Janine Hamner Holman  
less than 10% of managers have ever been trained in how to manage. So, you know, we have all of these people in management who don't know what they're doing because they've never been taught not their fault. But you know, we just like we parent either like our parents or different from our parents. We manage like a boss or not like a boss

Jeff Ma  
Hello and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories with real people about real business in real life. My guest today is Janine Hamner Holman and Janine is an internationally recognized speaker, Best Selling Author and expert on what it takes to attract and retain world class talent, organizational cultural change and development, conscious leadership, leading in a virtual workspace diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, psychological safety at work and emotional intelligence. And I think I'll need to create separate episodes for each one of those who knows. But as CEO of the j&j Consulting Group, Janine brings more than 30 years of experience to the stage. For her consulting, workshops, keynote speaking and trainings, Janine uses scientifically validated strategies and tools to build high performance teams, enhance organizational functioning, and develop organizations and leaders with whom everyone wants to work. She is the author of the newly released book, Mind the Gap lessons in 21st century conscious leadership, as well as a contributing author to the best selling books, Mission matters, world's leading entrepreneurs reveal their top tips to success, and on the shoulders of mighty women. And, of course, she's also the host of the podcast, the cost of not paying attention. So Janine, it's wonderful to have you here with me today. How are you doing? Ah,

Janine Hamner Holman  
I am thrilled to be here with you today, Jeff. And it's it's so funny, you know, sort of hearing all of those things I kept wanting to say like, stop, stop, because we, we humans, we get self conscious in those kinds of, of intros. And it also got me thinking about how easily we can take ourselves out, we can take ourselves down, we can have impostor syndrome pop in. And, and so I just got to have an opportunity to just like, okay, he's saying all these things, they're, you know, they're all true, it feels like, feels like a lot of it feels really long, but I just get to present and not wigged out about, about hearing all of that about myself.

Jeff Ma  
I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. But impostor or not. You're a valuable guests here today. Because there's so much there's so much I want to ask you about. And before I get a chance to dive in, I first want to hear about you, when you hear about Janine and what your passion really centers around. And if you don't mind, how you arrived in your life to that passion.

Janine Hamner Holman  
Ah, we only have about 25 minutes. So I realized, actually, about when I was, was contemplating leaving my last job where I was working for somebody else, and going out on my own, I realized that sort of the through line in my life had been that I am on a mission, to have the world of work, be one in which everyone can thrive. And, and all of those words in there are, are important. And I think for me, there, there was a turning point where I started my career. Initially, I wanted to be an attorney, and I went and I worked in a couple of really big law firms in New York City and realized, oh, no, this is not what I want to do. And so did a teeny pivot and went to work for social change nonprofit organizations, for almost the next 20 years of my career. And early on in that career, I had this opportunity where I was working as a community organizer in the Bed Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, which this was in the mid to late 1980s. It was a pretty rough place back then. And there was this one day where we were looking at the state of public schools in Brooklyn, which was a very interesting place to look at public schools, because there were some great ones. And there were some really not great ones. And so I was, I was in Bed Stuy and there was this school, and it was raining that day. And I walked in. And almost the first thing I came to was a classroom of first graders, except they'd run out of classroom space. And so this classroom was happening in a hallway. And it was raining, and there was like water coming in the ceiling. And the teacher had put the ABCs, up above the door jamb. And her kids running around, and I thought, if I were five, or maybe six, and sitting in a hole, and trying to learn how to read, what would the trajectory of my life be? And, you know, when we're in our early 20s, we still have a lot of that righteous indignation. And I remember thinking like, this is not the country that I, I think we have here like, what, what is happening. And so I got really interested in how to create systemic change, and how to get at things at their root. And so when I started my business, I was really interested in how to address some of the challenges that organizations have at their roots, and not what we often do, which is, you know, we pop off the top of the dandelion, and we think we've gotten that, or we check a box, because we know, we're supposed to be doing something about this diversity thing. So we we better do something. And often in that situation, what we end up doing, what organizations end up doing, causes more harm than good. And, and so I got really interested in how do we how do we address some of these things, so that everyone can have a world of work in which they can thrive. Which is why there's that whole word salad of things that that I do that you read in the beginning?

Jeff Ma  
Well, that word salad happens to be, you know, a good page out of the most important book, I know, I subscribed to which is, you know, these are these are some important things. And, you know, that's that change at a deeper level, is I think the the movement that's happening in the world right now, which may take you know, I hope to see it in my lifetime. Who knows, right? But it's such an important time right now to be in the workforce. And, and being a part of any culture because it's changing. As we've seen, people want different things, and we're doing different things. We're trying different things. And I know that you and and your business are really kind of at the tip of the spear here. When it comes to a lot of that stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that landscape and how you view it?

Janine Hamner Holman  
Yeah, so I had an opportunity. Just last week, I was on the global Chamber of Commerce. And and I was talking about how, in my opinion experience, we are in this perfect storm that like any perfect storm, we did not see coming. And it has to do with a couple of key things. One is there massive demographic shifts that are happening. You know, we've got the Baby Boomers, and the Gen Xers who are our, you know, the baby boomers are mostly retired, there are now about 10% of the workforce. And the Gen Xers are mostly the folks in sort of senior positions in organizations. And then we have the millennials and the Gen Z's who are coming up after them. And, you know, every every generation throws shade On the generation that's coming after them, and there's been a lot of shade thrown on millennials, and the thing that I think is so brilliant about this generation is that they are completely unwilling to put up with the kind of nonsense that I put up with, in jobs, they are unwilling to work for a manager who's toxic, they are unwilling to do work that has no meaning for them, you know, they, they have these great values, and the the Gen Z's who are coming up after them, at least in the United States, this is the first generation that does not identify a majority of them as white. White people are less than 50% of Gen Z. And so we've got this big shift happening. We also are, you know, are we out, I'm not sure. But you know, we're at the end, hopefully, of this COVID pandemic. And the heart of what that created were, were totally new conversations about work. So that people that you would not expect, were suddenly having conversations about, like, I need work life balance. And I'm not a fan of that word balance in that context, I think harmony is a much better word, because you're never like, the seesaw is always going to be going one way or the other. But when we can create harmony, when we can create, you know, a work life connection that works for you, then then we got it. And it also because so many people were at least for some period of time, not working. It gave people an opportunity to really think because we were in this health crisis, about what's important, and what are what are my values? And how do I want? How do I want to work. And then we've got all of the social movements, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, the me to movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, we've got all of this social movements that are that are coming together. And so we have, you know, these three really big things that are creating this pressure on organizations, to have managers who are well trained managers, and as I know, you know, you know, less than 10% of managers have ever been trained in how to manage. So, you know, we have all these people in management, who don't know what they're doing, because they've never been taught not their fault. But you know, we just like we parent, either like our parents, or different from our parents, we manage, like a boss or not like a boss. And, and this concept of boss is really changing. You know, people want somebody who's much more of a coach and a mentor, and somebody who cares about them as a human being and not just a producer of work and cares about, you know, how their life is and what their trajectory is going to be at this company or someplace else. And if I tell the truth, I mean, that's what I've always wanted to, like, those are great things to want. I just wasn't willing to quit my job if I didn't get them. And that's the thing that's fundamentally different about this generation, is when they don't get what they paid, they will leave.

Jeff Ma  
What uh, you know, I asked the question, not knowing where you'd go, but you gave one of the best breakdowns and summaries of what's going on I've ever heard. Fantastic. Yeah. I have a I have a close friend colleague of mine, who she she, she always calls me boss, just to mess with me because she was like, we live in a world where that's kind of cringy it's like, she's always like, got it boss. And I'm like, I'm not your boss. And because I used to be I hired her long ago. We are now close colleagues, but she still messes me and it gets on my nerves. And you just you brought that up. Give me so. So full disclosure, when looking through your list of you know, impostor syndrome triggers But one thing that stood out to me and I wanted to kind of pick your brain around is the what I consider the longest four letter word, psychological safety. So to set it up to set up the stage, why I'm curious about is because obviously, in my work, it is not the end all be all, but it's definitely a sign of where you're at. If you have it, or you don't, it kind of correlates one to one with your culture. But that's what it is, it's more of a, it's more of a symptom or an outcome. But it's often treated as a is the way I put it is if you walk into a room and say the word psychological safety, you suck all the psychological safety out of that room. And, you know, it's like this, it's like this problem you're chasing? Yeah, but you cannot go at it directly. Right? At least that's, that's how I see it. Because it's made up of so many other things to create psychological safety, if you just walk around and say, We need psychological safety now, it's it's literally the opposite effect. Right. And so I was curious, I was hoping you could first kind of, I guess, give me your kind of maybe, you know, 30,000 foot, take on psychological safety in the workplace. And we'll start from there, because I'd love to pick your brain around it.

Janine Hamner Holman  
Alright, so just a little bit of background, in case anybody doesn't know, this term psychological safety was really coined by Amy Edmondson who is a professor at the Harvard Business School. And she was studying actually what was happening in hospitals, and looking at rates of mortality, connected to what she termed as psychological safety, which is essentially, is it safe for me to raise my hand, have a question, say, Hmm, I think I see it a different way, or I have a concern about this, or I think we may be going down the wrong path. Like and, and saying any of those things in in, you know, a stereotypical operating room where we've got doctors and nurses, very hierarchical system. What she realized is that when that is present, when a nurse can say, Doc, we're supposed to be on the left knee, and you're looking at the right knee right now, or, like, you left a sponge in or you know, what, whatever it is, that can have really profound outcomes. And then it got important because people started looking at like, Hmm, this is this is interesting, and, and there's so many things baked into it. And so the way that I think about it, and this is just a new construct, actually, that I've come to in the last couple of weeks, is that in order for organizations to have success, in order for organizations to be places in which everyone can thrive, in order to have top and bottom line profitability, in order to carry out their mission, whatever that is, organizations have to be okay to fail, we've got to transform our relationship to failure. In order to transform our relationship with failure, we've got to have psychological safety, it's got to be okay. To it's got to be safe. In order to feel safe, we have to have trust, in order to have trust, we have to have connectivity. And, and so I that's, that's what I've come to recent, my current working up, sort of operational theory is that like, that's, that's the secret sauce. And that's the way that psychological safety comes into, into the mix. So that it's not, you know, and a part of psychological safety is trust, a part of psychological safety is connectivity, a part of psychological safety, is having it be okay to make mistakes. It's also interesting, you know, when we're talking at the foundation of it, then is connectivity. Another word for connectivity could be love. So you know, it. It's coming in part of what I love about this moment in time is that we have all of these folks who are looking at this problem and coming up with all kinds of different permutations about what can what can be done, how how do we, how do we transform the world of work, because, like, that's, that's a big thing to be taken on. And, you know, certainly, I'm not doing it all by myself, I'm doing it, you know, in partnership with people like you and, and hundreds of 1000s of practitioners throughout the world, and companies and organizations that are taking this on. And so. So that's, that's how I see psychological safety as being embedded in this work. That helpful.

Jeff Ma  
100%, and, again, incredibly well summarized, you have a great knack for it, and I couldn't agree more, I, you hit it right in the head, and where you said, connectivity, I automatically inserted love. But you know, love itself then breaks down into so many different elements in a workplace. So my question is around, then how, and, and the caveat here is, obviously, by building all the other things that we just mentioned. But, you know, I'm curious, your take on, you know, whose responsibility is it? What does that look like, practically in a workplace? And how do you know, if you're doing it, right?

Janine Hamner Holman  
So whose responsibility is it? It's, it's everyone's responsibility. But one of the one of the challenges, one of the pitfalls that organizations sometimes fall into is, is thinking that an initiative that sounds like what we're talking about, well, that sounds like HR. And so you know, HR is going to own this. The problem with doing that is that in most organizations, HR is not part of the C suite. You know, occasionally it is, but usually it is not. I also, I also think that it's an opportunity for transformation in organizational structure. If it's not part of the C suite, it is usually accountable, either to the CFO, in which case, you've got an inherent problem between money and people, you have a constant battle, that you are that you are building into the structure of your organization. How do we pit money against people, bad calm, not not the right conversation, not not a productive conversation to be having. So if, or they're accountable to like the chief attorney, or you know, put them in the C suite. So but usually they're not. And so then you have a part of the organization that was established, in order to protect the organization from its people. That's the history of HR HR was established in order to protect organizations from retaliation from their own people. So you have a department that is transforming as well, because most people these days are in HR, because they want people to have a great experience at work. And yet there are these old vestiges in in many organizations of that lineage of that history. And so, where it's got to live, as in be driven from is leadership. If leadership is not 100%, bought in your you're not ultimately going to go anywhere. And then it is the opportunity and the obligation of all folks in the organization than to take it on. I'm working with an organization right now on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And one of the things that we established very quickly was that even though the impetus from this is coming from HR, what we need to do is ensure that there's buy in at the leadership level, which you know, it starts with Okay, so, what are these words mean? diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, what are we what are we talking about here? And then people with people who live that work, there's all of these other words intersectionality and you know, there's all of these words that get sort of tossed around So you've got to ground it with the leadership. And in my opinion, my experience, you've got to also grounded in the mission vision values of the organization. Because if it does not connect to the mission, vision values of the organization, ultimately, it's going to become just a thing that we did at some point. And it's not going to have, it's not going to have sticking and staying power.

Jeff Ma  
Of slowly. And, you know, I think many organizations, especially as we talked about, we're in a moment, we're in a time of change. And so you're seeing organizations, trying all kinds of things, doing all kinds of things differently, to varying levels of success. But one of the biggest pitfalls I'm, I'm seeing is around the gap between leadership buy in Mission values and statements, things like that, and behavior, actual, actual living out, and you see it end up doing way more harm, to say, we're going to love each other, we're going to trust each other, we're going to, we're going to do all these things, and your leadership is bought in and here are the new values and your leaders are behind you all the way. And these leaders in reality, see themselves outside of the problem. They're rolling, they're rolling out an initiative for everybody else. They're funding the new, you know, Director, you know, C suite level person that's overseeing D AI. And problem, problem solved, sign the check. And we are good. And, and it's subtle, in some cases. But it's apparent, because psychological safety, and really culture for that matter, you know, lives more in a smile in an elevator than it does in a statement on a wall. So, you know, trying to get to a question here, because I'm just, I'm also just, you know, word vomiting out right now. But the question I have for you then is, you're nodding so my first question was, do you see that as well? And I'm gonna assume you do. So the follow up? Question is, how do you address behavior? How do you address leadership behavior?

Janine Hamner Holman  
So the first thing that I do is, is we is work with leadership to get really clear on actually I start with values before before mission, I start with values, because values are what's lived out every day in the organization. And, and I asked them, so tell me, all right, so your value is authenticity to take a word that's thrown around a lot these days. Great. What does that mean? How do I know if someone in this organization is being authentic? What does that look like? Here? What's your evidence that that is, in fact, one of your values? Tell me about some times when people have been authentic or inauthentic? And what does that look like? Tell me about a time that you were in authentic. And, and what happened. And so I worked to get them to really both figure out what what do we mean, you know, we we have integrity here. Well, find me an organization that's gonna say, Yeah, we have no integrity. People lie, cheat, steal, it's all good here. Like, No, you're not going to ever find an organization that's proud of their lack of integrity. But what does integrity mean, here? And how do we know? And what do you do? What do you do, Jeff, that has people feel your integrity. If as a leader of an organization, and that's one of your values, you can't tell me a story about that, or a story about some time when you realized, Oh, crap, what I what I am doing or trying to do, or intending to do is actually out of alignment with that value. Because, you know, I have all sorts of values. And and then sometimes I find myself doing things and you know, I've been doing the work long enough. Usually I catch myself at some point and say, Oh, wait, I can't, I can't do that. That's, that's not in alignment with my values. And so, if if you can't tell me a story about a time when you started down a path, maybe even only for 20 seconds And then your own mind, and then realize, Oh, crap, I can't do that. That's trying to save myself that's trying to look good. That's trying to, you know, do all the things that as humans do, then then either it's an aspirational value, which is okay. But then again, we get to grapple with what does that look like? What does that feel like? And then we check in on it, and then we work with the whole organization on it. You know, when when you say, Okay, so these are our values, integrity, and fun and authenticity, and, you know, whatever they are. And then you roll it out to your people. And you start doing some polling and some work groups around that, and, and some anonymous stuff, and people are rolling their eyes and like, yeah, that's not what it's like to work here. Alright, so now we have an opportunity. Now we get to figure out, so tell me about how we're not living that value every day? And what would it look like if we did? And what would your part of that be? Because, you know, just like, the previous generation loves to throw shade on the next generation coming up, people love to say, oh, yeah, that's not what we do here. Well, so then what could you do? That would move that ball forward? is a conversation that that often catches people flat footed? Because that's, that's not how we're socialized. We point out problems. We don't think about how am I the solution. And that's, that's part of what it takes to create organizational change.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. I love it. And it was one of those rare moments when I really regret deciding to make this podcast 30 minute episodes, because I've got a laundry list of questions and about eight more topics I want to cover. So if you're listening and you want, you want more Janine like I do, please write me write in, leave, leave some feedback. And I'm gonna bribe her to come back and continue some of this conversation. But in the meantime, Janine, thank you so much the time flew by with your wisdom and just the way you're, you're tying a bow on so many of these topics in such a really understandable and really, really comprehensible way. It's awesome. It's a gift. So don't, you know, don't feel awkward, but you're incredible. It's awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1  
You're You're so welcome. And part of part of what's great as we get to continue this conversation in a month and a half or so, when you and Chris are coming on my podcast.

Jeff Ma  
Yes, we are will be joining the cost of not paying attention, which I'm sure everyone will tune into as well. So Janine, that's our time. But to be continued. And thank you so much for your your wisdom and your time today. It's meant a lot. And to our listeners, thank you to you, as always, I'm sure you have already. But if you haven't, please check out the book love as a business strategy. And check out your needs book Mind the Gap lessons in 21st century conscious leadership. And with that, we're out of time. So thank you, everybody. Have a wonderful week, and we'll see you next time.