Quirky HR
Quirky HR
Ep 70 | The HR Challenges of Maintaining Mission Focus When Leadership Fails To Lead: Sonya Shelton
From navigating through the world of journalism, advertising, and marketing to gracing the sphere of leadership consulting, our guest Sonya Shelton has experienced an astonishing career trajectory. Today, she's not just a renowned executive leadership consultant but also a best-selling author, helping organizations align their business strategy with their culture. This enlightening conversation takes you on her journey, highlighting the profound challenges she faced while maintaining company culture during an upheaval period at the Walt Disney Company.
Sonya's powerful insights into the symbiotic relationship between organizational culture and business strategy are a revelation. She recalls her time at Disney, explaining how she fostered a microculture and the tactics she employed to safeguard it amidst chaos different leadership styles can create. Sony provides tips on how to stay mission focused when leadership isn't and the importance of purpose.
To connect with Sonya,
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You're an Executive But Are You a Leader? https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Executive-But-Leader-Communicating-ebook/dp/B007FPHK7Y
Executive Leadership Counseling : https://executiveleader.com/sonya-shelton/
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Dana Dowdell - Boss Consulting - @bossconsultinghr - @hrfanatic
This episode is brought to you by the Essential Skills for Supervisors training offered by Boss Consulting HR. If you're a new supervisor or a green supervisor, or you just feel like you need to refine your skills, it's a great training for you. It's offered online and we cover all of the basics of onboarding, performance management, having difficult conversations, interviewing, compliance everything that you need to know to be a better manager. So if you're interested in checking out the training, we have one coming up soon and if you head on over to bossconsultinghrcom forward slash training, you can sign up for our next session. Welcome back to Quirky HR. I am joined by Sonya Shelton. She is the founder of executive leadership consulting, which she founded in 2007. So lots of coaching and leadership experience that we're going to dive into, and she's also a bestselling author. She wrote you are an executive, but are you a leader? Sonya, welcome to Quirky HR.
Sonya Shelton:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation today.
Dana Dowdell:I am as well. So you have been doing executive leadership coaching since 2007. So you are just a couple of years away from 20 years, which is amazing. Tell us how you landed in this area of leadership, human resources, talent management.
Sonya Shelton:Yes, absolutely. So my career was kind of meandering. It might look a little eclectic if you looked at my resume. I actually started my career in journalism and went from there to advertising and marketing and then ended up in employee communications, which I kind of saw as a little bit of journalism, a little bit of advertising and marketing, but with HR in there as well. Right, like the employee experience and the last job I say the last job I'll ever have I was the head of internal communications at the Walt Disney Company globally and I was there at a time where nobody in my position had ever experienced what I experienced and nobody in that position would ever experience it again.
Sonya Shelton:We had a member of the Disney family, roy Disney, who led a shareholder revolt against RCO at the time, michael Eisner. So here I am, head of internal communications at a time when the company is probably the worst of the worst, but in a company from a cultural perspective that is known for the best of the best, right. So I was there at both times where I could really see what great culture looked like and then what really toxic culture looked like and what the impact on me as a leader in going through that experience and kind of trying to hold my team together and a lot of things that were being thrown at me and I didn't really show up great as a leader sometimes, right, and it really developed a lot of empathy for me, for leaders, in that a lot of times it is the culture, environment that you're in. You know better, right, and how you're showing up, but because of the environment that you're in, you sort of get caught up in that, right.
Sonya Shelton:And so I became very passionate about culture and very passionate about leadership and my clients say, oh, you know, they think that their company is always the worst. Oh, you've probably never seen anything like this, but because of my unique experience, I don't that I'm. Nothing scares me, right. I've been able to see the really great, great companies go through hard times and what that does to their culture. And how do you continue to maintain your culture through those hard times. So today, what executive leadership consulting does is we look at the connection between your business strategy and your company culture and how can you create a culture that's actually in alignment with that business strategy, so those things don't happen to you, so that you can continue to develop the culture based on where you are now as a business and are able to move your strategy forward through your culture.
Dana Dowdell:I have so many thoughts because I went to the Disney Institute oh great, I got to go to their training on engagement and employee relations and, of course, we got a backstage tour. And I remember feeling a huge sense of disappointment when I realized that so many of the Disney employees were unionized and I think in my head I was like here's this company that prides themselves on their culture and their brand alignment, but yet employees something must have happened where employees were not feeling seen, valued, connected to their purpose. Was that so, that experience at Disney? What was that like for you on a day to day? Was it just putting out fires?
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, well, it was very during that shareholder revolt. It was very political, right. So we had a lot of just scrutiny on everything that we were doing in communications and, of course, everything you know Disney is a unique company in that we would, the whole time that I worked there, if we did an employee survey, the results of the survey would be on the front page of the LA Times or the cover of variety, right, Like there was no internal anything. We always had to be aware that anything that we said internally could also be out in the press the next day, and so during this time it was just a lot of scrutiny, a lot of politics.
Sonya Shelton:I think there was a time where, you know, I was trying to do things to remind employees that it was a great company to work for, trying to keep them focused on the business, even though all of these things were happening externally, and it really was like a divorce with what was happening in the media. And it was, you know, just every day, a challenge to say how do we walk the line of trying to keep this culture going at the same time that externally it's being torn apart, and at the highest levels it's being torn apart, and there was just a very interesting experience and also always reminding me what was, at the core, the purpose of the company. Right, and that's where our team always kept coming back to what is this company about and how can we keep reminding people that that's what this company is about and we will get through this.
Dana Dowdell:I feel like that must have been so challenging to keep people's kind of like eye on the prize.
Sonya Shelton:Right, yeah, absolutely.
Dana Dowdell:Did you leverage your leaders internally to help kind of drive that focus forward?
Sonya Shelton:As much as I could. They were going through their own things while all this was happening, but, yes, as much as we could. You know, we really focused on, as I said, on the purpose of the company and the business strategy and what the company was doing. Right, what is? What are the great movies that are coming out, what's happening in the parks, what's ESPN doing, what's ABC doing? And really focusing on showcasing the great work that was happening in the middle of all of this turmoil and making sure that employees were feeling recognized, that they were still doing good work, even though all of these things were happening in the political side of the leadership.
Dana Dowdell:I feel like that's just such a huge undertaking.
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Dana Dowdell:Because it's kind of out of your control what's actually happening externally and I think all HR departments and business leaders face that where there's something that you cannot influence but you have to keep people kind of calm and connected and focused. Yeah.
Sonya Shelton:And it's, you know, it started with me and my team, right, because I realized, you know, my team gave me feedback that I wasn't treating them well.
Sonya Shelton:Right, and it was a real wake up call for me and I we just had a very conscious decision to say we're going to create our own microculture and, in our bubble, no matter what's happening in with the company, this is how we're going to behave, this is how we're going to treat each other, this is how we're going to get through this and handle this as a team.
Sonya Shelton:And it really taught me the importance of leadership and that you do no matter the size of the company, you do always have influence, right, and I think I got to a point where it was like, well, like you were saying, like things are out of your control, there's nothing you can do, but there was something I could do and I did it. Right, and my team saw the same, that there was something they could do and they did it. And, you know, just keeping that momentum going, I would like to think that it had a ripple effect in, you know, the people that interacted with us and the people that we were communicating with, to keep them together and focused and, I think, business going through not the same thing but a lot of turmoil now and I look at that, as you know, fondly, remembering that you know they always have their purpose to lean on and they always have that to go back to their core of what the company is about.
Dana Dowdell:I feel like there's this concept called the like the fish stinks from the head down right, like if top leadership is not directly connected to the purpose or the culture or the vision that it's really hard for the rest of the team to get on board with that. But it sounds like you are the proof in the pudding that these microcultures can have impact, can have influence and are you able to share it all, like what was happening with top leadership when this shareholder revolt was happening.
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, I think. Well, there was a focus on what's going to happen. Right, are we going to keep the same CEO? There was also Bob Iger was the next in line to be the CEO, and it was a little bit of sort of internal fighting about who is going to be the next CEO.
Sonya Shelton:It was interesting because Roy Disney looked similar to Walt. You could tell they were related and we did almost like a booklet on the employee experience, like all the things that you get as a Disney employee worldwide and all the benefits that you have and why it's great to work for this company. And at the beginning of that booklet we had a picture of Walt Disney and a quote from him about how it takes people to make the magic. And I got in trouble for that because Walt looks so much like Roy that it looked like I was on his side, like something that I wouldn't even have thought about.
Sonya Shelton:Right, and leaders can get crazy like that when things are on the line, when there could potential loss of control, potential loss of influence, potential loss of a job. Right, leaders can get a little bit crazy and it's important to, like I said, I have empathy for them and what they're going through in that experience and we just have to remember to lean back to why are we here? Right? And I think that even Michael Eisner, as he went through all of that and I watched him go through it and I have tremendous respect for Michael still is how he never forgot that right. He always remembered what, even while he was going through that personally, he was being having shots fired every day and he never lost sight of what the company was about and how Disney was founded right and what it was founded on and the principles it was founded on.
Dana Dowdell:So one challenge not complaint, I will say challenge that I hear all the time from HR professionals and also from, I would say, like newer or green leaders, is that idea of I have all these ideas but my boss doesn't align with them or they don't resonate with my boss, and so I think this idea of like a microculture is really, really interesting. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about what schools and steps you instituted and took to kind of protect that microculture and really have an impact?
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, I think, like I said, we were intentional. I had the conversation with my team that we didn't have to be like everyone else in that time, right, we could decide how we wanted to come to work, what we wanted our work experience to be like. And I think for me in my career, everybody would always joke at Disney that I had this reputation of no mean to Sonya. No means not right now, right. So I was always looking. If I really believed in something, I would always look to how does this? First of all, how is this moving the business forward? I think a lot of times, especially in HR, hr professionals know the right thing to do but they're not always connecting it to the business strategy and so if they're not connecting it to the business strategy, they're not necessarily going to be heard. And that's why we came up with our culture model aligned with the business strategy. You know, there's that Peter Drucker quote culture, each strategy for breakfast, and we don't believe that. We believe they have to have breakfast together. Neither one is more important than the other. And you see, in cultures where the company is leaning too hard on strategy and then it's not a great place to work, and then we have seen on the other side, companies that are really focused on culture and their business suffers. So it's really about bringing those things together and I think HR is perfectly suited to get really familiar with the business strategy and what the business is trying to do and then bring your ideas about the people side in alignment with that and, when you're making your business case, really make it a business case right. Why you know this is the right thing to do for the people, why is it the right thing to do for the business strategy as well. And in some cases, you know when I, when we're working with clients, they have to make some tough people decisions for the business strategy, and so so I always say are you okay? So if you're, if you want to make this call let's say layoffs, for example you want to make this call? Let's talk about how this is going to not impact just the people that you're laying off, but all the people who are left. And are you willing to take this risk of some of your high performers also leaving right? And so I take them through what are the consequences of making this tough call from a people perspective, so that they understand the risks and how can we prepare for those risks ahead of time and take people through understanding those risks?
Sonya Shelton:So sometimes leaders, when they're making tough decisions, will just sort of block out. Well, they still have hearts, right? I think that's the important thing to remember. They still have hearts, but they sort of block out the feeling part of themselves so that they can make these hard business decisions. I think it's more important to remind them yes, we still have to have that feeling part. We still have to have the emotional impact of what's going to happen to people, because they are still people. That doesn't mean that we can't treat them with respect through it. It doesn't mean that we can't help them through it and help them, even if they're leaving the company. Help them have a smooth transition. There are a lot of things that we can do to make this easier for them.
Sonya Shelton:I think HR has that unique perspective of being able to say if this is the hard business decision, how can we do this the best possible way for the people, even if it's not an easy message, rather than saying no, you can't. This is why it's bad for the people. I find a lot of HR people end up getting removed from the table in those conversations because leaders don't want to hear it. They have to make the decisions, to come to the table as a partner and say, okay, we know this is going to hurt, but how can we do this in the most respectful and empathetic way so that I've had people leave in a layoff situation, leave the company working with us, feeling like I really respect this company, even though it was hard on me. I left the company feeling good about the company rather than feeling bad about the company. I think HR can really contribute to that and be a partner for that.
Dana Dowdell:I think there's a lot of concepts in leadership. I'm curious your thought on this. Like servant leadership, that we're in leader, you're a leader and you're in a service mode. Then there's another book and it's escaping me right now, but it's really more tied to what you said, in that when you're in a leadership position, you have a duty. I want to call it duty leadership. You have a duty to develop your people, train your people, be kind, be respectful, be professional, but also make hard decisions. It's not about servant leadership, it's about that duty to carry the business vision forward in the most responsible way. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that. Particularly, the title of your book is you're an executive, but are you a leader. How do we tie those two things together in terms of title? What is leadership and are you an executive or are you actually leading people?
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, absolutely. I wrote the book title to be a bit provocative because I do think a lot of leaders lean too heavily on their title, especially as they get higher in the organization and into that executive level where they're basically saying I'm the boss and therefore you must.
Dana Dowdell:Respect by title versus action.
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, absolutely. I've seen so many leaders come in with fear leadership their consequences if you don't do what they say. It's a very uncomfortable place to work. People are afraid what happens to a body when you're under stress. All of your energy goes to your arms and legs so that you can fight or flee or freeze. I see the same thing happening in an organization where organizations that are under stress operating by fear. There's a ton of activity, everybody's really busy, but there's not a lot of thinking.
Sonya Shelton:I see those kinds of leaders that are executives or managers that are leading by their title are actually creating a culture of compliance. They will get people to do what they have to do to stay out of trouble. They're not going to get creativity, they're not going to get innovation, they're absolutely not going to get passion. As if you come from a perspective of leadership that it is about the business but it's also about the people that make that happen. You help them see the purpose of the company, what we call red-thread leadership, starting with the purpose. You run that purpose through everything that you do, from your business strategy, your goals, your processes, what we call positions, or your organizational structure and your culture, which we call passion. You run that purpose through everything, then you get people that are passionate about that purpose. You get people that you help them understand their role in that purpose and then they can be passionate about that job. That's leadership. You mentioned servant leadership, which I'm a big fan of, but I also think that it gets misinterpreted and misused and that it's about who are you serving? I think some people will say, oh, if you're practicing servant leadership, you're serving employees. No, you're serving your clients and your customers.
Sonya Shelton:I worked with this organization in China actually, where the CEO of the company he had a hotel and three different restaurants, this is the word chart was upside down. He was at the bottom and at the top were the guests, right. So he said okay, so our guests and our customers in the hotel and the restaurant are at the top of the org chart. The people who are closest to the guests are right under them and everybody else is in service to the people that are serving our guests, right. So it was taking it to the next step. It's not just serving your team or serving employees, it's serving, helping them, serve the people you serve as a business Right, and if you start there, then everybody's job and the way that he really he looked at it was that everybody's job is to serve the next level of the people who are serving the guests.
Sonya Shelton:Right, and ultimately, his job was to serve all of them in service of the guests, and I stayed at their hotel while I was working with them. I don't speak Mandarin, but it was the best service that I've ever had in my life and the same with their restaurants the best service and his issue was that he was getting other companies poaching his people because they were so great, but then they would go to the new company and they wouldn't be so great, right, and the people that were, that were stealing them, were like I don't understand, like I took your people, but they're not bringing what you're doing. So I don't know, and it was because of this servant leadership culture that he created, but really looked at who are you serving? Ultimately serving your customer.
Dana Dowdell:I think that's fantastic. Yeah, the book that I was referring to is called the Motives by Patrick Lanzioni. Have you read that? Yeah, it's a short read, but it's very much about that duty that, when you step into a leadership role, it's not for the title, it's not for the compensation, it's for the duty that you have to your team, your patients, your customers, whatever to serve them, to support them, to drive the vision forward. And it's a short read. It's really, really good. So yeah.
Dana Dowdell:I want to ask you a little bit about burnout and what your thoughts are, from a leadership perspective, when employees are feeling like they are burned out.
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, burnout is something that I'm super passionate about right now because I'm seeing it really increase exponentially over the past few years and we have to do something about it as leaders, right, we, we it's not sustainable for anybody, right, and I think, with the economy, you know, being so volatile and so much uncertainty, you know, I think that those are some some contributions. Right, the, the uncertainty we can't really, we don't, we can't really plan too far in advance the way we used to be able to because of the uncertainty. But at the same time, things are changing so fast. Right, there's this rapid pace of change, and those two things, I think, are contributors to burnout, but I don't think they're the cause. I think what's happening is that people are not really connecting with the purpose of their company and they're not really clear. So when we don't have, when we have uncertainty, what we're looking for is clarity, right, and we can be in uncertainty and still have clarity, but I think leaders need to do a better job at really getting clear on the purpose of the company.
Sonya Shelton:Why are we here? Why are we doing what we're doing? Not only why are we here as a company, so it was something like a nonprofit or even healthcare. Their why is pretty clear, right, but why are we making the decisions you're making? Why is the strategy direction, the strategic direction of what it is, why? Why are we making these changes? Like always remembering to add that why and that purpose into every conversation and everything that you're doing, and then also empowering people to question is what I'm doing in alignment with that purpose? And if not, can I bring that up and say is this really a good use of time? Should we be doing this this way? Maybe we did this this way 10 years ago, but now it's not. We don't really need to do it. And so empowering people to stay in alignment with that purpose, but also having clarity right.
Sonya Shelton:So I see so many and this is another place I think HR can really help I see so many companies not really helping people understand their role and why they do what they do. And even at the manager level, I have coaching clients where they're trying to figure out their job description and like what are my, what are the expectations? And I encourage leaders if they're not telling you, then you design it and you tell them what it is and get feedback right. Like, if you're not getting clarity, then you drive the clarity and I but I those two things purpose and clarity are the antidotes that I see to burn out and the examples that I use.
Sonya Shelton:You know, when we do have a big change in life right, like we're maybe we moving to a new house or having a baby or getting married these are major life changes, very stressful, but we know why we're doing it and we can see what's on the other side of it. And because we have that purpose and we have that clarity purpose of why we're doing it, clarity of why, where we're going and what's it gonna look like that helps us get through all of that stress right. So we know how to do it. As human beings, we just need to get better at doing it in organizations to help people have that purpose and clarity so that they don't get burned out.
Dana Dowdell:I also wanna say I think that when you are encouraging people to connect to purpose and bring that clarity, the clarity might be that they realize they're no longer connected to the purpose and that's okay.
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, absolutely. I say all the time. Clarity polarizes, right, and so it's okay and that's good. That's a good thing. You want those people to find the place that they're passionate about and work for a company that has a purpose that they're passionate about, and if they're not passionate about your purpose, you want somebody in there who will be right. So it's a good thing.
Dana Dowdell:Yeah, not a bad thing. So what are some strategies for HR professionals, green leaders or even veteran leaders, who maybe are just a little bit boxed in in their thought process and philosophy to encourage their team members to connect to purpose?
Sonya Shelton:Yeah, we start with why, right. So we have a tool called the why connection that helps people understand why they do what they do, what motivates them, how they bring that why to life, how they earn internally processed information and then, ultimately, what others could expect from them. So the why, the how and the what, and we encourage people to use that framework first to understand how they operate right, so what motivates them and how do they operate. And then we extend that to the team. How does the team operate? Why does the team exist? Right, even if it's just a department? Why do you exist? How do you deliver on that? Why? And then what can other people expect from you? And that starts to align them and starts to develop some clarity.
Sonya Shelton:And I think, even again asking that question why, even if you're doing a project, why are we doing this project? Starting with that intention and that objective and reminding people. I come from a communications background and I think when I was coming up in college people said oh, you need to say, you need to tell people the same message somewhere between six and eight times for them to get it. And now that number is something like 18, because we have so much information coming at us all the time that we can't remember everything.
Sonya Shelton:Sometimes leaders will say, oh, but I told them. It's like I told them what the purpose was. No, you have to keep telling them, and keep telling them in different ways, right? So show how it's coming to life, how to bring that up. How does that purpose show up in this project, in this initiative, in this decision and or as somebody, as you're recognizing somebody, this employee showed up this way and this is furthering our purpose. So this is an example of living our purpose and looking for different ways to communicate it so that they can step into really bringing that purpose to life.
Dana Dowdell:I always say that when I do leadership training, I ask any of them if they're parents, and I will always get a hand or two and I will always say when you were raising your children, did you teach them to look both ways before crossing the road? And they would always say yes, and I would always say did you have to tell them again to look both ways before crossing the road? When you caught them not looking both ways crossing the road and they said, of course, and I was like your employees are the same way. You have to consistently communicate in various ways whether that's standup or emails or trainings or recognition what the expectation is, but it's not a one and done and it never will be a one and done.
Sonya Shelton:No, absolutely not.
Dana Dowdell:Never, Sonya. This is great. You are fantastic. Where can listeners connect with you and also get your book?
Sonya Shelton:So everything is on our website. At executiveleadercom we have. There's a link to the book there. They're linked to our social media. I'm on LinkedIn on all the socials. All the links are on executiveleadercom. We also have a lot of free resources there free webinars, a lot of articles, hundreds of articles on leadership and encourage listeners to connect with us. Bring up, bring your challenges and we're happy to direct you to some free resources.
Dana Dowdell:That's fantastic. I will make sure that everything is posted in the show notes so that you can connect with Sonya, get her book and check out some of her resources. Sonya, thank you so much for being on Corky HR.
Sonya Shelton:Thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation. Likewise Thank you.