Understanding Yourself and Your People to Create Positive, Healthy Environments

Tatyana St. Germain is a brilliant woman who focuses on providing guidance and coaching using development assessments, talent optimization tools and so much more. She is a straightforward, no-nonsense person and in today’s world we need more people helping companies and leaders have the hard conversations. Tatyana is amazing at her craft and this is a conversation that you won't want to miss.

 

Leighann Lovely  00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely. Let's get this conversation started.

 

Leighann Lovely  01:09

Today is going to be a great episode. I have an amazing guest joining me today. Tatyana St. Germain is the founder and CEO of Great People Management, a consulting firm that offers hiring and development assessments, talent optimization tools, and leadership and executive coaching. Tatianna believes that people are the foundation of every business, but the right people are the backbone of a successful business. She has helped over 1000 organizations across the US, Canada, Europe and Asia, develop their leaders and establish sustainable and cost effective systems to select, retain and develop the right people who get results and smash the competition. With over 20 years of business, corporate, and international experience. She is an expert in understanding and solving complex people challenges in the workplace, including selection, onboarding, turnover and retention, her integrity her unique perspective, valuable insight, keen observation, and a no nonsense approach attracts companies who demand results, who strive to always be better, make smarter decisions about their people and increase effectiveness of their managers and teams. Tatiana's background spans a variety of fields, linguistics, international relations, training, teaching, recruiting, business development, strategic planning, service excellence, and CEO roundtable facilitation. She is a vintage trust advisor and an avid networker when she is not connecting people or trends, forming organizations. She enjoys making wine, cooking, reading, camping, gardening, stargazing, traveling and RVing around the country with her family. Tatiana, thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  03:16

Thank you for having me on Leighann.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:19

So why don't you start off by telling me a little bit about yourself.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  03:24

Alright, well, my name is Tatyana. I am an executive coach of 100 and CEO of great people management. I work with corporations to help them ensure that they have the right people in the right positions. So sort of in talent advisory role, as well as working with executives and leaders in management at the management level, and all the way to CEO, coaching them and providing leadership development and team development services as well.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:55

That's awesome. Now you, you specialize in actually using assessment tools to, you know, help with reviewing employees and doing a lot of your coaching or in I'm sorry, doing a lot of your work with these individuals and these companies, I should say, not individuals. Tell me a little bit about, you know, how you utilize these assessments and how that can be effective.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  04:23

Well, what's interesting, and you kind of mentioned this already, I work with both individuals and companies. Okay. So in what I'm finding in my consulting practice is what we're lacking is information. I know we're surrounded by information, but there's a lot of noise. And what we're not focusing is information about people, individual people, and it's a really powerful piece of data, very scientific piece of piece of data that psychometric assessments provide, and when you can measure somebody and know exactly what makes them tick, understand their story. some weaknesses, understand what motivates them understand their full potential, then as a hiring manager, as a leader, you can make a much better, more informed decision. What position to put this person in? Will they be a good fit for this role? Will they be a good fit for this team? How will I, as a leader, as a manager work with this individual? And so this information can be used both on the hiring side, on post hire promotional decisions, any human decision in the workplace, is it's extremely important to make it as precise as possible. So we're not It's not like a flip of the coin. Who do I hire today? Well, who do I promote today? Or how do I put a project team together? A lot of times, it's just intuition you're guessing. And some leaders are better at it than others. Most people, it's kind of by the seat of their pants, it's based on observed behavior. They're making some inferences, make some assumptions, and hope for the best, essentially. And it's, it becomes very frustrating when it starts to cut into the company bottom line, when you were lacking engagement, when productivity is not up to par, when you you wake up one day, and we realize your entire team is just a bunch of mediocre performers. What are you going to do about it? And or what's even more frustrating to COVID, we a lot of organizations experienced this, people just left. So turnover issues that cuts into the bottom line, it's extremely costly. In other words, not to have the right people in the right positions. And going back to your question, that's what employee assessments help us to really reduce costs, improve lives of humans in the workplace, because they are happy in their jobs. And when people are happy in their jobs, they make companies that make they do great stuff. And sometimes I just educate organizations and HR professionals, I do webinars and in person events, seminars, telling them about different assessment tools, because there's 1000s of them out there. And other times I actually get involved with my clients and help them implement assessment products for different initiatives.

 

Leighann Lovely  07:31

So in let me just swipe, so we get some clarification. So on these assessments, and let's, I guess, take one, for example. The DISC assessment, when you're grabbing this information, how do you turn that information into usable, understandable data that a hiring manager, for instance, can use to make an informed decision on whether or not this employee is going to or how to, you know, train this employee? Or how to, I guess, how do you turn that data into real, tangible information that can be or it maybe it's not a DISC assessment? Maybe I'm calling out the wrong one. But how do you how do you translate that so that it can actually be made? Because there's a ton of information on there a ton of you know, here's what they're strong at, here's what they're weak at, but how does it How does it then translate to be usable, functional, functional information that can then be valuable?

 

Tatyana St. Germain  08:47

Tunable insights, is what you're looking for. So that's part of the reason why I focus so much on assessments that produce those actionable insights that anyone in the company can pick up and make a better decision. So there's no guesswork, there's no interpretation, because whenever you involve humans in interpretation, you're introducing bias. And on the hiring side, it's well, it's a very litigious environment. So we don't want to introduce that personal bias, we want to remove personal bias from the hiring process. We can not remove it completely because at some point in the hiring process, you have a face to face interview with a bunch of folks potentially, so that that is still a human to human interaction. But when we are measuring people you have to as an organization, you have to ensure that you use tools, psychometric assessment tools that are specifically validated for pre employment, and just because not one of them. This is according to Department of Labor, and there's over 4000 disc type assessments on the market. So the good ones I'll take a will tell you it's in their technical manual implementation guides. The disc is not used for hiring, because it does not have the job matching capability. It measures their contents. But post employment, I use disk, it's very useful for team building, and for onboarding, and for in terms of actionable insights. So depending on what type of dispute use, I use a lot of quietly products and their disk actually produces actionable insights, or reports that again, managers can take and run with it. And include that as part of their onboarding process as part of their team building exercise, I still recommend a facilitator, such as myself, to do something like that. And I do a lot of team workshops. But again, this is kind of a fallback for my practice, I use normative assessment tools. I'm not sure if you want me to call them out or not.

 

Leighann Lovely  11:02

It's, I'm, you can call out whatever you want. I'm, an island over here.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  11:10

Okay. So I use again, it's a widely tool, PST select, assessment, and a couple of others to Lexis tool, and I recommend my clients, there's a few other tools that are a little more expensive and more cumbersome to use, not scalable, but they're also very effective, scientifically based assessments. They measure the total person. And you know, when I get this question quite a bit, so what's the difference between disk and px T? Other than those actionable insights, right, in the hiring, that post hire, what's the real difference? How differently does it measure an individual. And somebody recently, one of my colleagues said, Imagine the disk is like an x ray. And px T is like an MRI. So it goes deeper, broader, and measures the whole person. So that's the that's really the big difference.

 

Leighann Lovely  12:08

Now, before you go on, now, you mentioned a facilitator, because I'm assuming that this information is his own, only as good as the person who's getting the information, right. I mean, I can sit in and read all of this information. But if I don't know what to do with that, it means nothing.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  12:28

Yeah, that's, why I do record when, when budgets are concerned, right, for a lot of people, for a lot of organizations. So it's, it's almost humorous, sometimes when budget is allocated to quote unquote, employee development, or team development. And that budget is only big enough to buy assessments. It's not big enough to hire facilitator, or it's not big enough to take the next step and hire a coach. If there's a need for leadership coaching, or executive coaching. It's kind of like, well, why did we even start down this path? Yes, I absolutely recommend when we're in a situation of team development, leadership, development, et cetera. You cannot leave people to their own devices. It's great information, all assessments I use of those great reports, insightful reports for self awareness for coaching, even self coaching, and how to work better together with other people, how to work better with the whole team, how are we different? How are we similar? But it it's much more fun. When you attended the workshop that I I facilitate, because I add some of that color commentary, I share real life experiences. And then it's an opportunity to, for for the attendees to ask questions, very specific questions, or raise their hand and say, Oh, yes, that's why you're this way. Remember, when we were working on this and that, and you did this? Yes, that makes sense now. So they are learning about each other. It's, that's why it's truly a workshop. And they walk away with more tangible, very applicable personal information that they can then apply in their day to day work interactions with others, but on the hiring side, because it's usually higher volume, and I work with midsize to large organizations. The idea is to empower hiring managers with information from from these job matching reports. And it does not require interpretation because it gives them interview questions. So they don't need to do really anything else. I mean, they can call me for a debrief. I'm always He's available. I couldn't get through quarterly trainings with all of my clients, a lot of refreshers, touch points, I want everyone to be on the same page. But that that part of utilizing assessments for hiring purposes, generates Behavioral Interview Guide, that they can ask those questions and make a better decision.

 

Leighann Lovely  15:24

So something that you said, like really hit me here, you said, you know, after you, you know, work with people, and people walk away going, Oh, wow, that's why you handled something this way. Or that's why you are, you know, this, this way, or whatever. And so I recently took, oh, my gosh, and I'm going to embarrassed, embarrassed myself and not remember what the assessment was. But it's it definitely explained why certain individuals on my previous team were the way that they were. And in doing that, do you find that team members start to become a little bit less stressed, in interaction, and even with each other, not just managers, but team members and having a better understanding of the way that their teammate processes information. And communication opens up a little bit better and people? I mean, I have to imagine that just understanding the way that XYZ coworker handles things, and understanding that can open up huge doors.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  16:42

Well, that's what I love about my job. Every person is unique. We're all born unique and different. And when we look at another unique person, a coworker, or team member, we see differences, we perceive differences, but we see them as difficulties. Because what happens is our fear centers in the brain, the reptilian brain takes over, the amygdala kicks in. And we start to fear the unknown. Because if it's something different, it's a mystery. It's unknown. And we take that personally. And when people act on their differences, that's when conflict, potentially, or we can misinterpret make assumptions. And it can cause conflict, I do get involved with conflict resolution situations as well. And usually boils down to communication. And communication, if we break it down to how it starts, usually is because of those differences. Because of assumptions, I'll give you like a quick example. You can take a person who is extremely skeptical, and then you take a person who's extremely positive and optimistic. And when they come together for meetings, or one on ones or whatever, whatever. Let's say they're working side by side on the project, they're more more skeptical individual is going to ask a lot of questions. Because they don't trust themselves. They have high standards for themselves and others. And they're very vigilant. This is what drives them. And they can come across as negative. And and everybody else on the team, and especially this extremely positive person might might say, Well, gosh, there's so negative, it's really toxic toward me, we start to put labels on this, like, what's what's going on within your life? What's wrong with you, okay, there's something wrong with you. Or they can take a different tack and say, well, they're doing it to me. They're doing it to me. And so that becomes stressful for the positive person. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a skeptical person could look at a positive individual, a trusting individual and say, well, that's their stupid. How can you not ask this question? That's just dumb. So there may be lack of respect. And it all stems from lack of understanding of where we each come from. But once you explain that, this is just somebody's hardwiring, this is their DNA. This person is wired to be optimistic and charismatic. And you know what's great about it? Yes, they can miss some opportunities. But you know what's great about it, they believe in you more than you believe in yourself. And don't you want to surround yourself with people like that? Wow, totally different perspective.

 

Leighann Lovely  19:37

You sound like, this is terrible. what I'm about to say this You sound like a marriage counselor. You sound like my marriage. But it's totally and completely true. You especially when you become really comfortable. For instance, you've been at the same company for a really long time. You know, your coworker you think you know, your coworker or you know, a friend or you, because this happens in human? You know, I've gone back to the marriage because I've been with the same man now for, you know, 10 plus years, right? I assume that I know what he's thinking, that immediately creates conflict. Because the assumption that I know what he's thinking, when he says something to me, is wrong. It's automatically wrong. Because that leads to if he doesn't mean that, and I act on that, then he looks at me and goes, What are you doing? And then I get defensive, right? That is the exact same thing with any other relationship, if you jump to a wall, and that's why I assume, you know, makes an asset to you and me, right? Because, and that. So, so this, you know, in any, in any working situation, if you if you get comfortable, and you start to assume that you know, what people are thinking, or you assume that somebody should act, the way that you act, because that's the only thing that you know, and a lot of people think that that until I really started to get more emotional intelligence and read all of those books and start to, you know, have a better understanding that not everybody thinks the way that I think kind of went Oh, right, because everybody's different. Everybody thinks uniquely, everybody processes information differently, just because I heard it, you know, the same person say something and I processed it in a positive way. Doesn't mean that the other person processed it in a positive could have been like you just said, a skeptical way. So it's, it's, I mean, I can imagine how valuable it is to become aware that you know, of how your coworkers process and understand information. Because on a daily basis, people get ticked off people even driving, somebody cuts you off, you assume that they knew that you were there, right? You assume that they did it on purpose. Nine times out of 10, it was an accident. They didn't mean to do it, because nobody goes out on the road maliciously trying to say, I'm going to piss everybody off on the road today.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  22:32

Yeah, and assumptions. lead to the wrong conclusions. Typically, like you said, and usually we don't assume to the positive, we always assume for the negative, especially with respect to us, okay, somebody's out to get us. Somebody's trying to do something to me. And Steven Covey's Seven Habits mentioned this, I think it was in the sixth habit. I can't recall right now which one it is, but his story about being on the subway train late at night, he assumed that these kids were running around because the Father and the Father was just too bad parent wasn't controlling. But it turned out that they were coming home from the hospital. And the father didn't know how to handle it, because they just lost their mother. Right? You, it takes practice. And the first thing I recommend when I do coaching, my coaching practice, I recommend that leaders or anybody really who I work with, they need to start to observe themselves and catch yourself. That's the first step. Don't try to fix everything. Don't try to stir the ocean. Let's just be more mindful and observant of your own assumptions, and how you react to different stimuli. And then pause, and then ask yourself, is this an assumption? And if it's an if it's an assumption, you say, yes, it's an assumption, I really don't have all the information, you have two options. You either drop it and take things at face value. Or if you really need to know what's going on, what's the intent behind whatever the person did or said, ask them. They'll be passive aggressive, just ask them. You did this, but I don't understand what's behind it. Could you tell me more? being observant of yourself is really a powerful experience. And it took me a long time to get to that point. But I recently experienced this that when you're in that mode, where you observe yourself and you pause and give yourself space and time to catch the assumptions. It makes you less pissed off. When people something that would normally take you off. For example, we were coming home or four of us with the kids. We landed midway, we came home from Florida. It was kind of slow Meeting raining, cold, snowing, whatever it was, it was nasty outside. And the bus driver who took us to the to the parking lot refused to stop at where we parked. She said she's going to the deck to the parking deck. And it was it was literally for her. It was not a big thing. But she refused to stop and refuse even though she was going back by back there. She was not going to take us. She wanted us off the bus. She started screaming, get off the bus. And you know, I've never seen my kids were angry. My, my husband was angry. And he's usually pretty, you know, pretty chill. And all I could think of, yes, it's frustrating. But I thought, what if she lost a family member? What if her son was shot? What if like, we don't know what's going on, and she literally lost, she lost it in that moment. And she was not going to give us any customer service. And yes, we could have taken the number of the bus and her whatever. And, but I felt that piece. Well, my entire family. It was just we were walking her to walk through the snow, sleet to the car. I observed the three of them feel me. And then halfway home, they were fuming about this. But I felt like it really. We were all healthy. We're all together. And we don't know what caused her to lash out like that. Could she just be a major? Bad person? Yes, yes, absolutely. But it has nothing to do with me. And I choose not to take it personally. And I it was such a revelation, I was just at peace. And if we could do this at work, can you imagine what we could accomplish? Then you're productive, because when emotions start to take over, the rational brain shuts down, right? You literally don't hear it's been proven by studies that you can put somebody could be telling you something, and you think you hear you, you cannot repeat what was said, right? Because the heat is rising, and you don't. So emotions, feelings, all of that I deal with with this in my coaching practice, of course. But it all starts with self awareness. And self awareness cannot happen without either decades of self learning and self reflection. Or we can skip decades and squeeze it down to an hour and you take PST select and learn everything you need to know.

 

Leighann Lovely  27:51

You know, and it's and it's so interesting that because it's really interesting when you said that when emotions take over that you don't hear anything? And how often do we find ourselves in situations with our children, for instance, you talk about your family. And first of all, you know, that's an amazing, it's amazing that you, you know, to be able to be in that situation and to be able to allow your rational brain to stay in charge. Because it's it's not easy, especially when you have your family there. And trust me I struggle with that when it's when it comes to my family. You know, it's very hard to keep those emotional, you know, checks and balances. Because you feel that Mama Bear COME OUT, right? You feel that protective. It's sometimes a little bit easier when it's, you know, in a business situation where you're like, Okay, you're not, but family. So I applaud you for for staying level headed. But yeah, you know, I always say to my husband, like you're getting me to the point where I'm going to see red, I'm going to shut down, I'm going to, you know, like don't push me or not even my husband, it's usually my daughter. You know, she's at that age, she she actually turned five yesterday. But she's at that age where she pushes and pushes and pushes and pushes and I'm staying calm, and I'm staying calm, and I'm staying calm. And all of the sudden it's that snap where you're just like, oh my god, like get get away from me, you know, and then I have a puppy who's also and you stop, you stop the logical thinking and the emotion completely takes over. And we'd like to think that that doesn't happen at work. You're level headed, you're logical, but you can't you can't separate we we've, we've learned I've had this conversation now multiple times. We've learned that we are not robots. We don't walk into work and drop baggage. We don't walk into work and flip a switch and now we're either now we're the professional person. We are ourselves our whole person. No matter where we are, and yeah, for years and years and years, we've seen people pretend that they could go to work and become this professional human being and nothing bleeds over. And we've seen a society of people who've just burnt themselves out trying to do that, right. So the only alternative is to try to understand other human beings and be there for each other. So these assessments are awesome in trying to, to get there. What happens however, when you have, then this is probably a more difficult, but what happens when you have a manager? Who's I guess, more blind to this information? Do you deal? Yeah, believing? Don't believe in it? Or I mean, do you deal with organizations when it comes to coaching through that?

 

Tatyana St. Germain  31:09

This is actually a one of the most popular questions in my coaching conversations. What do you do when a leader who needs development doesn't think they need development? So they look in the mirror, and they see perfection, right. And the reality is, it's a rotten apple. That's what everybody else sees. This, this is why we have 360 degree evaluation tools. This is a wake up call for those leaders, as long as this leader is not the one who's holding the purse strings and approving contracts and budgets, right. Because then they think that they don't need development, nobody else needs development, and they're not going to participate, and they're not going to approve, then they're not a client, they're not going to be a client, right. But if we get a chance to work with them, and they do participate, this usually comes out of left field for for them because they're not self aware. But this is the feedback. That's truly a gift, because they need to understand that this is what's really going on, here's the reality. And yes, 360 tools are based on perception, because they tell us, we ask direct reports, we asked peers, clients, bosses, everybody around this leader, including the leader themselves, how they perform on different leadership competencies. And so they get feedback, they get scores, they also get comments, and then we build a development plan for them. And every leader has room for improvement, and for development. So this type of feedback can be difficult, especially for those who never took the time to be self reflective, or self critical, or be aware of how they might show up at work. They may have great skills, but they don't have the people skills, or they don't have the the soft skills, they don't have leadership skills to accomplish what they need to accomplish. Maybe they're a great technical person, but they they're not a great communicator. And so it comes out. And typically when a when we have a leader like that, who's not self aware, they get, let's say, kind of mediocre or bad feedback. Sometimes this feedback can be harsh, because comments are open, and they are anonymous. But they can get pretty nasty. And it's amazing what people do. Just think of what people do on social media, when they're when they're protected by anonymity. So some of that culturally, we It seems like unfortunately, it it spills into the professional world. And I see more and more a 360 feedback with those anonymous comments be quite personal and nasty and not professional. But this is the type of stuff this leader is evoking and other people that kind of feelings they're bringing up and other people and it's not productive, and they need to know that. So all feedback is a gift. And that's how I start the conversation. The next option is for this leader to say, well, people are just stupid. I worked with a German engineer. And this is I know, stereotypical, but he was truly he traveled from Germany, from their office in Germany to me to rural Tennessee to manage a team of engineers. So if they're all engineers, but he's from Germany, and he's having an issue with culture, language, everything else potentially. And when he gets gets this feedback, and it's not, not good, lots of room for improvement, some good things, but a lot of he focused on the paper Of course, and he's in, we start to work through it. And he goes, well, people are just stupid. And I don't disagree because i want i Feelings are messages from our brain, feelings and emotions, and you cannot ignore them. If you put them in a little box in the closet, you know how people say we're compartmentalize, it's the worst thing you can do, because at some point, that's going to be a big explosion. And it's going to not just be an exploding closet, the whole house is gonna go down. So you need to acknowledge these emotions and feelings. And so I don't start to fight with somebody when they say, Well, this is this. Yeah, sure. Okay, let's assume you are correct. And people are stupid. And I've been in those shoes growing up, I thought everybody was stupid. Honestly. So and it was extremely irritating to me. And, frankly, because I'm like, I can't have friends, I cannot have an intelligent conversation with anybody. And at that time, I was five. So it was really difficult for me. And I worked through so I knew exactly what he was coming from. They said, You know what? I'm with you, buddy. Let's, let's assume they're stupid. What's next? What are you going to do with this information? We try different ways. And he's still good. It's he was very dismissive of this feedback. And then finally would make the difference. Because I asked him a question that he could not kind of could not not connect with. I said, Do you want to be effective in this role? Because I said, sounds like you. You don't need to be in this position. People are stupid, you hate this. So we're at an impasse, right? What? Of course, coached plenty of people out of their jobs. And he goes, Well, no, why not? Do you want to be affected? Well, of course. So that was his motivator. And then he got over the hump. He's like, Okay, let's take things at face value. It is what it is, what you got, this is what is, so let's deal with it. Not because you need to be everything to everyone, not because you need to compromise your values, not because you need to change who you are, you need to just change what you do to be more effective to achieve what you want from life and business. And that's what typically resonates with most people. They don't want to take assessments or go through coaching programs, because it's an IT they feel it's going to be an attack on who they are. And my approach, and the tools I choose to use in my practice are different, they measure the uniqueness of who you are. So that together, we can craft your unique path to what you want. And you're going to do it the way you need to you need you will, you don't change, I don't believe people change. There are certain things that are wired in our DNA. It's the hard wiring in the brain. And it's it's set, it's pretty much set, it's not. You can learn new things, you can acquire new skills, you can learn strategies, almost despite yourself, but at your core. And I'm going to change what that DNA is your core is your starting point. And it's important to know because you cannot get go from A to point B without knowing point A. And so that's these assessments, all types of evacuations, they really help us get grounded in not only who we are, but what's our departure point. And then from there, we can say, okay, based on what I'm comfortable with, this is how and what I can do. And then it becomes authentic. And if you're doing something to improve yourself, that's authentic to yourself, you're honoring yourself, well, then you're gonna continue doing it. That's a more sustainable path to improvement, versus trying to do something that's hard because you read a book, right? Well, they did. So I'm gonna do it. Don't ever compare yourself to other people, because you're always comparing your worst self to their best self. And that's unfair. To extremely unfair to so well, I'll get off my soapbox, if you have another question.

 

Leighann Lovely  39:20

No, I just I was very intrigued. Kind of you sucked me in on that. On that example? I mean, and I find I find it very amazing that there are some humans out there that are willing to take the information, you know, consume that, and then, you know, by the end of it, you're able to get them to understand that this is not an attack on them. That it truly, you know, and yeah, you know, that some people can be mean, and, you know, counterproductive by some of the things that I'm sure that they say on this evaluation when they're when they're giving feedback. And it's unfortunate that you know, but again, they the people giving the feedback are also human right. And this is also a way for them to finally say something that they need to say. And they need to get off their chest, but the people who are getting that feedback, if they're able to finally consume that, and then move forward from that, and thrive and do well, and change that behavior to to thrive in their position. I mean, that that's, that's amazing, though, I mean, and what a what a role for, for you to be in to watch that person, you know, bloom and thrive and, and do well, you know, in that role, and if they can't, hey, there's, there's a million other positions out there, where maybe, you know, being a people leader is not, is not the right role for them. But, you know, to have that insight, I mean, I, I wish that I could have the insight from every single person that I that I meet, to be able to understand myself better. I mean, because I would prefer, if I'm doing a horrible job somewhere, that that my manager were to sit me down and say, Okay, here's what I need for you to change. And here's my constructive criticism to you, not because I want to be malicious, but because I want you to be a better human going forward. But that is a really hard conversation for leaders to have. And that's what struck, that's the thing that's I struggle with the greatest is that. Why is it so difficult to have that conversation as a leader, and if you can't have those conversations, you shouldn't be a people leader. I mean, there should

 

Tatyana St. Germain  41:54

Conflict avoidance, and this is one of the traits actually that we've we measure a lot of people, they will actually there could be two possibilities. Everybody has their own story in their own reasons. Again, we don't want to assume, but what I typically observe is it could be that it's innate to them, it's in their DNA. And we can measure this with PX T. And they're highly accommodating, so they don't like conflict. And so they will find every possible which way to avoid confronting somebody a hold accountable, because they think it's going to cause conflict. They don't know what but they think, and another thing is just pure laziness. They just maybe they're disengaged, they're not in this role, long term, they're not fully bought it bought in mind, they don't really want to have this conversation.

 

Leighann Lovely  42:46

And that's sad, because if you if you're going to truly be, you know, a person, a people leader, a servant leader, along with that comes having to have the hard conversations, right? I mean, you're gonna have to have your, eventually you're gonna have to fire people, eventually, you're, you're good, you have to hire people, you're gonna have to sit down, and you're gonna, if you want to truly help people, you know, grow and develop, you're gonna have to have hard conversations. You know, today, your work was mediocre. Here's how you can be better. You know, today, this happened. I have always throughout my career, I appreciated the leaders who sat me down. And when you can't do that, I remember, years and years ago, I dropped an F bomb in front of this was many, many years ago, but I dropped an F bomb in front of a wildly religious coworker. And immediately my manager came to me sat me down and goes, you can't say that at work. And I was like, Oh, my God, did I did I say that? He's like, Yeah, and you need to go immediately and apologize. And make sure that you just watch your language in the future. And I mean, and I was embarrassed, like, I was so embarrassed. But he didn't like push it off. He didn't, he was straightforward. You can't see this word at work. I mean, this again, words now have become so much more. You got to you know, you go to a event, and people are saying every which it's the words are so colorful now. But anyway, I was like, wildly embarrassed. I was just like, I can't believe I did that, you know. And I went over to the coworker, and I said, you know, I really apologize. I did not mean to swear, and I know that you're, you're very, you're very religious. And that was my fault. And but I appreciated that. It didn't take a day. It didn't take a week. It didn't take a month for my manager to come to me. It literally took like 10 minutes from me doing that to my manager coming to me and saying, Yeah, don't do that again. Oh, right. Yeah, I won't do that again. He was one of

 

Tatyana St. Germain  44:59

Just-in-time feedback is something that's become very popular. A lot of leadership training programs talk about this, I talk about it whenever I get a chance. With a new generation in the workplace, you know, younger millennials and generations here, especially, if you wait until the next review cycle, they're not even going to be with your organization anymore. I mean, they leave at the drop of a hat, right? So then you need to provide just in time feedback. And based on my, my work, and my experience with measuring people in that particular trait, managerial courage, only 16% of the population is wired to speak the truth to have this kind of courage, despite the potential for conflict or defensiveness, or any kind of pushback, the rest of the population, and the general population that's not just leaders are kind of more flexible with that they're less inclined, if you will, to handle situations just in time. And of course, it does escalate. So there are strategies even for conflict averse leaders that they can implement to provide just in time feedback. And it starts with setting clear expectations on the front end. So if you know that you're not going to tolerate and you don't want to perpetuate a workplace where certain language is tolerated, we'll go ahead and talk about this expectation on the front end, right, right. So then it won't feel like conflict or some or you coming down on somebody or out of left field, when you have to hold people accountable to that standard. you've communicated that to them, right. And it's a little more palatable for leaders who are less inclined to kind of get get you straight between the, between the eyebrows and shoot you straight and some points, to be honest, some of them can be like a bull in the china shop, they don't pull back at all. And they take it to the extreme right. And they're always picking on people. So there's always extreme sides to every every trait.

 

Leighann Lovely  47:11

Yeah. Yeah. And again, approach I mean, it's not like this manager came to me and was like, it didn't yell at me, just pulled me aside was like, hey, you know, yeah, FYI. Okay, don't do this. Oh, right. Of course. Yeah. You know, and again, a great leader, somebody who was, you know, in the trenches. Not only was he a great leader, he was the owner of the company. And, and I felt comfortable enough that when he came to me, I didn't feel picked on I didn't feel like he was, you know, calling me out came to the company, you know, came to me and said, Hey, I don't tolerate this. Great. My apologies. Won't happen again. You know, I mean, there's, and there's different approach. And you're right, there are certain leaders that, you know, every time there approaches can be a little intimidating. But, you know, well, we are, we are coming to time, this has been such an amazing conversation. And I could go on, and go down so many different paths with you on this, but to get into the retention piece and get into so many other things. But I want to ask you the question of the season. So the question of the season, if, or, actually, what would you change about your job, or the practice that people have in your job if you could, or in your role?

 

Tatyana St. Germain  48:42

What I would love to change about my job is has less to do with me more with everyone that I work with, and it's a cop out. But here's what I mean, I, I'm glad to see that due to COVID more organizations are focusing on people. I would like to see more investments, time, and money needs to be invested by individual people, by parents in their high school kids, and by organizations in people. We have to know each other better, we're so disconnected. There's so much noise, so much information, we need to understand ourselves, we need to be more self aware of who's aware of others, and we need to have real conversations, real human conversations. And so whatever with that respect, what I would change for myself, is spreading this message more forcefully. In fact, I changed I put this song in my on my website at the very top. Imagine a world where people love to come to work. So if you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said that's super cheesy. And now I challenge people close your eyes and get beyond the cheesy. And imagine the world where people, every single person loved what they do. Can you imagine the impact on society, economy, productivity, overall happiness, stress relationships at work outside of work, everything, we spend majority of our lives at work, waking hours at work. And if you don't love what you do, it's corrosive, toxic, and it's not serving you because you lash out at people you love at the end of the day. Yep. So if I can contribute in a small way to that world, and I can partner with organizations, and provide them with these tools, so that those organizations can help contribute to building that world, and put the right people in the right positions, have real conversations with them, develop them, help them, help them be fulfilled. That's, that's really my passion. And I think that this was a really a turning point. And that's what I'm changing and continued to change will started last year and into this year, I'm going to be a little more more proactive in spreading that message.

 

Leighann Lovely  51:17

And that's awesome. And that's what this podcast, you know, the reason I started this podcast in the first place was because we're human, and if we connect as humans, maybe that is, you know, a push towards, you know, having conversations that will create us to connect even more, my fear is that the more advanced technology becomes, the less we connect as humans, and people keep saying, but the technology is how we're staying connected. But I see people taking a walk, staring at their phone. Whereas when I grew up as a child, we would be on a walk all, you know, talking and hanging out. And you know, this reminds me of that, that movie, were all the boys, you know, what was that movie? The it doesn't matter. You know, we rode our bikes everywhere. We never, you know, it was constant interaction communication. It was never phone and playing Pokemon staring at us. And yes, technology is connecting us in a remote world of where we were banned from leaving our homes, but it's continuing. We can now be in public, and yet, we're still meeting on Zoom. So I fear that we are going to have to intentionally, very intentionally have to make sure that we stay connected as humans because there is a difference between talking on the Zoom like we are today than sitting next to each other in a coffee shop and having a real human conversation. So I you know, I throw that out there because I want people to remember that true connection. You know, being in person has a different feeling. Anyways, if somebody is interested in reaching out to you, how would they go about contacting you?

 

Tatyana St. Germain  53:30

A couple of ways. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So look me up Tatyana, St. Germain. I think I'm the only Tatiana St Germain and LinkedIn. But I may be wrong, but I think I am. And you can also go to my website and find a bunch of connection links there. To my LinkedIn to my YouTube channel and the email. Great people management.com Is the website luring people management.com or email, you can send an email either to Tatiana at correct people when.com Because great people do win. or discover how at great people when.com

 

Leighann Lovely  54:15

Excellent. And that'll be in the show notes. Again, thank you so much, Tatiana, for the amazing conversation. You have a wonderful day.

 

Tatyana St. Germain  54:23

Thank you so much. Leighann

 

Leighann Lovely  54:25

Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode to follow us like us or share us. Have a wonderful day.

 

Contact Information

 

LinkedIN - linkedin.com/in/tatyanastgermain

 

Website - greatpeoplemanagement.com

 

E-mail - tatyana@greatpeoplewin.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, leader, assessments, person, conversations, organizations, question, feedback, assumptions, conflict, information, measure, human, tools, coworker, development, coaching, manager, tatiana, hiring