This episode features an interview with Nell Derick Debevoise, Founder of 3D Performance. She has spent her career helping purpose-driven leaders expand their impact, grow their businesses, and build powerful legacies. Nell is also a Partner at PurposeFused, author of Going First, and a Senior Contributor for Forbes. In this episode, Amanda sits down with Nell to discuss purposeful leadership, implementing a growth mindset, and the Me, We, and World dimensions of employee experience.
This episode features an interview with Nell Derick Debevoise, Founder of 3D Performance. She has spent her career helping purpose-driven leaders expand their impact, grow their businesses, and build powerful legacies. Nell is also a Partner at PurposeFused, author of Going First, and a Senior Contributor for Forbes.
In this episode, Amanda sits down with Nell to discuss purposeful leadership, implementing a growth mindset, and the Me, We, and World dimensions of employee experience.
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“There has to be a willingness and investment in self-awareness and reflection as a starting block. But without the leader and a leadership team and eventually all of your managers, all of your people managers, having the support and the expectation to do that self-reflection and self-awareness, to really get clear and honest about what they care about and what they're good at, it's just not going to stick. Without doing that individual change from the top and all the way down and through, there is no organizational change.” – Nell Derick Debevoise
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:41): Nell explains the Me, We, and World dimensions of employee experience
*(13:44): How leaders can speak up without alienating employees
*(21:59): Segment: Story Time
*(22:16): Nell explains PurposeFused, Purposeful Growth Institute, and Inspiring Cowgirl (now known as 3D Performance)
*(31:08): Nell gives a preview of her book Going First
*(37:55): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(39:36): Nell explains what a growth mindset is
*(44:41): Segment: Ripped From The Headlines
*(45:20): Responsibilities of leaders when handling layoffs
*(54:36): Segment: Asking For a Friend
*(54:51): Mistakes HR makes in personal and career development
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Links:
How Your Organization Can Navigate Layoffs With Humanity
Investing in middle managers pays off—literally
Topgrading Interview Guide: How to Evaluate Talent
Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: Nell, thank you so much for joining me today.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Total pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Amanda Berry: A couple months ago I read an article you wrote in Forbes titled The Next Frontier of Employee Experience, which is a very appropriately titled, by the way. I sat back and thought about it when the title came back. I was like, that's exactly what this is.
Amanda Berry: But I immediately knew, I reached out to my producer and I said, I want to get her on the podcast. This is the kind of content that I, I find very valuable. So I wanna start talking about that article 'cause it really talks about what the next frontier of employee experience is. Now for our listeners who haven't read it, you'll probably be talking a little bit about it, but you can just Google Nell's name and the Next Frontier of Employee Experience because I want them to understand this.
Amanda Berry: You're an advocate for this me, we, and world dimensions. So can you explain those three dimensions and how they intersect?
Nell Derick Debevoise: Yeah, totally. So all the work that I do with leaders now is about this kind of three D performance, right? And so these are the three dimensions we talk about Me, which is. Me, right? So my physical health, my mental health, my emotional health, my spiritual health, even not to freak people out, God forbid we talk God in the workplace, but you know, spiritual in that very broad way and but also all the other mes around me, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: So this is that kind of like individual wellbeing piece. The we is the we, so our teams, our organizations more completely. I also talk about it very holistically for people. So family is another version of we, whether that's blood or chosen family, but all of those kind of groups of many mes who are interacting and trying to get something done together.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And then the world is, The people and groups beyond that, right? So we don't necessarily mean the full 9 billion humans inhabiting this planet Earth. But another way to call it, one of my colleagues says, your we wees. Right? So kind of those people that you probably don't know by name, you may interact with in passing supermarket or vendor that you work with or a neighbor.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Customers maybe. Customers. Totally. Suppliers, exactly. And so the interaction is every dimensional, right? The graphic that I have in the article shows the connections between all three of these three dimensions. And so just very simply to start to play it out and then people can use their own imaginations to see it in your own life.
Nell Derick Debevoise: But a really good example I like, 'cause I'm a breakfast person and have 10 toward low blood sugar if I don't have a good breakfast. My meetings are not good, especially once you get to 11 or 12 o'clock. I'm hangry. I can't focus as well. I'm just not great, right? And so for my, we, that's a drag, you know?
Nell Derick Debevoise: And not if it's on the weekend, that's for my husband or my dogs or you know, those Wes don't do as well when I don't do the me part of getting breakfast. Super basic and simple. And then when we look at we to world, when our companies aren't responsible about how we pay employees or how we source our inputs or whatever those things might be, the world doesn't look as good, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: Because there's climate change, or extreme weather or wealth gaps are growing and getting worse, which leads to crime, which leads to instability, right? I mean, it's a real systematic thing. Then we can close the loop by saying, in a world with instability, crime, climate change, we are not well. Right? I live in the New York area a few weeks ago when the fires were coming down, blowing smoke down from Canada.
Nell Derick Debevoise: People were not okay. You know, that's not good for us in the short term. Can I go for a walkway or the longer term, how is my lung house? So for better or worse, we're seeing the interconnectedness of this very viscerally these days. And so I think people are more receptive. But that's a brief intro. Happy to go.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Where is helpful from there? I wanna
Amanda Berry: talk to you about company culture and the impact of those on company culture. I, let me start there. When we think about employee experience, because this whole article's about employee experience and company culture, and I, I thought it, it's really well written. It's super easy to understand and follow.
Amanda Berry: You take these things that we're talking about in the work world and, and I guess in non-work world and you simplify 'em, but you twist them a bit and turn 'em on their head. So I really appreciated that. But I'm wondering if you could just talk about this me, we world impact internally, like at an organization and how that
Nell Derick Debevoise: plays out.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Yeah, so the main observation of the article is that so much of our focus at work, whether we're thinking about culture or talent strategy, right? All of this kind of related people stuff is focused in the we dimension, right? Which makes sense. As I said, we is our team, our organization. So I get it and there's a lot to think about there.
Nell Derick Debevoise: How do our teams work? How are we structured? Are we, you know, a hierarchical organization? Are we flat? All of those things matter. But this next frontier that I'm talking about is looking at, we have to get into the other two dimensions, both the me, right, this net sense of like, I talk a lot about mass customization of.
Nell Derick Debevoise: People are really unique and do have different wants and needs, and we can, thanks to technology actually serve a lot of that. I'm not saying that work needs to be our full source of love and appreciation and ego and all of the things like Esther Perel has some great words on that. We are asking too much of work in some cases, but we do need work to recognize the individual.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Right? And do you need student loan repayment or retirement contribution? Do you need parental leave or caretaker leave for altering parents? What do you need to support your wellness so that you can show up and contribute to the, we fully, and I think that we were laughing before, but when we think about the things like an extra day off that you can't actually take or a ping pong table or a pizza party.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Turns out these things just don't work. And we know that empirically from living and working as humans. We also know it by research. There is really good research out there that shows people would actually rather get a thank you note from their boss than a free pizza party or a gift card for cash. And so we have to bring that we piece in and really not be scared to let people truly bring their whole selves to work.
Nell Derick Debevoise: You know? And that doesn't mean wearing inappropriate clothes that are just not okay in any world wave form or shape for safety or whatever. But it does mean letting people be themselves. And then the other stretch that we need to make is out to the world level, right? And again, research here as well as the anecdotes that we've all been hearing for these past few years about people care about their company's values and they're not standing for when you're on a Zoom call and your two-year-old toddles by or your dog, it's much more.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Dissonant to be doing a zoom call with someone whose values you don't really want to let into your house because they are now in your house. You can't just kind of shut the door, drive off, take the subway to your office and kind of, well, it's just work and deal with a values mismatch now that it is like literally in our living rooms or bedrooms or kitchens or wherever we're working from.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so it's not that people are asking, I think people get scared by this or overwhelmed. It's not that they're asking companies to become Greenpeace and fix the Amazon. That is not their job. They shouldn't do that. They don't know how to do that. Greenpeace and other people are doing it well and know how to do it, but they want to know how people feel about those things or that they feel about those things.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Right, and I understand. That the stakes can be high, right? If you're the c e o of a publicly traded company that creates and or can destroy billions of dollars of wealth by a comment or a thing, I get the weight of that. But we have to be braver. We have to be more courageous about sharing what we feel and think as leaders, because if we don't, we'll lose them.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So actually the real risk, in my opinion, is not forging this new frontier and staying comfortably in the we because you are gonna lose people.
Amanda Berry: There's a couple quotes in this that really speak to me, and I love this sentence you have. It says, some companies create hand waving policies and offer blanket benefits to enhance the employee experience.
Amanda Berry: However, office parties, and many you just mentioned, pizza parties and pig pong tables don't create the connection and the opportunity that employees crave for meaningful engagement. Even worse, the others operate from an arrogant perspective that employees are lucky to have a job and a mentality that led to the great resignation.
Amanda Berry: And then you go on to say about what employees want. They're looking for outsized outcomes. And then you quote two out three employees want their companies to communicate actions on big environmental and social issues. They're demanding shifts in agendas of their employers and A C E O who thinks they'll win the talent wars by offering a bit more money and some extra, you know, homeworking and gym membership is going to be disappointed.
Amanda Berry: I think that you really just sort of lay it out, right? You can't continue to do like paint nights via Zoom. You go to work the next day and it's just chaotic and toxic and it, those two things just don't align. I'm wondering if you have any perspective on what the cause in this shift is, because there was a time when getting an extra week of vacation time or being able to wear jeans at work 'cause you bought a jeans day or all these benefits kind of mattered and the employees were very excited about them and now you're saying that stuff isn't gonna work anymore.
Amanda Berry: So how did that shift happen?
Nell Derick Debevoise: It's a great question and a lot under it. I think about it a fair amount. So we'll do a follow-up episode on really the deep dive, but I can give a few headlines. The first thing that I think is most dramatic is the world is really crazy right now. You know, I, I know every generation or many generations have some form of an unprecedented thing, which is fair, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: Like depression. Whoa, that was very real. I was just with my 98 year old grandmother and talking about some of the factors of her growing up that were affected by that. That's a big deal. World War ii, like that was a really big deal. I get it. All of these things were significant. I think what's different now that we really can claim is what we know is that the pace of technological change is exponential and it's faster than humans can keep up with, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: Human evolution is crazy and powerful and cool, and actually relatively quick in the scheme of things, but not in the scheme of technology. And so there's this, there are these, Mega events, pandemic, land war in Europe, climate real apocalypses multiple times a year in multiple parts of the world on this shaky foundation of incredibly exponential change.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And with transparency, we're seeing all of that that's happening everywhere in the world, thanks to global media and social media. And so people are freaked out. You can't just shut the door, drive to work, subway to work, do your accountancy for eight hours with one hour to have a sandwich, and then come home and make dinner and watch 60 minutes or whatever like we're being bombarded with.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Tragedy, tragedy and we're, our lives are at stake because we went to the supermarket. It's pretty nuts. We are meaning making creatures in a world that is very intense and scary and changing and hard to understand. And so the walls of work are permeable and are human selves are permeable and so we can't, we just can't sit and barrier that out for eight hours while we do our spreadsheet or our messaging or our teaching or whatever our task is for those eight hours.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I think that's a whole ensemble of factors, but that's what I would describe the headline is.
Amanda Berry: As I was reading that and thinking about that, one of the things that comes up, my background is in internal communications. I've talked with tons of internal comms folks on this show and, and HR as well. One of the things that I hear is an example of the Roe v Wade decision that was made last year in 2022.
Amanda Berry: Leaders may have feelings on this and they may have something that aligns with company, but they don't wanna alienate folks who work there. So they're oftentimes paralyzed not to say anything as the best approach. The other side of that is I hear from the same people, you know, if they make comments on everything, as you pointed out, there's so much stuff going on.
Amanda Berry: I mean, I live in Wisconsin. You'd mentioned earlier about the wildflower smoke from Canada. We had the wildfire smoke. It kept us inside. We couldn't exercise. We've got four months of summer, we can't even go outside for a week. I guess my point is they don't wanna alienate and they don't want to have to on raise issue.
Amanda Berry: 'cause then there's not gonna be a lot of time every day something's gonna have to come up. So can you explain where, where you sit knowing those two things and what advice you give to folks who are struggling with those two degrees of difficulty having
Nell Derick Debevoise: leaders speak. It's a really. Real question, an important one to wrestle with that I talk with partners and clients a lot who are in these high stake C-suite roles, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: So I'm comfortable with the discomfort and the challenge of this. The first thing that I would say is that despite some of the bad branding that the millennials have gotten, they don't want it all. They are actually not that demand. I mean, there is a high bar. There's a beautiful vision of the future and good for them for pushing us, you know?
Nell Derick Debevoise: And then Gen Z coming up behind. We don't totally yet know exactly how they'll play out as they come into more middle and senior roles. But I. Something is so much better than nothing, you know? And so this is where I go back to like, I think people are miscalculating risk in a really dangerous way that right now with all of the trouble and issues that we've talked about, and with the rate of change, the real risk is to not do something.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so look, I love that you went into the belly of the beast. No doubt, I think it's pretty unanimous. Roe v. Wade is the most third rail issue in our US country right now. Nowhere else in the world, by the way, but here it is really a problem and really polarizing. So that is probably the toughest one.
Nell Derick Debevoise: That's the one that comes up most often is really feeling kind of untouchable. So I, I say the something better than nothing to say. Don't start with that, right? Like if a leader is looking to like start sharing some values or some positions, start with, we have to get real about inquiring into what is causing climate change slash listening to the science of what we know causes climate change.
Nell Derick Debevoise: 'cause it was a real bummer to miss Summer this year. I really enjoy barbecues and if that's a position that your employees are offended by, hire some more fun people because barbecuing is a really good thing for all of us to get behind. You can barbecue vegan hotdog if that's your version of barbecue, but like, it's still fun.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And then, you know, maybe a middle ground is George Floyd and institutionalized racism, right? And. There's a little story that I'll share, if you don't mind, because I think it's instructive on this point. So, A C E O that I worked with ran a really fast growing tech company, several hundred employees in the Chicago area.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And when the George Floyd murder happened in this June of 2020, he was really not okay. He was just really like, this is a problem. I've had some awareness of institutionalized racism, but like this is a level of racist violence that is just really not sitting well with me. So he brought this to a group of peer CEOs and was like, what are you guys gonna do?
Nell Derick Debevoise: What do we think? Are you speaking out? Are you not? And they're all kinda like, I don't really wanna touch it, you know? And so he was like, okay. But it just didn't sit. And so that weekend he was talking to his wife about it. He's like, I really feel compelled to say something, but I don't know how it's gonna go.
Nell Derick Debevoise: What if I got fired? Would we be okay? He really felt like it was that we just didn't know, right? This was so much less of a thing. Three years ago, and she said, I agree, good for you. I'm proud of you. Do it. If you get fired, we will figure it out. You'll get another job, or we'll move to the, you know, whatever, do it.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so he did, and it was received extremely well by his team. He told his c e o group, they were like, actually, could you forward me that letter? You know, by now a few weeks had passed. And so more and more was being said and coming out, and I think people were getting a bit more comfortable with that idea.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So, great. He didn't fix institutionalized racism, you know, I know his company was still working on inclusion. I'm sure it was not a perfect situation from the perspective of racial bias or anything else, because none of us can be living in a, a country with racist systems. But anyway, he did that. He felt good about it and proceeded with business.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Six months later, eight months later, one of the recent, unfortunately, many spats of rocket fire and violence between Gaza and Israel happened. And some of his employees came and said, we would really like you to speak up like you did about George Floyd.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so he got the request and had a lot of feelings and reactions, and so we were able to talk through what is that about? What reactions are you having? What feelings are you having? What are you inclined to do? Anyway, long story short, through this process of reflection, which is what is so important for leaders to do about really getting to their true selves and where they really feel like they're making their best contribution from their unique position was what racist violence and institutionalized racism in the US is in my sphere of influence as a C E O of an employer of hundreds of people in the Chicago area with suppliers, with customers, and so forth.
Nell Derick Debevoise: The Gaza Israel issue is in my sphere of concern. I'm worried about human rights, I'm worried about violence, I'm worried about Middle East instability, American intervention I, all of that is of concern to me, but it doesn't fall in my sphere of influence in the same way. And so I'm actually not gonna issue a statement on this one.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And I think it's such an instructive story because again, I don't know exactly right. I didn't get to see the exact ripples and responses from all the colleagues who heard that response. I'm sure there was disappointment from the people who had wanted the statement, but I know that there was also satisfaction, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: That no was human, it was discerning. It had a kind of framework, right? Or a logic. It wasn't just, nope. Try again next time. Right. It was really grounded in authentic philosophy for him. Right. And so they could really respect that and get behind it in a way that wasn't alienating to the people who had wanted the statement or the people who would've been opposed to the statement or whatever it was, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: It really built their respect and trust, frankly, of him, that he had the discernment to know what was in his fear of, of influence, that he would indeed take a risk to speak up about versus what wasn't. So I think those are some of the principles that something is better than nothing. It's really just about being human in some ways, you know?
Nell Derick Debevoise: And being honest about, look, if you lost mom to breast cancer, it makes sense that that's gonna be a thing. And there's not much controversy there, but it's a choice. It's a stand, right? And it just, it shows an extracurricular understanding of. Actual human issues, which frankly, most of our work doesn't touch, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: If you're a heart surgeon, you're dealing with life and human issues. If you're a tech, c e o, thank goodness, I'm glad your app is there, your plugin exists and keep your coders on track and all of that. But it's not life or death, right? And so in a world, when we are faced with that on a pretty like daily basis, either short term or long term, it's just not sustainable to have leaders who don't let those issues in and reveal their positions.
Amanda Berry: That's such a great example. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. We're gonna move into our segment story time. Welcome to story
Nell Derick Debevoise: time, story time, story time. Lemme
Producer 2: give
Nell Derick Debevoise: you a story.
Amanda Berry: You have a ton on your plate. I'm gonna throw some things out here. Let me know what I've missed. You're a partner at Purpose Views. C e o and founder of Purposeful Growth Institute, founder of Inspiring Cowgirl. I wanna know what that is. You're an author, you're an advisor, you're a coach, you're a facilitator, you do so much stuff.
Amanda Berry: Can you tell us a little bit about each of those organizations
Nell Derick Debevoise: and what you do there? Yeah, with pleasure. So I'll start by helping people make sense of this all by saying, my purpose is to help co-create work environments that are healthy and fair and inspiring for all of us. And so that's what I care about doing in the world.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I. For reasons of how I like to work and my style and my personality, I do it through this portfolio, right? So Purpose Fused is an awesome company, founded with a guy I've known for a decade plus, and actually his middle school friends. So you can imagine the dynamics there are just fabulous. We have a blast and we do corporate development programs for leaders.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So we help C-Suite folks who understand that purpose is absolutely a performance driver, getting that me dimension into this next frontier of employee experience, and we run programs for their teams, whether that's, we just ran through an entire team of almost 250 people over two years to really help them get to their me purpose and best performance.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So that is a ton of fun. Great work with usually, again, teams of one to 200, maybe within a Fortune 100 massive company, or maybe that's the whole company that we wrap our hands around. The Purposeful Growth Institute is a 5 0 1 C three nonprofit that indeed I'm founder and c e o of, and we help graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds find ways to use their schooling and work experience for social environmental impact.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Super fun. We have a big flagship partnership with the National Park Service, so we were in the Grand Canyon altogether a few weeks ago, which is an absolute privilege. And that inspiring cowgirl is me and is a bit more of a holding company for my intellectual property. The book that I wrote that we'll get to soon coming this fall, some of the service marks and trademarks that I have, you know, I do all of this work of purposeful leadership and this three D approach in pretty like nerdy type A structured ways, which is I think why my clients and partners love it.
Nell Derick Debevoise: 'cause it's a bit different. And it's not for everybody and it's not for every situation, but for the people it does resonate with at the moments when it is really needed. It's really powerful and from what I've seen really unique. So all of the kind of service marks and trademarks and intellectual property is held as inspiring cowgirl.
Amanda Berry: So where did, where did the cowgirl come from? And you mentioned you're, you live in New York City. I'm just curious when I think of. A cowboy cowgirl in New York City. I always thinking that. Jerry Seinfeld, I don't wanna be a cowboy. Not a lot of
Nell Derick Debevoise: cowboys in New York. Lot of cowboy in New York. Yeah, so I have to be fair moved to the burbs a few years ago.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So I'm actually in Connecticut now, which is decent cowboy country. But no, it's about the work that I do with horses and horse wisdom. And so I've ridden since I was 12 years old, not super seriously, just like pony camp in the summers or whatever we could manage, and then started riding again in the pandemic, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: So many of us went back to kind of outdoor activities that we could do and still be safe. So I found an incredible trainer here in the west of the Connecticut, New York area, and I ride a few times a week when I'm around. And now I've started working with a woman the last few years who is in Santa Fe and we do equine assisted learning.
Nell Derick Debevoise: What is that? So the idea here is that horses are brilliant. They are the second most successful species ever through 3.8 billion years of evolution. They have survived for 56 million. I know someone out there wants to know what the first most successful animal or species is, and it's the platypus, but platypus aren't as like charming partners.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Like if I invited you on a retreat with platypus, it just wouldn't be the same as big, beautiful Spanish horses. Yeah, it'd probably be
Amanda Berry: like an hour playing with platypus. Whereas like we could spend like a weekend or a week on horses. Yes.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Bingo. And so my mentor, Kelly Wendorf, has been studying horse culture for 20 plus years.
Nell Derick Debevoise: More than that in a lot of her wisdom. But the horse focus has been more recent, so decades of studying how they've been so successful. 'cause horses are prey animals, right? If people don't have experience, horses might feel scary. They're big, they weigh 1300 pounds. They might step on your foot and break a toe, but actually they're prey animals.
Nell Derick Debevoise: They're worried about the mountain lion, the cougar, whatever it might be, coming to attack number one. Number two, they're also herd creatures, right? They live in groups. And so arguably a lot of business leaders I think, feel really similar to that right now. Right? They're sort of prey to the competition or to Chachi PT who's gonna get them out of a job.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And certainly we are in herds at work, right? And so there are all of these incredible lessons to be learned from how horses have thrived through literally tectonic plate shifts on the planet to say nothing of real major climate change, to say nothing of extreme weather and predators and all of this.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so we essentially facilitate sessions where leaders are able to be with the horses and either have this. Successful heard behavior be modeled to them or mirrored maybe in something that they're doing? It's amazing. It's magical. I mean, it's just, it's nonverbal. Obviously. We don't have Mr. Ed or speaking horses.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It's all nonverbal and so it's, it is hard to put into words, but two things I'll share that I think people can relate to even without doing it. One is that it's non-verbal and non-intellectual, right? So it just pushes it out of our heads. Everyone I work with is incredibly smart intellectually, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: They wouldn't be in the positions they are without that. We can talk around a coach or facilitators. Yes, yes. Well, we do it this way because of this, or they do it. When you take that away, you have to be with the body piece, the emotional piece. And because horses are prey animals, they're hyper hypersensitive and they see and feel and react to that level.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so the insights that people get in the sessions that we do together are new, almost always. And if they're not new, they're a different version or a different dimension we might say of something that they've known to be true.
Amanda Berry: You know, as you were saying that one of the things that I pick up on a lot of your riding now is you focus a lot on the idea of compassion, empathy, vulnerability, and as you're talking about working with horses, it just hits me that these leaders have to learn to read horses sort of emotion and how they're feeling.
Amanda Berry: It's not based on like, what is our bottom line? All right, we have to cut, we have to do this, we gotta do that. It's really like, can I get on you? Are you ready for this? You know, like, but you're reading their emotion to make decisions. I assume that's what they're kind of
Nell Derick Debevoise: pulling out of that y Yes, and I'll add to it a little bit.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So generally, sometimes we do, but generally the work I do is all on the ground. We don't get in the saddle, we don't ride, we just hang out with the horses as members of the herd. So that's one piece, which some people are very comforted by. 'cause they're like, I'm not a rider, I don't wanna do that. I'm like, no worries.
Nell Derick Debevoise: You can stay both feet, fall, be on the ground. And the other piece that I would say is, We bring the horses in because they're such powerful teachers. So they ye yes, we are learning ab, I mean, they have a very inclusive, collaborative, subtle, empathetic version of leading, but you can't not see that when you're with the horse.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So actually what I find is people, you don't have to work that hard to learn that. You just see and feel it. And so the way that people are hit by these insights in the sessions is really amazing to me because it is so subtle, right? The horses are, because they're prey animals, they conserve energy. And so they're very subtle.
Nell Derick Debevoise: They don't move if they don't have to. They're not lazy. They're just strategic about saving energy for when it really matters. And so the communication is very subtle, but it's so different from what we're used to and it's so real, right? Horses. Can't lie. They have no reason to lie or even to hide things.
Nell Derick Debevoise: In fact, that would be counterproductive from an evolutionary perspective because they need everyone to know if they're worried about something or if they're hungry and the herd needs to find food. And so they're very straightforward. They're very direct, but they're very subtle and it just hits people in a way that is really, I mean, life changing in many of the sessions I've had and certainly style changing for some of the leaders.
Amanda Berry: I mentioned earlier you're a coach, facilitator, partner, founder. One of my favorites is senior contributor at Forbes, author advisor. You host one-on-one sessions, workshops, you do this horse training, which sounds amazing. And then the one thing we haven't touched on that you mentioned earlier is your book comes out in September titled Going First.
Amanda Berry: I haven't read it. I'm excited to read it, but can you give us a little bit of preview of what we can expect
Nell Derick Debevoise: in the book? Yeah, so it really is the learning and emergent tools from the last 15 years of work with very deeply purpose-driven leaders. So people at all stages of career from. College and business school through Encore.
Nell Derick Debevoise: You know, I'm retiring but I don't wanna stop working. So all stages of life, all functions right across functional areas, across industries, somewhat global. Definitely been fairly US-based and out of this work of striving to find purpose and meaning, which as we were discussing, is really ramping up in these years, emerge these frameworks.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so again, I am tend to be type A ish and pretty analytical in my approach. So I don't do any of the work I do with like, I wanna make the world a better place, right? Like that's not why I went to work for nonprofits after college. It's not why I do what I do now. It's about performance. It's like I know, and the research shows that when we do stuff that contributes to the world we wanna leave behind.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Not only are we happier, healthier, lower risks of dementia and stroke, like very real outcomes in the health field. I. We're also more creative, we're more resilient, we're more collaborative. It just goes better, and that means that our companies do better. Retention is higher, and so costs are lower.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Literally, the return on assets of companies are higher. Harvard found when people are fear about the purpose beyond the bottom line of what their company is doing. So to me, it's just pragmatic. So the book. Gathers all of those frameworks and makes it more accessible, right? I've, I can only work with so many people just based on time and budget and geography and availability.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so I've put one of the core frameworks that I use with people into that book in a very like d i y, self-guided approach. And so there's the book which talks about this notion that. Purpose drives performance and breaks it into all of the different parts of our life and work in which we can control that or invest in that for ourselves.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And then there's a companion playbook, which is, you know, 150 pages of guided reflection to really think through what this means to you in a very action oriented way. You know, it's not the like write a statement that you print on a mug and carry around to inspire you all day, which is important. And some of the work we do with purpose use helps people get to that as well.
Nell Derick Debevoise: But this is really about brass tacks of like, okay, you say you care about X on Tuesday afternoon in the meeting, what does that mean? And how about on Sunday when you're visiting your stepfather, what does it look like there? Right? So really making it very tangible and concrete. So yeah, it's not a light read, it's not beach reading, which is why it doesn't come out till the fall.
Nell Derick Debevoise: But if you are looking to really kind of engage and wrestle with some of this stuff, it's a fun but also pretty provocative and deep. Comprehensive flow through all of the elements of work and life where you might be able to find some purpose and satisfaction.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, purpose is definitely the word. Just like reading your stuff, purpose is coming out so clear when it comes to you.
Amanda Berry: I think now when I see your name on articles, I know there's a purpose behind them. I just wanna harken back to the conversation we just had before story time about this me, we world. I love this idea of purpose, right? If you're gonna say you're, you like X, what are you actually doing to create it? And I wanted to come back to that because I feel like it's super important because I feel that way about culture or employee experience, just in general.
Amanda Berry: I feel like we have so many people saying, we're gonna create a better company culture. We're gonna change our values and we're gonna give an extra week off, or whatever it is. So those things are. Great. But we're still, I'm just saying like the broader, we still not really feeling a huge culture shift or creating an actual culture at work that, that we can hold onto and be proud of and wanna keep employees at their jobs.
Amanda Berry: I'm wondering if you would just, if you have any thoughts about that because I feel as if it's become such commonplace for people to say leaders like, we're gonna change our culture, we're building a better culture. And then they do a couple things and then we're right back to business as usual. Like what do you tell leaders to make sure that if you're building a culture, how do you make it stick?
Amanda Berry: What does that
Nell Derick Debevoise: look like? My first answer to so many things, but to this is always, it has to start with you. Like it's me, we world for a reason, not we, me world. So there are people who have a lot of expertise on culture change and so you all included work with you? My piece really is before that and I have some thoughts on the we dimension, but.
Nell Derick Debevoise: They've gotta get and stay really authentically in touch with themselves. And that's everything that literally is like, are they breakfast people too or not? And how much exercise is it or not? And what kind and at what time and what, what do they have natural energy for versus what don't they and what are their triggers that get them frustrated behaviorally or politically or you know, and, and this is not like go on a weak retreat and learn about yourself and write a purpose statement and then come back and you're done.
Nell Derick Debevoise: We're dynamic creatures changing all the time. And so there has to be a willingness and investment in self-awareness and reflection as a starting block. And if that's not there, I'm really skeptical that culture change, which needs to involve performance metrics and your training and meeting styles and spaces that you work in, whether those are zoom rooms or physical and all of those things, for sure matter.
Nell Derick Debevoise: But without the leader and a leadership team, and eventually all of your managers, all of your people, managers, having the support and the expectation to do that, self-reflection and self-awareness, to really get clear and honest about what they care about and what they're good at.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It just not gonna stick. I'll add just a favorite quote from a brilliant teacher of mine, Reverend Angel, Kyoto Williams, who says a version of, I'll butcher her words, but the spirit is, there is no social change without individual change. So that speaks to the world dimension, but it absolutely is true for the we dimension as well, that without changing ourselves and the people at the top do matter most, not in the sense that they are more important, but they set the tone right.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so without doing that individual change from the top and all the way down and through, there is no organizational change.
Amanda Berry: It's the perfect transition into our next segment, getting tactical.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I'm trying to figure out tactics and to be perfectly honest, that I didn't have to worry about tactics too much.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Here I am in charge and trying to say, why did you sleep through tactics, tactics.
Amanda Berry: Also, earlier this year, you wrote an article on Forbes. Again, I love forbes.com, why soft skills are all that matter and what to do about it. This is really almost that internal reflection about what skills you have. I wanna point out in here you referenced power skills and that's how they should be rebranded.
Amanda Berry: I thought that was really smart. Because it, soft skills means like, they're almost like secondary, like, uh, golf skills. So I love that you put that in there. So I wanna just throw out a quote from that. And you said mindset before skillset and tool set, right? And you said, this is a concept which we brought further into the spotlight.
Amanda Berry: We're moving closer to that than we were, let's say 10 years ago. In my opinion, there is more focus on culture and employee experience and human approach. I mean, Even just watching during the pandemic, one of my favorite stories and during the pandemic is watching a VP who, her nanny or whatever was sick.
Amanda Berry: And so she was on calls holding a baby, a toddler, and then there was like a five-year-old running around and she was killing it. And I was in awe, 'cause I'm like, ah, I gotta take, I, I'm over here. Like, oh, I gotta take my dogs out, give me a minute. You know? And she's just like feeding one rocking the other and just absolutely not missing a beat.
Amanda Berry: So one that made me realize the human experience is, is now really a part of work. Not that it never has been, but we're in people's homes now. So I wanna back up and just say, can you talk a little bit more about that growth mindset?
Nell Derick Debevoise: So growth mindset has been around for a while. Carol Dweck is the grandmother of the concept, and pretty simply, it's a scientifically describable notion, which is that you believe that you or things can get better.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so it's in opposition to a fixed mindset, right? So there are assessments to see this just quickly and, and free online. Whether you think my brain or my body is a fixed entity that can do certain things, period. In contrast to a growth mindset, which is that my body or my mind, if I do 10 bicep curls a day will get a bit stronger, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: Or when it comes to power skills, if I practice active listening, I will start to develop that as a muscle, which arguably will help build empathy and other things. So very simple. It's just the belief that one or something can change.
Amanda Berry: I love that. This other quote, valuing EQ over iq, so it's, it's really part of that.
Amanda Berry: How do you find people who have high EQ or value this growth mindset? Let's say you're in hr. How do you ensure that that becomes a priority? You can have the best engineers from Google, and maybe they all have high EQs too. I'm just using this as a pure example, but maybe they don't, but they may be the best in their field.
Amanda Berry: But if we value EQ over iq, That's something a little different, but how would you recommend there's a nice balance of this within an organization?
Nell Derick Debevoise: Yeah, great question and and a huge one, but I think it has to be through the entire employee lifecycle, first of all. And so super tactically, my one point is in selection.
Nell Derick Debevoise: We've been using for, gosh, probably 10 years now, a process of interviewing called Top Grading. The research was originally outta the University of Chicago. Now decades ago, but if anybody knows, traditional interviews are dismal at predicting job performance, right? The correlations are hysterical in the research they've done.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Like it's almost worse than just picking somebody blind to do our traditional interviews. Top grading is this very structured, very powerful thing, and it's simple. There's not so much to it, but it's very googleable. I think I've written a Forbes piece about it that I can find, but the piece that links to growth mindset and EQ is that you go through a person's resume very accurately and specifically, and you ask them what they might have done better in that role.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Among other things, there's some specific, very specific questions that you ask about every single role systematically through their job history, and that is, Intentionally because it's a really clear indicator of growth mindset, right? And so whereas somebody who doesn't have a growth mindset is going to say, oh, I did it as well as I could have, or not be willing at least to share something like that because they don't believe that they can change.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so they wouldn't want to reveal that to a potential employer. Someone with growth mindset. I've heard all kinds of answers, right? I was like, well, I really overcommitted. We go all the way back to college. So one I remember vividly, she said, I really over committed in my senior year and I was then not able to keep up the commitment that I cared about to the drama club and student government and my dorm foosball team or whatever the over commitments were.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And by the time I got to graduation, I was so burnt out. I didn't go on the trip 'cause I was just too tired to even celebrate. So she talked about how she's worked on that through her professional career of making decisions and saying no. Anyway, so, so highly recommend Topgrading for so many reasons, including this ability to really screen for growth mindset among other elements of EQ and power skills.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I think during the job, of course, what you measure matters, you know, and, and what's measured gets managed. And so you really need to think about performance indicators and how you measure performance, what you measure, how you provide feedback. And again, that's a whole profession that I won't step on the toes of, but important to really be intentional, purposeful about how you are promoting people to manager, how are you are supporting managers to really be coaches essentially, you know, and to have that EQ and all of these power skills to support your people because more and more and more, AI is gonna beat us.
Nell Derick Debevoise: You know, who has the best iq, ai and if it doesn't in your field yet, it will pretty shortly 'cause it's learning from all of us way faster than any of us can learn. And so great. Obviously there are some risks and concerns and challenges and so hopefully there are smart people. That also is not my field.
Nell Derick Debevoise: But again, miscalculation of risk. If you are not working on these power skills and building them in your teams, you're gonna get beat if, if you're only, if you're a competitive edge, you think is IQ as a person, a professional, or as a manager of people, false, you have a very short horizon of success.
Amanda Berry: Let's move into our next segment. Ripped from the headlines.
Nell Derick Debevoise: You hear the news Xray. Xray read all about it. Our stories ripped from the headlines, ripped from the headlines, ripped from the
Amanda Berry: headlines, ripped from the headlines. There's no doubt that 2023 and even end of 2022 just had a lot of news about layoffs.
Amanda Berry: Different kinds of transitions, but mostly layoffs. That's a very scary time for employees. I'm, I've been in a career long enough to where I've seen now a couple cycles of layoffs go on. My skin is a little thicker to it, but I wanna talk to you about that. 'cause I think that ties in nicely sort of some examples of all the stuff we've been talking about.
Amanda Berry: I wanna start with this question. What responsibilities do leaders have when it comes to handling something like a layoff to be thinking about their employees and the me and the we? Because, and all of that is so connected, so I wonder what your thoughts.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Yeah, I really think it's just the internal version of what we talked about of speaking about Roe v.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Wade or racial violence. It's the internal comms in your world, version of that. And there is just no excuse not to be human and to speak up about this when it's internal, right? If you just can't rally to political statements about some things that are external, good luck to you. Again, I, I think that's problematic, but in some companies, in some places, you're gonna get away with that.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Internally. You can't not speak up. And so I wrote an article about this as well because the stories, I'm sure we all heard stories about. Just inhuman ways of doing this, right? And look, it is business and there are gonna be slowdowns and there are gonna be layoffs. And so I'm not by any means suggesting that you can't do it.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Although my first encouragement in the article is to consider if you really do, because when you consider the true cost of layoffs, again, we found out that actually it can be far more expensive than the cost savings of the immediate salary reduction. So a note there, but layoffs will happen, right? We will have to let people go for one reason or another, whether it's systematic or whether it's an internal strategic choice for the business.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so you have to speak to it. You have to let it be hard, right? Like you have to recognize either this is a difficult time for our business or our industry. I am scared as a leader and it breaks my heart. Or it is difficult that we are cutting jobs from people who have served us for years or decades or whatever it might be, and I can only imagine the pain and suffering and risk and damage to you and to your family.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And that is difficult. And these are the difficult decisions that we have to make. We have done them as thoughtfully as we can by X, Y, z. Specifically, what have you done to think about the tenure or replacing people within the organization? It just, it has to be thoughtful and human. And then you have to share that to some extent, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: I realize that full open book transparency is also not always a very good thing, but a thoughtful. Share of at least some part of that story is just a must.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, getting leaders to sit down and be more transparent. I would be remiss if I didn't ask about Covid 19. That was sort of the other big thing, big scary thing that's been happening for our employees.
Amanda Berry: Shaping the experience. It's really changed everything. I know that's such a cliche thing to say, but it really has the way employees work and just all this stuff. I mean, a lot of employees are like myself, get a work remote, you know, at home all the time, but, but that's not the only change. It really changed workplace in a lot of different ways.
Amanda Berry: Absolutely. And I'm wondering as you think about like leaders and how they lead or just workplace employee experience, is there anything that we can take that we've learned from the covid 19 years that we should keep with us and use in our toolbox as we move
Nell Derick Debevoise: forward? Yeah, I mean I think one thing for sure, and indeed we've seen it play out is, you know, it sort of goes back to like Maslow's hierarchy and take it or leave it.
Nell Derick Debevoise: That's an important part of psychology that has been evolved. But you know, it's this notion of like, people need to be okay first they need to have food and sleep and water and shelter and that's real. And c Ovid 19 was such a 21st century reminder of that still matters and it isn't a given for even those of us who have salaried white collar jobs, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: I mean, it's all too easy to forget. That wasn't a given for many people in our society living very close to us even before that. But you know, this slap in the face of we can all die. We are mortal and simple. Formerly simple acts of everyday life can be fatal. So I think that's part of it. And I think.
Nell Derick Debevoise: There is certainly lip service given to physical wellbeing. Now the range is broad in terms of how genuine those efforts are, right? I mean, the amount of overwork in this country's culture is just literally sickening, right? The Jeffrey Effer book, I think it was 10 years ago, that work is killing us Stanford professor, like research work is killing us.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It's actually killing us. So that needs to change more. But it did bring back, I think, more respect for like the sick day. And my question is always like, oh, they have Covid so they're staying home. I'm like, well, what if they have the flu? Like I also would like them to stay home if they have the flu because I don't really want that either.
Nell Derick Debevoise: You know? And it's, I guess, not as sexy of an illness as Covid 19, but like I also don't want that. So I think it moved us a little bit forward. Although not enough. And then mental health I think is the other thing that absolutely I, I think actually ironically, we're probably doing more actual service and investment in mental health funnily than physical.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I'm not sure how you would assess that and if that's a research backed claim that I'm making, but just anecdotally I think that's true. You know, people are making sure that there's therapy on hand and coaching or whatever it is, and that's not perfect by any stretch either. But I actually think we're making more, at least cash investments in that than some of the things like exercise or dietary awareness or that would be a whole takedown of our food system.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So maybe employers can't quite get to that needs to be nice balance in there. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's part of it. And then I think it broke for once in all that this notion of like, leave your personal life at the door. It is just absolute gobbledygook. We never did that. Right? Even when like the tough mad men in the fifties and sixties were like leaving home with the dirt.
Nell Derick Debevoise: No they weren't. They were a jerk if they had a fight with their wife that morning. Like we're human beings and we have brains that work in certain ways and they are not immune from that. So I think it just really was the nail in the coffin of that notion. Again, not that we're now dealing with it perfectly, but at least in concept, I think that's pretty much been
Amanda Berry: extinguished.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. It's hard to put the lid back on that box now that it's already started. So I really totally hope us keep improving. But, and when you look back over the past few years with Covid, is that anything you can point to that say leaders, what you started during this, during Covid, and so you need to stop doing that.
Amanda Berry: Like what shouldn't remain after Covid that we were picking up.
Nell Derick Debevoise: One thing that comes to mind, and if I come up with a better answer, I'll follow up with you, but the first thing that comes to mind is the somberness of Covid. It was so intense and scary. So I think there was this sense of I can't show up light or happy because of what's going on.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And some of that is 'cause I'm not, 'cause of what's going on. But some of that was just like a version of survivor's guilt or whatever. Like if I'm not sick today, I don't know who household number might be or who might be immunocompromised or you know, I just, I think it, it created a fragility that is very, very problematic in so many ways.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And I think that's the root of kind of the woke. Nation criticism and problematic ness. Life is intense and these days really intense. And it's joyful and miraculous and it's tragic and violent and everything in between. And so as human beings, we cannot be fragile, right? There's a reason for the work on resilience and also some problems there about how it's assigned to different people of different backgrounds and socioeconomic status.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So that's another line of reasoning. But we need to be resilient. Like things are changing. Things will change. We will be laid off, we will get divorced, we will get sick. Our parents will die. Our kids will die. For some of us like gonna go down. And also we will disagree with the marketing color that our team goes with and you know, on all levels.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so if.
Nell Derick Debevoise: One will break. But as leaders, if we are fragile or we see our people as fragile, we cannot make the courageous decisions that we need to to thrive. And so then we end up. I think that's a little bit where we're mired right now of we're stuck in this status quo trying to protect the fragility. And it is really bad.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It is really bad. I feel very strongly about this now, so thank you for asking the question. This is a forthcoming Forbes article that you've coaxed out of me. We need to leave behind the fragility and come into a much more robust, courageous way of being in the me dimension of leading and managing and collaborating in the we dimension and of stewarding our world in the world dimension.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Wow.
Amanda Berry: Well, I can't wait to read
Nell Derick Debevoise: that one now. No pressure.
Amanda Berry: That's awesome. That's really cool. So thank you for that honest answer. I really appreciate that. Let's move into our last segment, asking for a friend
Nell Derick Debevoise: who's asking for a friend. Hey. Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend.
Amanda Berry: What are some mistakes you see HR making when it comes to a career and personal
Nell Derick Debevoise: development? I think the biggest thing, and it manifest in a lot of different symptoms, but the root cause is just fear of people leaving and moving on. Which if you look at the facts, it's like really goofy, right? Of course people are gonna move on eventually, and like some people, you want to move on sooner than later, right?
Nell Derick Debevoise: And if people are tempted at all to move on, I. You're probably better off if they do, because I promise they're not at a hundred percent productivity where they sit. So I think it's that. I think it's just like fear of people moving on because actually in general, people don't wanna leave jobs. It's hard.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It's a hassle these days. It's scary. It's not that great job market anymore. It's different. And so they don't really wanna move on either. So if you ask some questions and open the conversation, actually more often than not, we see people being excited reci about staying. Maybe 'cause something shifts a little bit or a role or a stretch project or whatever.
Nell Derick Debevoise: But again, it links the fragility, right? But we gotta get rid of the fear of losing people. What's
Amanda Berry: your advice you would give to a leader of a company looking to implement more of a growth mindset? Maybe they've heard this and they say, Ugh, I can see myself leaning more towards fixed. What
Nell Derick Debevoise: now? Yeah, it's all, I mean really, I know vulnerability can be really overused and like make some people nauseous, which I get, but listen a little more to Brene Brown.
Nell Derick Debevoise: She really is pretty savvy and nuanced about it, and I think it's that. It's the little and the big stuff, right, of saying, I'm so sorry. I know I was supposed to get you this by today and I had a crazy weekend with a kid's sick or whatever details you want to or don't want to provide, I'm gonna need 48 more hours and I'm sorry, I'll try not to let it happen again.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Right. But just that humanity of acknowledging when you make mistakes in the moment or the bigger stuff of like. Sharing stories as relevant of like, man, I remember my first job. I was just so terrified to speak up and this one time I asked a question, I got smacked down and I shut up for three more years and didn't contribute until I finally had a supportive manager.
Nell Derick Debevoise: If you're ever feeling that smacked down, like, please let me know that, or whatever the narrative is, right? It could be a million different things, but just modeling one's own growth mindset is far and away the best way to teach it. There are some nuances. It's, I think it's more written about in the parenting world, but so you can find, there are some very specific ways of giving feedback or asking questions like saying, wow, you worked so hard on this.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I really appreciate that. Versus, gosh, you're so good at this. Good for you, right? Because the latter says, well, good, good thing. I'm good at it. And what about the next task that I don't think I'm good at? Versus validating you for, gosh, you worked so hard on this, and what an awesome result. Good for you. I can work hard on anything hypothetically.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So that's the way to do that.
Amanda Berry: Wow, that's really great. What challenges do you foresee leaders facing in the future when it comes to employee experience and culture? What should we be
Nell Derick Debevoise: prepared for? I mean, I have to start with sort of a COI answer, but that I always start with, it's like, it's not that hard.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Don't be nice, be empathetic, be thoughtful, be intentional, be purposeful, and like, yeah, that takes a little bit more energy, but the payback is so real, both in terms of like just the satisfaction, the relationships you build, the intel that you get that then informs decisions and actually makes hard decisions easier to say.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Nothing of the fact that people trust you and are on board. So then the implementation of the decision is easier. Like it really is an upward spiral. And so, Just start. And I think that leads me to say the hardest thing is convincing the kind of middle tier of managers who are, maybe Gen Xers, sorry, or maybe just millennials who've been brought up in this work culture or boomers who are still working and delivering great value, but with a very different approach.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So that might be the hardest. And I've talked to some really purposeful CEOs about that, of like, people meet us and they get so excited and they interview and they're so pumped, and then they get in the role and they go back to status quo because they don't actually believe that we're so empathetic or so creative, or so inclusive or whatever the elements are of their purposeful culture.
Nell Derick Debevoise: And so we have to really. Co them out of it. You know, like a dog trying to cross the invisible fence. Like even if you dig out the invisible fence line, that means the dog's not gonna get shocked anymore. It's gonna take a really long time to convince that dog to walk over that line after five years of knowing that they would be shocked for it.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So same thing, I think that's the hardest part is like really convincing, bringing along people who aren't in the safety of, and the power of the decision making seats at the C-suite, but in that middle area and have learned to manage and lead in one way. And now we're saying, no, no, really you can be human.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I actually, I swear it takes a lot of reinforcement and practice. I love
Amanda Berry: that example. I've thought of this a couple times where you've been speaking about this sort of idea about leading by example, if you will. I worked at a place where I would hear, because I worked with C-Suite, they would tell their direct reports, you're not expected to check email.
Amanda Berry: While you're on vacation, I will, but I absolutely do not expect you to. And every time they'd have to repeat it like, okay, you're gonna be gone for a long weekend. You are not expected to check him up. And then I saw them pass it down. And to the point where like my manager was telling me every time I would go, she would go, You are absolutely not expected to check email.
Amanda Berry: And from that day on, I stopped doing it. The relief that it felt. But it took a few times so that that repetition and that reminder was needed. I might do it and I might check email at midnight 'cause I'm awake for whatever reason. I fully do not want you to do that or feel like you should be expected.
Amanda Berry: It constant reminder finally stuck with me. And I was, I remember like, all right, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna check email, I'm on vacation. And then kind of, I was waiting to see if anything was said and how was your vacation? I'm so glad you were able to disconnect. Yeah, that's what I came back to. There's a lot of value in what you're saying, that you have to lead by example and then constantly sort of go this reminder.
Amanda Berry: 'cause people have been trained maybe in very different ways or come down in very different types of orbs,
Nell Derick Debevoise: very different types of leaders. Yeah. It's just such a way of good way of thinking about it. Totally. And I think, I mean if I may, I would polish that approach just a little bit. I mean, I'm so glad that it worked.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I would encourage those leaders if I were working with them, to frame it a little bit, first of all, to sometimes not check email because again, unless they're heart surgeons, uh, it does not need to be checked, you know? And so there's all kinds of reasons. Like I go both ways, right? Sometimes I'm cold Turkey and totally off and that's great.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I do really creative, engaging away messages. And so that kind of tends to build my business and work even while I'm off, which is great. But other times because of the nature of where I'm going or because I have a long connection in an airport or whatever, I can take care of things and it's satisfying to me and it's time efficient and it's great.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So I'm not doing it 'cause I'm burdened or whatever, you know? And so I would encourage them to have a slightly more nuanced conversation with people about it, especially at higher levels where people can handle that of there are weekends where I need to be on email because of my role, and that's just part of my job description.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It truly is not for yours. And that's not better or worse, but there are no brownie points for being on email on the weekends. It just depends if it's part of your job or not. And so for you right now, this weekend it's not for me. Next week it is, but for my summer vacation it's not. And so, right, like helping people get more nuanced about that, to truly show that like it's not that I'm a martyr or more important or whatever.
Nell Derick Debevoise: It's that I have that discernment and I want to teach that discernment in you as well. That no matter what, even if I have a baby and I'm up at midnight, Blue light in the middle of the night is never good for my brain. So just don't do that. And if you do, it's a bad habit that either you wanna talk about, I know it's a bad habit.
Nell Derick Debevoise: I know neurologically that's not good for me and I'm trying to stop. I encourage you to stop too, or not start if you haven't. Or just deal with it on your own and don't tell people about it. That's one of the things we're dealing with, right? So anyway, I, again, I'm glad that it came through. Repeatedly and authentically enough that it worked for you, but I think there's even a better, a plus way of doing what was their kind of b plus version.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, no, I totally agree. Well, hopefully everyone will be able to absorb that and maybe use, use the a plus version to my b plus version, or just
Nell Derick Debevoise: a minus at least gross mindset. Just a little bit better. Just a little bit better.
Amanda Berry: Oh, now this has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot. I'm, again, I'm super grateful and thankful that you're here today.
Amanda Berry: Before I let you go, is there somewhere where our listeners can reach out and connect with you or find you if you they have any follow up
Nell Derick Debevoise: questions? Yeah, so nelldd.com is probably the best kind of central place, and because of my portfolio, sometimes it points to different things. But nelldd.com is really easy to find and it links to my Forbes page and my medium and information about the book is there to some extent and more forthcoming as we announce the launch. A newsletter forthcoming this summer along with that as well. Ooh, you're doing a newsletter? Yes. Coming soon. Stay tuned. Okay. Sign up. No, no spoilers yet. But again, nelldd.com and you will, you'll be plugged in LinkedIn also. I'm a huge LinkedIn fan and junkie and so, um, definitely active on there and love to post and connect.
Nell Derick Debevoise: So those are the two main spots.
Amanda Berry: Great. Well thank you so much for joining me now. This has been great.
Nell Derick Debevoise: Thank you for your questions and thoughtful engagement. Really fun.