—so you’re not even talking about business goal?

Jim Rembach:   No. 

Heather Younger:    Hmm-hmm. I would have to say take better care of me. As you can imagine and just what you just said building a business having four kids, being an only child so I’m not really quite used to dealing with the multiples we have in our home I tend to pull, pour myself out to every single person around me it was really not one person who reaches out to me that I don’t somehow respond to it could be a total stranger it doesn’t really matter I kind of fill it as my mission but in the end—I sometimes get left for I’m empty. So, I have to say that that’s a big goal is personally to be better at filling myself up in many different ways. 

Jim Rembach:   Definitely and we hope that you continue to do your work and that you find yourself more filled up so that you can continue doing that work. And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now, before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Jim Rembach:   Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Heather, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Heather Younger, are you ready to hoedown? 

Heather Younger:    Yes. I’m ready to hoedown.

Jim Rembach:   Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Heather Younger:    Doing too many things at one time. 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Heather Younger:    Don’t worry about what others are doing, lead yourself first.

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Heather Younger:    I have insane drive and a desire to get better every day.

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Heather Younger:    I care.

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our Legion and it could be from any genre, and of course we’re going to put a link to, The 7 Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty, on your show notes page as well. 

Heather Younger:    Who moved my cheese?

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to www.fastleader.net/heatheryounger. Okay, Heather, this is my last hump day hoedown question, Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you. But you can’t take everything back you only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Heather Younger:    I want to own my past and do a better job of harnessing my voice for the benefit of others and not be afraid to do what I think I want to do because I’m afraid to fail. My life is kind of been and there filled with opportunities where I could have gone one direction or another and maybe I’d be better off. Because I was pondering it too much or fear of thinking it through too much I didn’t go down that road and I think it may have slowed down my progress.

Jim Rembach:   Heather, it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

Heather Younger:    Connecting with me probably best is via email heather@customerfanatix.com I always tell people that. Also I’m on LinkedIn and so going there connecting following me I’m pretty darn active so if you’d like what you heard today I would definitely do it that way.

Jim Rembach:   Heather Younger, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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