One of the most knowledgeable professionals in the area of career development, and Bestselling author Dr. Beverly Kaye sits down with Rob and discusses the keys to engaging and keeping good people believes caring about people. Spoiler Alert: one major way is noticing them!
Originally Published: March 6, 2023
Rob Jolles (00:00):
Engaging and keeping good people is a persistent issue, meaning that it’s not something that has a beginning, middle, and end to it. Let’s have ourselves a pocket-sized pep talk because amongst other things, today’s guest believes caring about people and noticing that that’s your real work,
Intro (00:20):
A pocket size pep talk, the podcast that can help energize your business and your life with a quick inspiring message. Now here’s your host, Rob Jolles.
Rob Jolles (00:34):
Today’s guest, Dr. Beverly Kay, is recognized internationally as one of the most knowledgeable and practical professionals in the area of career development, employee engagement and retention. Her Wall Street Journal bestseller, love ’em or Lose ’em, getting Good People To Stay is now in its sixth edition and her newest books Up is not the only way and Help Them Grow or Watch ’em Go continues to help many and an overwhelmed manager with ways to blend career conversations into their everyday routine. She’s received Lifetime Achievement Awards from A T D I M S, the Best Practice Institute, and well, the list is far more extensive. We just have to get to our podcast. Glad to have you with us and welcome to the show my friend, Bev.
Bev Kaye (01:23):
Thank you. I am glad to be here.
Rob Jolles (01:26):
Good. Well, I beat your alternate.
Bev Kaye (01:28):
Say that to all the boys by the way.
Rob Jolles (01:31):
I was thinking, I bet she said that before
Bev Kaye (01:33):
I said that to all the boys.
Rob Jolles (01:35):
Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here, so let’s dive in and with you. I want to start with love or lose them because six editions is an extraordinary accomplishment. And last time I looked, there were a lot of books out there, but what made this book click?
Bev Kaye (01:52):
I’ve often asked myself that and I think it’s because it’s, and it was meant to be a simple way for a crazed busy manager to flip to a page and say, I could do that. And that’s, I think my sign of giving a good talk. If the people in the audience say, that’s not so hard, I could do that. That’s what I want. It really is about simplicity and specific ideas. I think people say managers, you’ve got to have empathy. Will a typical busy tech manager empathy look, what do you mean? Yeah, we use words we think people know how to put into action and they don’t, so we have to give them the words to use.
Rob Jolles (02:54):
And you know, hit on something that’s really interesting because people don’t understand this about professional speakers and authors like Bevin and myself, is that when we haven’t given a presentation, we tend to go along and the more we give it and the better we write, we get it. The tough part is getting it into simple, easy to digest. And you’re right, the ultimate compliment. Compliment is when somebody comes up and says, I’ve always wanted to do that because that tells you, you’re making it look easy, but believe me, right, easy can be hard. That’s the challenging part, right?
Bev Kaye (03:28):
Right. That’s what we built. I founded my company on four words that start with a D, that I wanted all of the products to be deceptively simple meaning, well, that’s easy, but under it is all this research delightfully engaging. I love the smile factor. It’s got to be there in every article. And delightfully engaging, deliberately flexible. Nowadays, when you try to help a company, if you don’t hear this has to be only 30 minutes or only five minutes, shame on you. And then the last D is decidedly business centric. What is that business trying to do? But again, deceptively simple number one.
Rob Jolles (04:25):
Yeah, absolutely. That’s the key. And there’s certain things like when I work with a sales team, I’ll tell ’em, listen, you got to ask questions and listen. And they start yawning. Of course, I typically will take them beforehand of them selling things where nobody’s asking questions. Right? Right. But somebody brought me in a book one time from 1923, it was a sales book for one of the insurance companies. And on page one, ask questions and listen, these things are simple and yet some of the most basic pieces are what really? That’s where we fumble. That’s what we can’t get our hands on. And that’s that unconscious incompetency thing that we were talking about before we went on the air. Sometimes we forget. And
Bev Kaye (05:09):
That is, it’s good parenting advice. Ask questions and listen. Yeah, that all of this comes from stuff we know in our hearts. That’s why I love the book about the Knowing Doing Gap, because I remember giving my first speech, I love him, and a big shot stood up in front of his whole team and he said, everything Beverly’s going to tell you, you already know. And I’m off stage. I’m thinking I’m going to shoot myself right now. How can I speak whenever? And then he said, because your mother taught it to you when she said, go out and play nice in a sandbox. And that’s true. It’s like, you know this. Yeah. Are you doing it?
Rob Jolles (06:00):
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always kind of played with the phrase instinct versus logic. Because a lot of times what we’re doing is what you are teaching is, it’s not like it’s illogical that we’ve learned this, but our instinct is frequently off. It’s not logic, it’s the instinct that’s screwing us. For instance, no one argues with yes, the more someone else talks generally, the more they like us. I got to ask questions. Listen. Alright, that’s logical. Now is it instinctive? So right. Some of the things, and we’ll dig into that. Let me jump in with a question I was thinking about because when I came out of school, I was hunting for a company and I was motivated to work hard. So what I was looking for was, well, I want to be with a company that will reward that kind of effort that if I work hard, there’ll be a path for me. Can you talk a little bit about these companies with this internal mobility programs in their organizations? Just the value of that, because I still remember that was number one on my radar screen.
Bev Kaye (07:09):
number one when you said internal mobility, meaning I want to climb the ladder. Yeah,
Rob Jolles (07:16):
I want, well I want a ladder decline. A ladder decline. I want there to be opportunities. Not, you don’t have to just give ’em to me because I’m smiling, but what if I really love this company and want to stay with the company and see this company as my family? Is there a way for me to work, move mobily within the company?
Bev Kaye (07:35):
And what breaks my heart is in 1982, based on my doctoral research, I pre said, we want to write and publish it. And I wrote a book titled Up Is Not the Only Way, and I had failed my doctoral orals three times to get to the theory that up is not the only way. And for 40 years I’ve been singing it from mountaintops. And now finally, internal talent mobility is hot, hot, hot in every organization. And what that means is up vertical is only one of six different moves. And I think of those six, the one we forget the most is grow in pl grow right where you are, which relates back to the idea of opportunity. I think people are either opportunity minded, here’s how I can build that, or opportunity blinded, oh, woe is me, I’ll never get there. And all of that in your heart of hearts. But as a leader, you don’t stop and do or take an interest in or follow up on.
Rob Jolles (09:07):
Got got me thinking because I remember that and I’ve worked with management managers, have done some management training with Zenger Miller and a couple other companies. And one of my favorite pieces was sort of this battle between recognition and with managers frequently being concerned, thinking all they want is more money. All they want is more money. And I love the fact that I was working with managers equipped with, I’ll give you a 25 things you can do that have nothing to do with money, but people do want to be recognized. They do want to feel good about their space. And I just wish we could get the two sides together and realize sometimes the managers aren’t giving recognition properly. You know, did great Way to go. That’s not really recognition. Right? No wonder somebody’s asking from what you told me I did great. Right. Being more specific, et cetera. Right. But I
Bev Kaye (09:59):
Here’s what you did specifically. Yeah, exactly. And here’s what lit me up, and here’s what in love them. In one of the chapters, the book is written according to the alphabet, the Rs for recognition rewards. And it is saying that if you stop and notice, I noticed your eyes got brighter when you talked about X. Tell me more about what about X Got you. Excited. Yeah. That’s a manager who notices and it takes a nanosecond or three to notice. So I think that’s so important. And you know, used the word notice earlier and it jumped to my mind that I say that noticing is recognizing, here’s what I see, verbalize seeing, verbalizing, here’s what I just saw you do. And then if you can mobilizing, how about if I me moved you to that desk so you could do that piece? Whoa. I mean that’s what people are craving.
Rob Jolles (11:23):
And it’s not as if I’m going to come in tomorrow less inspired. No. Right. We got to remind the managers. Of course this is not the time to say and Bev, if only you could add this or do that. Right. Which is why, again, kind of the next piece of poison of why managers are scratching her head said, I’ve tried to give people recognition. It doesn’t work. There are no buts, there are no ifs, there’s no ants. But what I love that you just did was, but there’s a very fertile ground to see what else we can do and flush out. Because now I have an employee that’s beginning to trust me and wants to talk to me.
Bev Kaye (11:56):
Right. And sees that he noticed me. Yeah. He noticed that my heart went beep beep beep when I did that report. Yeah. I mean that’s the greatest gift we can give maybe. Yeah. I notice this about you. Yeah. Tell me more.
Rob Jolles (12:16):
Yeah. Love it. Okay. All right. Well we’re, we’re onto some employee growth now. So tell me some practical things that companies can do to support and inspire employee growth. We know one we bumped into just now, which is we might want to recognize them and look ’em in the eye while we’re doing it. Right. Some other thoughts.
Bev Kaye (12:36):
So I’ll give it to you in a way that helps your audience. Remember I’ve always talked about career leverage. The more leverage you have in your career, the more opportunities you’ll see. And if you are a manager sitting down with an employee and you have to talk about career and you think they’re going to want up and there’s no up, it’s all about career leverage. And for any manager out there nervous about having a career conversation just right l e V E r r on your thumb or on your disc, and remember it’s about lateral moves. What’s possible. It’s about enrichment. How do I grow you? Where you are, it is about vertical, but the upside and the downside of vertical, you’ve got to talk about, it’s about the first E is the second. E is exploratory. What might you try out? The first R is about realignment. What if you moved into a position that you hate? Can you tell me you hate it? You’re not doing well at it so I can move you somewhere else. Let’s realignment. And then relocation is if it’s not working, I know I can’t keep you forever, but boy oh boy, when you leave, I want you to have an invitation to come back again. I think the boomerang business is hot. Wow. So are you letting them go knowing the door is open?
Rob Jolles (14:23):
That’s interesting. I remember when, I only worked for a couple of companies that’s been working for me for over 30 years now. But I do remember when I was leaving Computer Sciences Corporation, I remember that, thank goodness I had a tech writer who was a friend. Cause I wasn’t really upset or anything. I had let a few people go, but I wrote a very long letter. Vertu is my manifesto. And I had a tech writer who said, here, let me take a at that and chopped it down to about three sentences. And that was my responsibility on the boomerang effect. Because when I handed them that note and there really were no hard feelings. I was just a young man trying to make a point. And that wasn’t the time to make my point. Certainly not the way that company and I did do business later on me as a consultant because I handled my exit properly.
(15:14)
Yeah. That means something. But again, instinct versus logic. My instinct was, oh, this is the time where I get things off my chest. Right. And that’s not logical, but it is instinctive. Right, right. When we’re young, all right, love that. We’re talking about bosses and some not so great bosses. And I, I’m curious, and maybe I you’ve think you’ve written that the number one reason why people will quit or leave is because of bad bosses. So if I’ve got that right, tell me some thoughts of what a bad boss can improve upon. And I think we got one unless you tell me no, which is let’s, let’s not just say, give recognition, let’s give them a repeatable, predictable process. That makes sense. So let’s pretend that we’ve got that one on the radar screen. Are there others?
Bev Kaye (16:07):
Oh my gosh, yes. So I told you that Love ’em is written according to the alphabet, A through Z. The J chapter stands for Jerk Are You One.
(16:22)
And when we came on the first publication 1999, and we said, the J is going to stand for jerk, the publisher said, no, why would you do that? Everything is positive. You can’t write about jerk. And we said, we have to because the data said we have to. And here’s how we learned about jerk. We took exit interviews and we followed the person to the new org. And we said, we have your exit interview in hand. What didn’t you write? What wasn’t on here? And to a person, they said in a variety of words, my boss was a jerk and I could not stand it anymore. And as good researchers, we said, well, can you tell us what you mean by jerk? And they gave us 55 jerkin characteristics.
Rob Jolles (17:23):
Is that a word? Did you just make that up? Gile? Yes,
Bev Kaye (17:26):
Jerkin. Jerkin. I made it up. Okay. And every single one of those words are what people said was the real reason they left. So when I do workshops and presentations, I’ll give the jerk checklist and I’ll say how big, I used to say, how big a jerk are you? Which five do you do now? Not right now. I say, have any of you to a room of managers had a jerk for a boss? And what did it do to you? What did it do to your creativity? What did it do to your productivity? And everybody’s hand goes up and when they start saying, here’s what it did to me is when they get, you’re right, I’m a jerk some of the time. And the managers that are willing will actually give the jerk checklist to their employees and say, I don’t want to be a jerk. You’re precious to me. Which of these things do I need to curve or stop? Now, wouldn’t that be a great exercise if everybody would do it?
Rob Jolles (18:48):
Yeah, sure would be. Xerox had a mechanism in place to try and spot the jerks by, and this is to me, late eighties, early nineties, before I had left to try and spot ’em. We would have an outside company come in and pull the employees, and if the numbers didn’t hit a certain range, the managers were given a certain period of time, they either correct it or they were moved on or out. Right, right. But I will tell you, it blew up in my face because we had, and I’m so lucky, I had worked for three great companies before my own, and I had a bunch of bosses and only had one jerk. But this guy was such a jerk that there were 24 people who was managing, and they were, most of the questions nobody gave him a mark on, which meant we were all outed. Right? Right. We needed to get together and go, listen, somebody’s got to take a bullet out of the chamber or we’re in trouble. And it really blew up on us because we had a jerk. When you go out for 24, there’s a reason for it. So now we have a jerk boss that was very hostile and it actually made me leave the company.
Bev Kaye (20:01):
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I say to HR leaders, do you coach or can your jerks or do you ignore their behavior because they’re bringing in great contracts, doing great work. And boy, I’ll tell you, everybody sits up and says, my gosh, you’re right. I didn’t coach him and I didn’t can him, he’s still here. She’s still here. So again, simple questions.
Rob Jolles (20:38):
Yeah, I’m so glad you’re in this space. I stole a line from Woody Allen. He had a joke one time where he said a horrible hurricane hit the New Jersey shoreline. The oh wiped out everything. The only thing left was the three steel milk bottles at the carnival that you’re supposed to knock. Go. That’s the only thing that survived a hurricane. These jerk bosses are like steel bottles sometimes.
Bev Kaye (21:03):
You’re right.
Rob Jolles (21:03):
The entire company can implode somehow that cubicle is still there. Because that’s part of the jerk mantra is they do know how to somehow manipulate and protect themselves. So it, it’s really meaningful to hear you talking about that because that’s the only reason why I left. I was thinking those steel bottles are never going to go down. Right. And it’s time for me to go, it’s bringing this home with me and I’m a pretty happy guy and I’m happy since, but I look back and went, that’s what it was. An individual. It wasn’t the company. Right,
Bev Kaye (21:35):
Right. Usually. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Rob Jolles (21:39):
So let’s talk about hiring for a moment because we all want to hire the right person and higher intelligently. I’m assuming that this is going to have a lot to do with engagement and retention. Am I right?
Bev Kaye (21:53):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, the H in the alphabet is higher. So we aren’t specialists in what’s now called talent acquisition, but it it’s like fit, is it? And when you hire, are you hiring for fit? Do you even know what fit is in your group and in your organization? And when you hire re-recruit your new hire, we got somebody in the positions filled, done onto other business. Do you say, Hey, how’s it going? Do you ask the question, what are you getting here that you didn’t want? Or what are you not getting that you wanted? What did the recruiter tell you That And that my friend is the biggest reason people leave. They say the picture the recruiter painted. Wow, it wasn’t real. And so it’s not up to the recruiter to find that person that came in. It’s up to the manager to say, is this what you thought it would be? Yeah. See, all those are simple questions,
Rob Jolles (23:23):
Right?
Bev Kaye (23:24):
And if we sit and wait and milk the answer a little bit, it, it’s where my whole idea of stay interviews came because from all the people we followed into that next company, we learned that no one asks them what would make them leave right before they left. And no one now says, what can I do to have you stay?
Rob Jolles (23:57):
Right? Or even before it even gets there, what can I do to make this even more rewarding for you while you’re here?
Bev Kaye (24:08):
It’s a great
Rob Jolles (24:09):
Question.
Bev Kaye (24:10):
And ask, it takes a minute to ask or half a minute. Half. And if they’ll think about it, if they can’t answer, they’ll go home. They’ll sleep on it
Rob Jolles (24:22):
And
Bev Kaye (24:22):
They’ll come back and say, that was a great question. Here’s my answer.
Rob Jolles (24:27):
And for people who are listening, I can give you a great place to tuck that in case you wonder, where do we insert that little diddy? Right at the end of your recognition. That’s where you can insert that little piece. That’s right. Because you’ve got somebody who’s now feeling very good about themselves. I’m very trusting. And remember, we’re not finishing it with now if you got only, we’re finishing with what else? What could I do to make this more rewarding? So we now have process behavior we can tack in so we can make that repeatable and predictable. Not wait till we’re in good mood or we think about it. Do it every time you give recognition. Maybe that’ll help anyway. All right. Listen, you have owned this space for a while now. Long, you got a long career in mobility, retention, engagement in leaders. As an engagement leader, what’s next? What’s next on the horizon for you?
Bev Kaye (25:22):
The latest thing I’ve been looking at are the gigantic amount of layoffs and layoff, layoff, layoff, layoff. And it made me go back in my files to the last time we had big layoffs, LA late nineties or whatever. And at that time, I just pulled it out. I talked about we’re not attending to those who are still there, looking at the people who are leaving and what more can we do, et cetera. The fact that there are big layoffs in your company means the people left are looking around. Do you know who they are? Do you know where they’re looking? Have you sent them a message that you want them to stay? So it is, I’m talking about the kept on workforce who stays after groups leave and it, it’s all the retention stuff again, but with a new maybe holder for all of it. So I’m looking at that and I’m looking at how to get my work out in Edible Bites. I miss when I used to do three day workshops and then two day workshops. So then one day workshop and then no day workshops, and how do I get with the sound bite generation?
Rob Jolles (27:11):
I might be a TikTok for you, although I will tell you, and we were talking about this, I’ve noticed that that workshops says the pandemic is easy, a bit are coming back, but of course they’re not as long you, I’m smiling because I’ll bet people went three day workshops. Folks, Xerox used to have a pretty good reputation in training. Our workshops were two weeks long, and that then you went out in the field and studied your product because I don’t need to be hanging around while you’re learning about a copier and a printer. And then we’ll come back for two more weeks. It was four weeks, six students, one instructor. That’s great. Then we went to a week, then we went to three days, two days. But I’ll tell you, one of the things this pandemic has taught us, I think, Bev, that we could just sort of talk about training for 60 seconds. I’m noticing more and more companies, and they’re the ones teaching me they want that workshop. And yes, they want it trim down, but they may say, I’ll tell you what, I want a one day workshop from you, and then I want 25 1 hour sessions once a week. And I equate it to, so you come here live and plant the garden, and then I want to see you weekly or biweekly to help us grow the garden. That’s
Bev Kaye (28:22):
Exactly what I’ve been doing lately.
Rob Jolles (28:25):
And when we do that, we’re doing our job because believe me, Bev and I are obsessed and focused. Maybe not when we started, but if you’re in the business a while, we get our report card not from an amazing delivery in a sense. And I don’t mean this arrogantly. That’s not that hard for us. We get it when you implement what we teach you, and when we come back and you’ve done it and you’re seeing results, that’s when we get excited. That’s when we want to write another book. That’s when we want to go. And so I like this little dance that’s going on between live and virtual, and I was never big on a YouTube. I don’t want to meet you and get your mindshare virtually, but I’ll plant it and then grow it virtually.
Bev Kaye (29:06):
Right. And I’ll send reminders. I’ll nudge you on what I just taught you, and that’s working. Yeah. So
Rob Jolles (29:19):
Excellent. One last thing. In sales, we use the term whiff them. Have you ever heard that before? Whiff them? Yep. Yeah. She’s nodding what’s in it from me, right? Right. So when we’re listening and you’re listening to Pep Talk, and oh, by the way, where do we get those books? Viewers, they’re on Amazon, right? Yeah. They’re online. Yeah. You got yourself an author’s page, right? Good. So everybody, you know where to get it, but you’re not just going to get these books. You’re going to read these books and then you’re going to write a review on these books. Then we now return to Rob’s question. We have whiff thems, and when I say a whiff them, if you’re listening and you want to know what’s in it for you to act on some of the things that BE’S talking about, and to grab one of those books and to really sit down and you can listen to or communicate, it’s going to be simple and bite size. The W is it costs a lot of money to have to keep hiring people. So would you like to trim that budget a little bit on it? Let’s get it. Let’s do it right the first time. And then understand that everybody has a limp. Everybody has an issue here or there. When we know how to manage it and coach it and motivate, inspire, and work through it and create trust, we can save that individual and we can save dollars from you going through that hiring.
Bev Kaye (30:41):
Right? Sorry. And every manager knows that in their heart of hearts.
Rob Jolles (30:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bev Kaye (30:47):
And yet in the rush to get the work done. Yeah, you lose it,
Rob Jolles (30:54):
Right? Instinct versus logic, right? Sure is logical, but is it instinctive? Right? I’d fight so much harder to hold that employee than go through the search and the training, and it’s a lot going on there. And that costs money. Okay. One last question for you mentors. I’m curious, what mentors have helped you find your way and find this space?
Bev Kaye (31:22):
There’s also a chapter M chapter is for mentor, where I define it in the Love them book. But people who have been mentors to me have seen me in a light that I never saw myself and said something to me that stuck. And sometimes it slips off. I was telling someone the other day who was saying, God, you’ve done so much in the field. And I say to myself, please God, help me become the person my dog thinks I am.
Rob Jolles (32:06):
Love that phrase. Yeah.
Bev Kaye (32:08):
Cause you never feel what your contribution really is. It’s always, for me at least, it’s do more, do more, do more. They’re doing more. He’s doing more. And it’s stopping for a moment and taking in. Good on you did a good job. I don’t do it enough.
Rob Jolles (32:35):
And yet we coach others to do it. Well, I’ll do it for you. Getting to know you has been very special to me, and although Bev and I sort of saw each other a few times, we really connected over the summer, late summer, and I respect the work you do. I think your books are tremendous. I think you really get it, which is, I wish more authors would understand that the hard part is getting it simple. The hard part is getting it so people can hold onto it and understand it. Because I said, what we want is we want you to be delighted, but we want you to actually do it. Do follow it, learn it, apply it. And that takes a very unusual talent and skill. You have a tremendous amount of content and information out there, extremely well respected in your field. I respect you a great deal, and that’s, I’ll stop, don’t worry, but you need to hear that. And how do people get a hold of you, my friend?
Bev Kaye (33:42):
I’ve got a website. I shrunk my company, so I’m little now and able to move easily. So it’s bev k.com.
Rob Jolles (33:55):
There you go. And can they reach out to you on LinkedIn as well? Take a minute. They came to you.
Bev Kaye (34:01):
They can reach out to me on LinkedIn, visit my website, email me bev@bev k.com.
Rob Jolles (34:08):
Yeah. And don’t forget to go to Amazon and grab one of those books that she has. Well, as I said, this was long overdue. I am thrilled that we finally sat down and did this, and I’m grateful you were able to spend some time with me today. Thank you, Bev.
Bev Kaye (34:27):
Thank you.
Rob Jolles (34:28):
Okay, well, we’ll do it again as well as we can next time. Everyone. Until then, stay safe.
Outro (34:40):
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, outcasts, wherever you get your podcast. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.