Why Leaders Need To Join Their Employee’s Journey w/ Marc Haine

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel Lolacher welcomes leadership and employee strategist Marc Haine to dive deep into one of the most important but overlooked aspects of leadership: guiding your team through their employee journey. 

Marc shares personal stories and invaluable insights on why leaders must shift from being mere managers to becoming true coaches, supporting their team at every milestone. From onboarding to creating workplace ambassadors, Marc explains how journey mapping and continuous support can transform your corporate culture and boost employee engagement. If you’re a leader looking to inspire and retain top talent, this episode will equip you with practical tools and fresh perspectives to ensure your team thrives.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Marc Haine, and here is why he is awesome. He's a customer and employee strategist, keynote speaker, and author of Lights, Camera, Action, Using The Lessons Of Live Theater To Drive Ownership, Increase Engagement, And Provide A Superior Customer Service. He comes with 35 years of experience in leadership and the hospitality and retail industries. Ahhh the service industry, but then again, aren't technically all industries, the service industry. Hello, Marc, welcome to the show.

Marc Haine: And thank you for such a great introduction. You said 35 years and I just realized, oh my God, I'm getting so old.

Russel Lolacher: Oh, I don't do that anymore. Like I, with my bios, I'm like, I'm going to stick to 20 cause I know it's creeping up more than that. Way more than that. I'm like, nope, I'm going to stay. It's 20 still sounds okay.

Marc Haine: I'm, I've decided I'm changing it now. 20 plus years.

Russel Lolacher: The plus is a lot of heavy lifting, but let it, let it, let it do its job. So, I'm excited to talk about leadership journeys today and how leaders need to be much more involved in their team's journeys. We'll get to that. But I have to ask you, Marc, the question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best or worst employee experience?

Marc Haine: I will go with the worst. 17 years old. I'm in McDonald's. So this is, keep in mind, this is I'm dating myself circa 1979.

Russel Lolacher: Okay.

Marc Haine: And to get a job, you had to compete with everybody else around you because unemployment was at an all time high. If you got hired you were so lucky But that gave permission to all the leaders to use and abuse you in so many different ways. And so, my worst fear was that employee experience was having a boss who thought nothing of degrading you in front of the whole team, yelling, screaming, cursing, calling you names.

And there was zippo you could do about it because the only alternative you had was to quit your job and not have a job.

Russel Lolacher: So I grew up in the service industry as much like you did. And it was so interesting. I was more of the early nineties, was really where it hit me, but the feeling was very similar in the sense of you are replaceable. You're lucky to even be here. And your bosses are not that much older than you. They're in their twenties and... even if you're a fresh faced kid, it's not like they got tons of leadership training to be in their position either.

So it's almost like this power trip. This is how they get to audition for adulthood is leadership at like fast food or restaurants at that time.

Marc Haine: And it's almost like because the leaders were so young and getting promoted at such an early age, like I literally went from 17 to 19, I got promoted into a management position, but with zero training, it became a rite of passage. I got abused when I was a crew member or when I was at the beginning stages within the company.

So now that I'm a supervisor, I get to abuse. And it's like a really bad sorority mindset of, of, of hazing people and, and rites of passage and, and thankfully, knock on wood, for the most part, I hope those are gone.

Russel Lolacher: Well, you make a really good point in the sense of the whole, I immediately thought the hurt people hurt people. Of the idea of that, the therapy side of things, but also it's that to your point, rite of passage. Well, I had to go through this so why should you get off not having to go through that? Because my bosses respect me more because of what I had to go through. So you need to go through that too to get their respect. Just this cycle of abuse that thankfully we're going to fix in this one episode of a podcast, Marc. So we'll fix everything.

Marc Haine: We'll save the world.

Russel Lolacher: Exactly. In 60 minutes or less. So, We're going to talk about leadership and their relationship to employee journeys. Now, a big piece of my show is definitions because I hate that we talk about things that never actually define what we talk about. Diversity, leadership, those are some of my biggest pet peeves.

So let's start by defining In your words, what is even an employee journey?

Marc Haine: So it's interesting because, let me put it to you this way. Would you talk to a five year employee the same way you would talk to an employee walking through on day one, walking through the doors on day one. Would you talk to them the same way?

Russel Lolacher: You wouldn't, because especially even just language is different. You've got, there's so many, I mean, I'm thinking of about a million different things, but quick answer. No, Marc, you wouldn't.

Marc Haine: And and and so so that proves that from day one to the five year that people evolve within the business. Now, wouldn't it be great if you could map what that evolution looks like through the, through somebody coming on board. And so in chapter 18 of my book, I talk about this, this idea of a employee journey defining concrete milestones that every person will reach within an organization. And we have a choice as leaders.

We can support them at each of these journey points, these, each of these milestones, understanding what questions they're going to be asking, what understanding what their needs will be and being able to be of service to that so that we move them literally from being a prospect because believe it or not, employees who aren't working for you yet, are prospects in your business, right?

So they move them from prospects to being a newbie. They have concrete needs and wants and desires. And part of that is you promised me a bill of goods, are you going to deliver? Right? If not, they're gone within three weeks, within three months, they're going to be going out the door because you didn't prove what you sold them coming on board.

Russel Lolacher: Especially now, even generationally, this is a much bigger problem than it was even say 10 years ago.

Marc Haine: Yeah, and I would even, I would even argue that in the newbie phase, the needs of the new generation is much, much different than they were in Baby Boomer phase or Gen X phase. I think it's, it's just different. So as leaders, we need to understand that the milestones, the questions people are asking, and then help them move to the next phase.

And the next phase, out of the newbie, the next phase is the taking phase. This is where you promise me a bill of goods. Am I getting paid on time? Are you giving me the days off and the flexibility that you promised me? Are you delivering on everything you told me in the interview I would be getting? And then if the answer to all that is yes, and you're fulfilling those needs, then you work towards becoming an engaged participant within that business.

And that's the first time that their people's mindset are kind of tipping into, I'm getting all this now, how can I be of service? How do I serve the business? And there, there becomes a less of me talk and more of us talk. And then if we're really stellar, we move them into the ambassador phase. And the ambassador phase is, I am here, I have drank the Kool Aid, I am all about this corporate culture. And this is something McDonald's used to do really, really well. I don't know if they still do it, but, you know, you hear these things, you hear, I, I... when I hear that business owners tell me, Oh, you know, our employees are like family. It drives me crazy.

Russel Lolacher: Sure.

Marc Haine: Because they're not family. Because sometimes we treat our family really badly. And, and at the very least, we would never fire a family member. Or terminate a family member. So, I like to talk about community, about building community, rather than talking about whether or not we have everybody here is family. So getting people into this, becoming an ambassador, this trusted person within your business, this is where they are all about you.

They're the ones going out on the streets, talking to the friends, saying what a great place this is to work. Unfortunately, the majority of people, and according to Gallup, 77 percent of employees right now in the workforce are disengaged. They're in what I call the pit of the tainted, and that's where the danger comes in.

Russel Lolacher: Is there a phase, just to wrap that up, is there a phase beyond ambassadorship or is that, is there a legacy piece to that or like what, what is beyond that?

Marc Haine: It's interesting that you ask that, because that's something I've been talking with leaders about, because we know in customer service, we have what we call aftercare. I'm a big proponent as leaders, we also have aftercare. When some, you know, I'm hoping whenever somebody comes to work with me in my organization or my business or my restaurant, casino, whatever I'm working in, I'm hoping that they look back at this as being, Oh my goodness, I've evolved to who I am today because I had this amazing experience.

And so that aftercare piece is the sum is that people can pick up the phone and call you. at any time and say, Marc, yeah, I left and I went to this casino or I went to this restaurant or I went to this business and I'm having challenges and I just need somebody to bounce ideas off of and you were so good when I worked there, could you spare a few minutes for me? To me, that's the aftercare that I think we need to have with our employees.

Russel Lolacher: And there's a big piece of that too, that the aftercare where a lot of value is a big piece for employees and they want to feel like they had an impact while they were there. So the biggest thing I've heard from people that were at the retirement age, if we're back, if we're thinking of age here, now keep in mind an ambassador, you can technically leave at any point and still need that aftercare, but there is that later part in their, their, their careers where they want to feel like they're handing off something that their head, that what they did matters and the next phase will take on what they did and, you know, take the baton and move along. They want to feel that confidence that what they did was not for not, when they walk out the door. So can aftercare help with that?

Marc Haine: Yeah, so, so that is within the definition of the ambassador. Because the ambassador is all about, it's, it's all about contributing to the whole. So these people become really great team leaders. This is where you see a lot of moral leadership really come to the surface within your team.

So people with good, strong moral leadership who have high values, high trust within organizations actually take on leadership roles without even having to be asked about it because there are people, there are people within the team that everybody knows I can go to Steve. Steve is so brilliant in supporting me.

And, and so that legacy piece is there because Steve wants to make sure that whatever he's got through his time with you, he can rub down into everybody else. A perfect example of that was I, I created a train the trainer program for a casino. And when I went to the management, they looked at me and go, I'm sorry, we don't have money for training. And so I went to the employees and I said, I, I want to do this train the trainer because I see how frustrated everybody gets when new people come on board and they're not trained adequately. However, there's no budget for training. And when I suggested that we do this on our own time, I had eight people show up. I said I had room for 12. Eight people show up going, I don't know about this. Well, we'll see what it's about. And by the time the first session was done, I had eight more people coming to me going, Oh, Marc, I heard it was so great, can I please be included? And it's like, I'm sorry, I only have room for 12.

That's it. Right. And to this day, that effect on that organization has been long lasting now, 12 years after I've done that.

Russel Lolacher: But that goes to show that employees are starving for good leadership. Like, I mean, it's great that they became so popular, but the start was, the beginning of that was literally, our people are not important enough to invest in. That is the story that they were telling you.

Marc Haine: Because you have the CFO sitting in a, in another office telling everybody that employees are an expense.

Russel Lolacher: A cost.

Marc Haine: Whereas I like to think of it that we invest in our employees.

Russel Lolacher: So you've talked about the employee journey as this, and I love the stop, start, hear, change, fix milestones as we go through this, where is the leadership role in this? Because you, you laid out, and I'm simplifying here, you've laid out a process. Of beginning to end, but a leader needs to be shepherding through this. Does it not? I mean, that it's not just an assembly line that we're doing here.

Marc Haine: And this is the interesting thing is I find all too often leaders are given so many different tasks to do that the one thing that they set aside is the actual leadership side. They become the department manager. I got to fill out these reports. I got to do this. I got to attend all these meetings.

But then they set aside the leadership side. Now imagine for a second if you turned, or... turned managers into coaches. So if you think about any business coach that you've ever had, any performance coach you've ever had, whatever. Imagine for a second that that becomes the primary role of every manager within an organization. That they are there to be the coaches. as the leader rather than the manager of a department or the manager of people. I think it was Stephen Covey who said that we lead people and we manage things.

Russel Lolacher: Yes. But so what we've talked about now, keep in mind, these leaders also are on these employee journeys as well. This is not a separate thing where they're exactly because what we always seem to forget is that leaders are also employees. We talk about how leaders are going to fix things for these employees.

I'm like, they're all employees. Except for the person at the very, very top of this. So I see the journey, but I also know leaders are already part of the journey for good or for bad. They already are part of the journey within that. So why are most organizations not looking at it like a journey and more looking at it as a, Oh, if we only get our onboarding right. Exit interviews? Yeah, I guess we should start doing those. Like it's just this, piecemeal checkbox exercise ,approach as to, to your point, this more of a holistic conversation. What is the challenge?

Marc Haine: Yes, so the challenge is that the way we're brought up into leadership roles. And so we look at what are the KPIs, what's the ROIs of our business within different aspects. If we put in training, the one thing upper management wants to know is if we spend this money to train our staff, what's the ROI going to be? Right? One of the hardest things to prove ROI on is something like marketing. It is, it's so difficult to prove it. And so I don't know why we have an expectation that when we invest a dollar in training that we need to see what that ROI is tied directly to it. Because it's kind of like saying, I'm going to put the seed in the ground and tomorrow there better be cabbage, right?

It's, it's, you put the seed in the ground and it's months later when you're going to see the harvest and so it's this idea of taking on an investment mindset rather than this transactional mindset of immediate cause and result and I think too much of what we do in organizations because we're under pressure to, obviously if there's no if if there's no money right there's if there's no margin there's no mission.

And but unfortunately, too much of it is ruled against the employees. And so the very first thing that gets cut is we're gonna cut training. We're gonna cut development. We're gonna cut any kind of process that helps us build a cohesive team environment that is going to support our business.

Russel Lolacher: You also have to have leaders that can do this because we have leaders that are great at fixing a person's problem or they know the right person to be in that position. But they're not a leader to, for lack of a better word, shepherd employees through this. So...

Marc Haine: And that, there lies the problem is the majority of leaders who are in roles, I call them incidental leaders because they were the welder who is really good at the, in the shop. And so somebody approached him and said, I want you to be the shop foreman because if you could teach people to do what you do, Oh my God, our business would be so great.

And so then we promote this poor guy into a position with no skills in, obviously welding is much different than leadership skills. Right? But this poor guy is thrown into a role, not understanding what it's going to take for him to be able to motivate people, to empower people, to be that fire that people can, can, can warm themselves to, right?

And, and, so we see this time and time again in every single industry that I've come across, that there are these poor people who just fell into leadership roles and not get the training. And so, to your point, you mentioned everybody everybody's on a journey except for maybe the person at the top. And I would argue that the person at the top is on their journey because they're learning how to be of service to the people in their organization,

Russel Lolacher: If...

Marc Haine: Right? So that person at the very top is in his journey of, you know, I was, I mean, look at any startup, look at the challenges that startups go through. You got three guys who start up something. The minute they get a venture capitalist in, that venture capitalist changes everything. And all of a sudden these three people start to feel powerless until they learn some skills.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, I think, and I was going to say that if they see that they're on a journey, a lot, there's a lot of people that are leaders that don't see it a journey. They just see things as happening to them rather than that they have, you know, power to shift, mold, and move the needle forward. So I would kind of want to ask the employee journey, you've sort of mentioned it like it's the responsibility of the organization or the leader. Am I reading that correctly? Or like, who is responsible for this?

Marc Haine: It's the responsible of the leader to understand that people are on a journey and be able to be ready for the different milestones that these people are going to be on. Because, you know, ultimately, the last thing we want is, we want, the last thing we want is people wallowing in that pit of the tainted.

And I know that whenever I've gone through a workshop to, to actually do journey mapping when, once we start pulling out the sticky pads. People can actually put names down on oh, this person's an ambassador. This person's in the pit of the tainted. This person's a newbie, and they can actually, they can actually map out based on what they already know about their business where people are in.

The biggest problem is when you have somebody wallowing in the pit of the tainted. Do leaders have the training and the capacity and the competency to be able to recognize it and then figure out what that person needs to come back into the flow.

Russel Lolacher: And I want to take that a step further into the diversity area because there are, every leader is not the same. Every leader has different experience and different skill sets. But also when you bring in diversity into this, we've got people with different cultural backgrounds. We've got different people that have different definitions of leadership.

We've got different... how does that factor into that leadership employee journey relationship?

Marc Haine: Well, when you know that everybody's on a journey, nobody's going to run the journey the same way. So for instance, I mentioned that as soon as somebody becomes a new person on the team, they become, they go through a newbie phase and then go into the taking phase. I've seen the taking phase go months and months and months because these people came from maybe a, a, a, a background that is that they didn't have a lot. And so now when I'm working, I want to grab everything I possibly can. And it's going to take them a long time to get over this taking phase before they become an engaged participant in the business. Somebody else in a different culture or even a different background will come in, they'll go to a newbie.

They'll get and they'll hop overtake the taking phase to going, Oh, my goodness, I want to be a part of this here. Let me. And they become an engaged participant much, much faster. And so for the leaders to be able to go through again, being the coach to the team is understanding who the personalities I have that I'm responsible for and where are they in their journey?

And what do I need to do to keep moving them forward? And what test can I have to make absolutely sure they're not sitting in the pit of the tainted?

Russel Lolacher: And that speaks to my next question, which is consistency. You talk about like, what can we do? The journey is a long one, or it can be short. I mean, generally let's look at a journey like it's a, it's a long journey. Ideally. For the leader to be a consistent presence in that shepherding of that employee journey, what do they need to be doing? Because again, I'm trying to measure between a checkbox exercise versus actual intent, leadership intent and effort. So where do we get the consistency? How do we get the consistency is the better answer.

Marc Haine: So. It's, it's interesting because number one, the checkbox process is transactional. What we're talking about is relational, right? And so one of the things that I highly endorse is that we stop onboarding our employees. We have to stop onboarding employees completely. Stop onboard. We need to be forever boarding.

And this is where being able to shepherd people through these different milestones comes in, because it's a process that doesn't end if we're leaders. First, we don't just turn the switch off and on like Wile E. Coyote and the Sheepdog as soon as the, as soon as the the, the bell whistles, right? And the shepherd stops, the sheepdog stops doing sheepdog stuff, and the, the wolf stops doing the wolf stuff, and they just, or the coyote stops doing coyote stuff, and they just go off hand in hand.

We have to get out of this mindset that everything we do as managers is transactional, because it's not that anymore. Transactional does not work with Gen X's, Gen Y's, Gen Z's, and of course the new generation that's going to, tipping on the doorstep right now, which is the which is the Alpha Generation.

It's tipping in and it's not, this is, transactional is not going to work.

Russel Lolacher: Is it a blanket statement though? And I asked this because leadership styles, there can't be just one. Any leader has to have leadership styles like it's a Swiss Army knife because everybody needs to be led differently. And the only reason, and don't get me wrong, I completely agree with you on the transactional, but there are people that want to look at work as a transaction.

They want to come in, they want a checkbox, they want to go home. Here, we're just here for a paycheck. Those people still exist. So I don't want to completely abandon the transactional because there are some people, that's all they want out of work. That's all they'll ever want out of work. And that's okay too.

Marc Haine: It is okay. It is absolutely okay. But when I talk about transactional, I talk about did, you know did we fill out the, the annual evaluation for Donna? Yes, check. Did we sit and review it with Donna? Check. That's what I mean by the checklist, by being transactional. Because even the people who like transaction, having transactional relationships, that they're not going to become, they're not going to join the softball team. They're not going to join the lotto pool. They just they're in there to do their work, but we still have a relationship with those people. And so that's really from a leadership perspective. Yes, as a leader, I know the different personality types on my team. In fact, everybody on the team is different.

And I didn't realize this until I started working in a hotel, and I had, you know, I was director of food and beverage at a casino before that happened, and then I took over as general manager, and then when I went to the housekeeping staff, they said, Oh, we got a big banquet coming up. Can you help? And they said, Well, we'll help, but only as long as I don't have to serve people. And I came to a realization that personalities that work really well, customer facing, don't do well with the same tasks as somebody who's super introverted, who likes task based duties. They love the repetition of being able to go into a room, doing the same thing, and right? They, they're, they shine at that.

And so different people have different needs, but as a coach, I can recognize those differences. I can recognize the diversity on the team and understand what each person needs because I am first and foremost, I am their coach.

Russel Lolacher: How do we handle disruption in this journey? As a leader, disruption is happening. And I don't mean change necessarily, but I mean things like a reorg. Or firing or promotions because you're not directly involved with your employees as they go into these next. But as this is a relationship, Hey, it's the name of the podcast. What's the relationship piece of this that needs to be reinforced?

Marc Haine: You know, it becomes a really interesting dilemma because what happens when I'm doing a relationship with, let's say, a food and beverage server. And. The relationship works in a certain way because I know that her role is that she's a fabulous person with the guests and so on. When I decide that she should become a leader, it was interesting because when I approached her, this one particular server, to become a leader of the department, she looked at me, she goes, but I can't be a manager.

And I said, well, why not? She goes, because I don't know the paperwork. And I thought, isn't that interesting? I had all these different, definitions of what would make this person an outstanding leader. But in her mind, what would, what made a manager, a manager versus an employee was the fact that they knew how to do paperwork.

And so being able to bring her on board and being, again, we're promoting people into a role. We owe them the training and the coaching that they're required to help them be successful. If not, it's for not. And we just absolutely kill our corporate culture.

Russel Lolacher: And I never understood, we talk about relationships and we talk about, even when we say the horribleness of we're a family, but the minute something changes, like a reorg, like a firing, like a promotion, suddenly they're out of sight, out of mind, don't even know you exist anymore. I'm like, but...

Marc Haine: And that's where the aftercare comes in.

Russel Lolacher: Like, but if it's a relationship, where's the relationship?

Marc Haine: But what's interesting is like I've, I've had situations where I had to terminate a young man because he could not be on time. He became inconsistent and he would show up and we're not talking, you know, it would, it started off as five minutes here and three minutes here, but then went to a half.

And, and by the time it was all said and done, I took him through coaching and progressive discipline with an understanding each and every time. Do you understand the expectation? Can you meet the expectation? Is there anything in your way to be able to meet that expectation? And because we had the deal going at some point, I had to turn around and I had to say, it's not going to work.

We're tried so many times. We've gone through the steps. We've tried it so many times. But the one thing I was able to figure out was what he was passionate about. And I knew that he was a, he loved playing guitar. And because of that, I was able to call out to a couple of music stores that I knew in the area and say, do you need anybody? Because I think I have somebody who's really passionate about music. He he's not passionate about doing what he's doing for me. Would you be able to give him an interview? Would you be able to screen him and see if he might be a good fit for you? And so when I sat down to say, I'm, as much as we've tried to do this, we know it's not going to fit, but you know what?

I might have an opportunity for you. And here's what I, here's what I got lined up. And because of that, to this day, he still hits me up on Facebook going, Marc, you are the kindest person to be able to do something like that, as opposed to just shutting the door in my face and leaving me be.

Russel Lolacher: And I wish more leadership, organizations, culture would stop doing lip service to the relationship conversation and actually treat it like one. I know friends of mine who I worked with and then I moved on to another job and they almost felt like they were imposing if they reached out to me because we didn't have that direct.

I'm like, no, I, your success is still important to me. Even if we do not meet on a regular basis or I have no influence nine to five. I can help you in any way you ever need. I want you to be successful. And yet, and yet I was so amazed that they were like, Oh, that's, that's, that's not the norm.

That's weird. I'm like, then let's stop talking about relationships. If we're not going to be honest about what we're talking about.

Marc Haine: Yes. And again, if we look at it from the sense of we're creating community. So within our community, so within your management team, you have a community within the departments, you have community within right, each each shift, you have community. And if we start looking at it in this kind of under that lens, it changes how we treat everything.

Because when we're in a community, when we're part of something, then we're looking at each of these communities. And saying, I'm a part of this community in this business as well as this one and this one. I'm part of the management team, but I'm also part of this department and I'm part of this shift.

And because of that, I am serving my community.

Russel Lolacher: Completely agree with that..

Marc Haine: And it's, it's, you know, we just, we just had our Stanley Cup the time of this this recording where we just lost the Stanley Cup in Edmonton and everybody's so sad. But really, when you look at it, look at the team that was there. Look at the team as a whole. That is a community. When people said, you know, so amazing to see everybody come out in Edmonton because all of a sudden, politics didn't matter. Differences didn't matter. Everybody was a community in downtown Edmonton, watching the game on the big screens and sharing the game. They had a shared experience. And that's the thing with community is you look at how do I provide shared experiences in each of these, in each of these communities to be able to reinforce that somebody is a part of something.

Russel Lolacher: It's funny that you link it to sports. Cause that's actually another metaphor I've heard that I like when it comes instead of family, that it's a sports team. People are leaning into their strengths, their weaknesses, how they interact with each other. People leave, people come in. It seems much, but you're all there together to do a singular purpose of moving the business forward. I've always liked that as a metaphor as well. I love your community, but I see the linkages really easily.

Marc Haine: And, you know, what's interesting is, even when you look at sports teams, nobody does anything alone. Like, when you think about an individual player, they don't just have the one coach, right? They have multiple coaches to help them do multiple different things. And so, you know, I was lucky enough, going from entrepreneurship in the food and beverage, having had three coaches.

Three restaurants in Montreal, I moved out to Alberta and it was the first time that I worked. I got hired into a casino as a director of food and beverage and it was the first time that I had a team of people I worked with. I had an HR manager, I had a marketing manager, I had director of finance and all of a sudden I was able to tap into the brilliance that was around me.

And then when, because I became a change agent in food and beverage, which means I would go into problem properties, all of a sudden I was able to leverage this idea of community by going to people who are the subject matter experts in their division and saying, you know, what's obstacles that you're having in order to do dishes? Or what's your obstacle in serving the bar faster? Or what's your obstacle in janitorial? And being able to tap into those powerhouses of people who had the knowledge from the day to day operation as opposed to dictating it from a corner office.

Russel Lolacher: So where do you start? Because I mean, what you're describing is not a lot of what organizations do when it comes to how they look at the employee journey, how they look at onboarding, stay interviews, and all of this. If you're a leader listening to this podcast right now and going, that sounds great. That's not my organization. It is not how we treat employees, but I want to. What are the first or second steps we need to be taking to go, okay, I want to do this differently?

Marc Haine: So number one is we have to have an understanding of what these milestones are. We have to understand what the, what the journeys are. And so when I work with intact teams, I take them through a journey mapping process where we actually look at the actual environment and say, what do we need to do to move people?

Because ultimately we're starting with the people first. We're not starting with sales. We're not starting with objectives. We're starting with the people first, because I truly believe that if we can really focus on the people first, understanding their needs, understanding their questions, understand how they're going to evolve with us, we are in a better position to be able to tap into that brilliance as they evolve, right?

And so none of this can happen at all. None of it can happen at all, if we have a culture, Corporate culture that is centered around profit, competition, distrust, right? If, if every time we turn around, somebody's saying, well, how come you didn't generate five more widgets than Steve did? Or why is Bob able to close more sales than you, right? And, I mean, I mean, don't even get me started on the sales aspect because sa just sales alone is, is so many different capacities required from cold calling to closing sales and each one requires different skill sets. And so under, anyway, so having said that, to get started, we need to understand this journey that we have within our organization, because the minute we understand that, we then understand what do I need to create the shepherds in our organizational culture, because when you have carrot and sticking managers, and you want to build a high functioning team built on trust, transparency, And performance, having somebody care and sticking somebody, some, you know, somebody going to, I just was talking to an HR manager and I said, I think it's a shame when, you know, as much as you're trying to do what you're doing, but you have one manager who's making idle promises.

How many times have we heard, Oh, you know what? I know you, I know you want to raise, but you know what? If you give me three more months, give me three more months and then, and then we'll talk about the raise. Okay? Right? And it's this whole kind of trying to get people on the hook to perform for a little while and then you absolutely shatter that trust is, is, it kills it.

So as a leader, we have, once we understand what the employees need, we can then run that exercise and find out what is it the leaders need in order to make that happen? How do we build the capacity and the competency and the trust to be able to run the, the milestones and be able to run the employee journey more effectively? Does that make sense?

Russel Lolacher: It does, but my question to follow up on that is what if you're within a culture that isn't adopting this? What if you're in a culture that is not ready for this, but you're a leader that wants to? Is it still valuable enough to do it within the team that you have and do have control over?

Marc Haine: Absolutely. Even, even if you're in a culture, like I've worked in municipalities and municipalities tend to be highly siloed. And so the community and economic development department that I was working with, we managed to do this. We managed, you know, through the recognizing who are moral leaders were and who are high trust leaders were within the department, we were able to create this beautiful amalgamation of brilliance within this one department to the point where other departments started looking and going, well, how come they're like this?

Like, how come they're so happy and how come they're so... and, and it actually became a bone of contention for other managers who didn't have the same kind of performance level because ultimately when performance gets rewarded, who's shining the highest right? And ultimately, the people who were in this particular department were winning awards provincially and nationally on the, on the stage, and they were being recognized for the work that they were doing within the different associations, whether it was family, children's services or economic development or whatever, and they were being recognized ongoing. But they were the only people within the group of this particular municipalities who were winning those awards.

Russel Lolacher: And as a leader, you have to lead. At the end of the day, it's about being a leader has to lead. They can't wait for, you know, the right circumstances, the right culture, the right, they have to influence what they can influence and they need to do that sooner than later.

Marc Haine: A lot of times you get the excuse, we're not ready for this, or we don't have the capacity for it. That's kind of like saying, I want to have a baby, but we're not ready. A baby happens, and you'll be ready. If you determine that that's what's going to happen. And it's the same thing, same thing with leadership.

If you decide, I'm not happy with the environment as the department head, or I'm not happy with the environment I'm seeing, I'm not happy with the, with all the gossip at the water cooler and all the backstabbing competition based agendas that I have individually and I need to do something about that, that is, that's the red flag.

That's the flag that you're planting in the soil right then and there saying things have got to change. And if you are the department leader and you're not doing it, nobody else can.

Russel Lolacher: And to your earlier point, when we first started talking, employees are starving for leaders to take their journey seriously. And we can't do that if we're just doing onboarding and then forgetting the promises we made when they started.

Marc Haine: Absolutely. If all you're doing is doing the onboarding, getting them to read the 300 page manual, sign off on the employment agreement, hand them off to somebody else and say, just shadow this person for a few days and we'll catch up to you in a month, and then you don't, and then you have an annual evaluation where all of a sudden you're blindsiding people with details about their job that they had no inclination or no knowledge of.

And it's like, really? Oh, so you're judging my performance on the same scale as you're, you're judging my appearance that I dress professionally. One out of five, five out of five performance. Five out of five, or even worse, four out of five. Why can't I get a five? Well, because we don't give fives to anybody for

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, no,

Marc Haine: Nobody's perfect,

Russel Lolacher: There's always room for improvement, Marc. There's always room for improvement.

Marc Haine: Right? It's, it's like how, like these are environments that morally shatter individuals time and time and time again.

Russel Lolacher: So let's end on a positive note. Marc. Thank you for this. I've loved this conversation. As you know, I'm a big supporter of the journey and understanding that it is a holistic one. So I love talking to somebody that sort of making my brain on fire. But I want to finish up with the one question I do ask, which is what's one simple action, Marc, people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?

Marc Haine: To do right now is say hello to your employees. Make eye contact, stop, walk the floor, care about your people. You know, I went through a whole big unionization of an organization, of a casino because people felt that the management was so different from the employees. And when you looked at the habit of this particular manager, he walked in, went up the escalator, went to his office, didn't say boo to anybody.

And at the very least you're surrounded. If you're, if you own a business or you're kind of the CEO of something, you have managers at different levels, find a way to bleed in information to you so that when you walk the floor, you can turn around and you can say, Oh Donna congratulations. So when are you due?

As opposed to, oh my God, you know, we're going to have to replace Donna in a couple of months because now we have somebody on maternity leave. Make eye contact, stop, and actually listen to your people. Number one.

Russel Lolacher: That is Marc Haine. He is a customer and employee strategist, keynote speaker, and author of the pretty fantastic book, Lights, Camera, Action, Using the Lessons of Live Theater to Drive Ownership, Increase Engagement, and Provide a Superior Customer Service. Thanks so much for being here, Marc.

Marc Haine: It's been wonderful. Thanks for having me.