Authenticity Starts with Who You Hire

This is part 3 of a 4-part conversation on authentic leadership.

Team culture begins before day one. 

In this episode, executive coach, author, and former Disney exec Jim Fielding reveals how authenticity shows up in the hiring process, how to build trust through vulnerability, and why showing up as a fully human leader sets the tone for every team interaction. From performance conversations to “espresso machine culture,” Jim explains what real empowerment looks like — and how to create workplaces where people actually want to belong.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: That I love that impact of that. So we've talked about us understanding authenticity for ourselves and really digging into it. Now we bring authenticity into the workplace.

Jim Fielding: Mm-hmm.

Russel Lolacher: Engaging, working with other people. How does a leader's authenticity, good or bad impact workplace culture?

Jim Fielding: Well, I think the leader, and again, it doesn't matter if you're leading a team of two, 20, 2000, the leader sets the tone, right? And we've, we've said this for years, all the classic leadership books, management by walking around, walk the walk, talk the talk, right? The leader sets the mission, the vision, the tone of the culture for sure.

I also think the company sets the tone of culture, right? Because there's a company culture that you're leading within, especially for me, 'cause I always worked at big companies. So Disney had a culture, Dreamworks had a culture. I was just operating my own mini culture within the bigger culture. I think I set the tone again, back to the interview, back to the recruiting, back to the onboarding.

I set the tone by being like who they saw in the interviews, right? Being who they saw in meetings, large meeting, large group meetings, small group meetings, one-on-ones, and by them seeing that I was emotional, that I was a human being. I had good days, I had bad days, and I wasn't hiding in my office on the bad days.

You, you instantly through almost osmosis are setting a tone that like, okay, he's serious about what he said. And you know what, we talked about hiring earlier and people are so shocked by this, and it didn't matter even when I was CEO of Claire's, there was a certain level of hire and I had to change it based on what my title was and how many employees I had. But, so it Claire's, director and above was the, the level I went to. I, there was not a director or above in the field or in home base that I was not part of the interview process on. Now I wanna be clear, it often meant they were down to two candidates and they'd give me the finalists, the two finalists, and I'd spend 15 minutes with each of them. And then I would make my opinion. But in many cases I was not the final opinion. The hiring manager was the final opinion. But what that 15 minutes did Russel meant that I had a personal connection to that employee from their interview, and my questions in the interview were not technical or could they do the job because I knew if they got to me that he already cleared all the hurdles about their ability to do the job.

My questions were, tell me about, tell me a story about yourself. Tell me something that would surprise me about you. Tell me what you, without violating finding out their age or their children's status, or anything like that. Like tell me what, tell me what you do for fun on the weekends. Like I wanted to know something personal about them because if they got the job and they started, I was able to know their name and I had something in my memory bank to say, oh, he plays soccer on the weekends. He's on an adult soccer team. To me, that was the culture. And I also like doing it because I'm a people person. In other companies, I would do manager level and above, depending on the size of the team.

And at Fox, you know, when I took the job as President of Consumer Products and Experience at Fox, I think we had 60 open positions, like the team was like, had been decimated. So that was a lot of meetings, but I really felt it eight, 12 months later because I, I had been so personally involved in the, the creating of that.

And I'm not saying it was like my way or the highway. It wasn't like there, that's what I'm saying. Oh, he's a gym person. No, you weren't about a gym person. It was, I wanted to know about what made you tick as a human being, not... again, if you got to that point, you could technically do the job. Like it wasn't a question of could you do accounting?

Russel Lolacher: But not everybody can go, Hey Jim, the CEO, can you sit down on this hiring panel? So is there some way and, and not all, I'll be blunt, a lot of CEOs are crap. They're not good. They're, when it comes to this people soft skill stuff.

Jim Fielding: I think, yeah, I would cha yeah, I would challenge, I would challenge the CEO. Like again, if you, if you don't have the time, like figure out what level, maybe it's senior vice president above that you wanna be involved in right at your company. But with technology now and Zoom and stuff, you can find 15 minutes in your day for key hires. I mean, you really can. I'm not saying you have to be in person, especially, I had global responsibility. I had direct reports in Japan and China and Europe. I didn't sit down in person with every person, but I definitely did a Zoom or a teams meeting because then when I did go to their market. And meet 'em in person. There was that little glint of recognition and something would be in my memory. So I, I would say a, a leader, again, depending on their role, depending on the size of their organization, they have to decide at what level. But I think it should be farther than just your direct reports.

Obviously as a leader you hire your direct reports, but I even if you can only do your direct reports, direct reports, okay. You know, that is still setting the tone.

Russel Lolacher: How do you know your organization is broken in this way? How do you know it's an inauthentic leadership organization? To, to be able to have to, you know, we should all be intentional. We should all sure it is. But we sometimes can't see the train running at us down the tunnel, see? Ooh, pretty lights.

And we don't really realize...

Jim Fielding: You, you know, Russel, I know your experience. You'll know, I mean, you'll start to see it in performance, like maybe numbers will start to suffer. You'll start to see it in, you'll feel it in meetings, virtual meetings or in person meetings like the, these undercurrents of something being off. You might even witness it if you're in an office environment where you're seeing little conflicts between different functions, right?

Creative arguing with finance or finance arguing with planning. You again, if you are worth the job that you're in, which is a leader of people, right? If you're, then you have to be doing active listening and you have to be doing active watching, and that's where that whole management by walking around comes in.

If you come into your office every day, and I'm putting office in quotes, even if your office is at home and you don't put on your active listening ears or your active watching ears, then again, I don't think you're doing your job as a leader because you have to be doing temperature checks. And is it more challenging in a remote work environment?

Yes. Is it more challenging in a hybrid work environment? Yes. Most of my career, my teams were, for the most part in an office that I was in. And if I needed to, I could say, Hey, everybody at 1:00 PM today, please meet in the conference room. We're gonna have a conversation. You can still do that. It's just, you know, virtual.

And then with these offices coming back, you know, two or three days a week, I keep saying to people even that I'm coaching, make sure when they do come back in the office that you're giving them time to be together and be collaborative. Because if they come in and they're just sitting on their headphones and Zoom calls all day, then they're gonna want to do that from home. I think human beings, I have a fundamental belief, people can disagree, I think human beings by nature are communal animals. Some people aren't. But I'd say for the most part, we actually like to be in community. And I always use, as an example, movie theaters. You know, Russel, I was in media for a long time.

They, we talked about the death of the movie theater, right? Streaming and Blu-ray DVDs and a hundred inch TVs and home theater systems. Were gonna kill movie theaters. Last time I looked, post pandemic, good movies that are made for movie theaters are packed. And it's why, because we like that collective experience.

A horror film, a musical drama. You like that collective experience of being in community even with people you don't know and you all gasp at the same time, or you all laugh at the same time. There's something we really like about that. I think it's why live theater is doing well in, you know, Broadway, West End. Especially post pandemic, I think human beings crave connection and I think we crave being in community. I'm saying the majority, I know there's people who absolutely love isolation. Good for them. I'm saying the majority of human beings like to be in community.

Russel Lolacher: That's fair. That's fair. And I think to your point earlier, being a vulnerable leader, being an authentic leader also models behavior so other people feel safe psychologically to go, oh, that's, that's an okay to way to show up. Well, I, I can do that as well. I, I, I think that is beneficial at the team level.

I think it's beneficial at the organizational level. Obviously at the team level you have a bit more connection because it's direct. But as the organization you're like, oh, okay. And I don't mean executives, sometimes I think the ship has sailed on a lot of executives because they've been rewarded for not having to be humans just deliverable.

They, but I think at every level, if you can show up authentically, it sets the blueprint for others to feel safe to be so as well. So I love that.

Jim Fielding: Completely. And Russel, I have a quick authenticity story for your listeners that I think you'll love because it's from my time at Fox. I had a manager level to your point, but she had a team of four people, high performing manager, somebody we really, really believed in. She started to leave the office quote early, like around 3:30 or 4:00, and it, after a couple weeks, it became an issue with her team and I, she did not report directly to me.

She reported to one of my direct reports and I said to my direct report, let's sit down with her because something's going on. We pulled her in. She looked nervous like she was gonna get in trouble, and we said, I'm not gonna use her name, but we said, employee X. What's going on? Like your team is noticing you're leaving early, you've been kind of absent in the afternoons.

You've been missing four o'clock meetings, and she said, and again, this was her authenticity. I'm going through a divorce. I haven't told you guys this yet. I'm a mother of four. I'm now a single mother of four, and I have to leave early to pick my kids up from school and daycare because of the commute in Los Angeles. Literally the mood in the room changed, so it was not a performance issue. And I said to her, and this goes back to being vulnerable, I said, did you tell your team that? Not the whole story, but did you just tell your team you have childcare issues? And she said, no, I didn't think that was appropriate. I said, oh, I fundamentally disagree. I don't think it's about privacy. You need to pull your team together and say, Hey, there's some changes going on in my life and I'm now in charge of pickup after school, and until I get my daycare situation worked out, I'm going to be come... because she was coming in earlier.

That was the thing. She was coming in at 7:00 AM but nobody was there. They didn't see her. And she literally said to her team, for the next period, I'm gonna be working like 7:00 to 3:30 instead of our quote, normal nine to five. Instantly, the mood of that team changed. Instantly. Because she was honest and vulnerable and she had an issue going on in her life she had to take care of, and they didn't pry, they didn't get personal, but then they stopped the judging.

You know what I'm saying? Like I think that's, and that was her authenticity for that period. She was going through a breakup. She was now a single mother. That's her story.