This episode features an interview with Sarah Lovelace, Vice President of People at Airbase. Prior to this role, Sarah served as VP of People at Plenty, held various roles at Box, and was a Recruiting Coordinator at Google. In this episode, Shawn sits down with Sarah to discuss adapting leadership to different organizational stages, realistic and meaningful leadership development programs, and challenges and trends in global workforce management.
This episode features an interview with Sarah Lovelace, Vice President of People at Airbase. Prior to this role, Sarah served as VP of People at Plenty, held various roles at Box, and was a Recruiting Coordinator at Google.
In this episode, Shawn sits down with Sarah to discuss adapting leadership to different organizational stages, realistic and meaningful leadership development programs, and challenges and trends in global workforce management.
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“You have to go through all of the seasons and you have to go through the reviews, you have to go through having a first hard conversation with an employee. Sometimes there's just not a time limit on that. I think, ultimately, those L&D programs sometimes aim to fast track that. But, I have truly found the best value is again, getting to know managers.” – Sarah Lovelace
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:58): Getting to know Sarah
*(07:52): Sarah’s leadership style at Airbase
*(24:17): Strategies for measuring organizational trust
*(31:23): Values that drive the People team at Airbase
*(35:56): How Airbase develops leaders
*(42:28): Future challenges for People teams
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Links:
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Cohesion Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Sarah Lovelace, VP of People at Airbase.
Shawn Pfunder: Sarah joined the global organization in 2021 and brought a wealth of knowledge from fast growing companies like Box and Plenty. Welcome to the show, Sarah.
Sarah Lovelace: Thank you so much for having me, Shawn. It's a pleasure to be here today.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, we'd like to kick things off by getting to know you a little bit better.
Shawn Pfunder: Nothing super personal, well, unless you want to reveal super personal things. But I've got five, but I only have like four get to know you questions. Okay. So the first one is what's an insult you've received that you're proud of?
Sarah Lovelace: You're too nice.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, that's great. It was an insult when somebody said it?
Sarah Lovelace: I mean, so, I mean, technically, no.
Sarah Lovelace: So, and I have like three people in mind who have said this to me, all of whom I consider really close partners in work, mentors. I don't think that they meant it like truly as like an insult, but the way that it came up, came across, it was effectively all coming from dudes. And if you're ever going to continue to progress in your career, I think you're just too nice.
Sarah Lovelace: And it's something that I was told when I was 27, when I was in my mid thirties, in my later thirties. And it's always something that's just sort of stuck with me. And I don't know. Check in with me in 20 years and see where I am. Maybe I'll feel differently.
Shawn Pfunder: Fine. I would just say that. Do you think, like, when you said that that came from me, because I think most people that would say they've worked with me would say that I'm extremely nice, but I would never get a, you're too nice.
Sarah Lovelace: You would probably never get that. Yeah, I don't think that you would ever get that. And I think sometimes as you progress in your career, um, and you're, you become, you know, an executive, I think everyone has this sort of like an idea of like what they think an executive sometimes will, yeah, you know, will look like, and then, you know, and in business, like you need to like make the tough decisions and to make the tough decisions, like, you know, you can't always, you know, You can't always be this sort of nice and warm person and I think that sometimes what people forget is that you can actually be a very, you know, nice, warm, approachable person.
Sarah Lovelace: It also doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to make hard decisions, especially hard decisions around people and like overall like organizational path and those two things can exist. You can be a female that. Likes to wear jewelry and nail polish and all these kinds of things and, you know, not be this like very like tall person.
Sarah Lovelace: You can be those things and still do what's required of the business as well.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Second question. What are the top five most opened apps on your phone?
Sarah Lovelace: Oh, okay. So, Audible.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, right on.
Sarah Lovelace: Audible, my podcast app, Spotify. I can't think of the other, honestly, I cannot think of the other two, like those three.
Sarah Lovelace: Like constantly, constantly open.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Well, I mean, like I am jealous. I wish that those were my three, because that means I'm not looking at my phone. Right. Okay. And getting the information. Yeah. I actually think that's. That's the direction we'll go overall, like over time, less of the looking at the screen and more being able to have conversations.
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah. I think that that's something that at least for me has changed a lot, especially in the last, my job became at Airbase, we are a fully remote global organization. And so for the first time, other than what was dictated by COVID, it was the first time I spent a hundred percent of my time working from home.
Sarah Lovelace: So if you're not in, you know, if you have a day where you have like a few less meetings, sometimes I find like, I am like, I am at home all the day, like all day by myself with my dog, Frank, who I love dearly, but doesn't, doesn't talk to me. And, and so sometimes I find like listening to something, going on a walk, it kind of started to become.
Sarah Lovelace: Like my version of a commute to work in the morning, you know, and a nice way to sort of just take a really quick break from work, get a lick, a little bit of like distance, maybe have like a new idea, like pop in without having to be something that I was necessarily looking at.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Oh, wow. Any current book recommendations? Non fiction listener or?
Sarah Lovelace: So I'm definitely fiction right now, as my twin sister says, we're in October. So we're in our spooky season. So we're definitely like, definitely listening to some books about supernatural things. Again, we're coming up to Halloween and the holidays. Always a really, this is so nerdy, always really great time to listen to Harry Potter again.
Sarah Lovelace: So good. I'm just waiting for the day that my kids are old enough to start reading those books to them. I cannot wait. Cannot wait.
Shawn Pfunder: What is a common myth about your fields of expertise?
Sarah Lovelace: Ah, yes. That all I do all day is just listen to people's problems and I'm effectively their therapist.
Shawn Pfunder: Uh, I've heard that so, so, so many times. Okay. Final question. And sort of, you have to put on your, Hey, listen, you're in your spooky season. So this is totally fine.
Sarah Lovelace: I am in my spooky season.
Shawn Pfunder: You're in your spooky season. If you could know the answer to one question. Mystery. What would it be?
Sarah Lovelace: What causes migraines?
Shawn Pfunder: Oh wow. It's not even spooky at all.
Sarah Lovelace: It's not even spooky. But like, the true cause of a migraine and how do we fix it?
Shawn Pfunder: So, it's because you're asking for a friend, right?
Sarah Lovelace: Oh, totally. Yeah.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Sarah Lovelace: I don't, I never get that. Um, yeah. Picture of hell.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, okay. So let's, let's dive right into the deep end. So big question for you.
Shawn Pfunder: How would you describe your leadership style? So both at Airbase and previous to that, and how has it changed over the years?
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of the core of like what has made me, like, Me has, we talked about, talked about being nice and, and direct, but, you know, I think from just like a leadership style, if this counts as a style, I like to work with people that I enjoy spending time with, that I enjoy tackling problems with, who think and approach something different than me.
Sarah Lovelace: I'm never looking for someone to join my team who's an exact replica of me. In fact, I want the absolute. Opposite of that, and I enjoy having, having a team that's a little bit more of a counterbalance in that way. And so I think my leadership style is it's very inclusive. It's very open. If my team is the one that is having the ideas and bringing the work forward, like that should be celebrated, but I think overall pretty inclusive.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Would you say two things that you mentioned in there? One of them, spending time, spending time with them. Is that just spending time with them at work? Or are these types of people, even if you don't spend time with them outside of work, like you would spend time with them outside of work?
Sarah Lovelace: I think it can be both.
Sarah Lovelace: I think one thing that has definitely changed for me over the last however many years I've been in the workplace, I used to think that having someone Team or that you worked with that you liked. It's like you had to think of them almost like as your friend. Oh, we have to be friends. And it's like, okay, like that's what 20 year old Sarah thought.
Sarah Lovelace: And now like, yes, some of the people that work for me now, I definitely would consider friends, but I think there also is a difference between people that you professionally enjoy working with and then friends. And it's okay for those two things not to It's a hundred percent okay for those two not to have to be the same.
Shawn Pfunder: A hundred percent okay for them not. Yeah, absolutely. The only reason I ask is that it's come up a lot, this new, I don't know if it's a new thing on the balance. Like I think even used to be more hardline. They're not your friends. Like, softened a little bit, it seems, with other folks we've had conversations.
Sarah Lovelace: Interesting. Okay, so I have actually had the complete opposite experience with that.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, interesting.
Sarah Lovelace: So, I was a very early on employee of Box. I joined in 2010. Freaking fantastic company. The company was about 60 people. When I joined, I spent just shy of seven years there. By the time I left, we were a little over 1, 200.
Sarah Lovelace: We had gone public. I mean, Just like the coolest experience to have, like truly as like your first tech job, which kind of spoils it for a lot of other things because you think, Oh, this is the norm and it is not the norm. But you know, in the early, a lot has changed and a lot changed in the seven years that I was there about our interview practices and what we would look for in people.
Sarah Lovelace: But we used to have this thing called like, like, and we would talk about it pretty openly and we, you know, Talk about like the car test and how, okay, do you want to spend seven hours in a car with this person? And you're driving from San Francisco to LA, like, are you okay to be stuck in traffic with them?
Sarah Lovelace: And I think in some ways it definitely helped build the foundation of the company because we all spent so much time in the office together. We always all wanted to be together, but then you also end up sort of like creating this like insular environment in a way. And even one of my Like one of my, who ironically has become my best friend now, when she, we interviewed her to join the recruiting team, like early on, I said to our manager, I was like, well, I'll definitely be able to work with her, but I don't ever think we'll become friends.
Sarah Lovelace: And I'm like, okay, what kind of interview is that? That is absolutely like absurd and ridiculous. I can never imagine those words coming out of my mouth. And so maybe it's like a phase of life thing where. I have a few extra years on, you know, what I did in my earlier days at Box. I have kids, married, got the dog.
Sarah Lovelace: I think maybe it's just that my, sort of my priorities and what I'm looking for in a work environment have changed where I have things outside of work, but I've actually sort of found and again, and maybe, you know, the pandemic and remote work has changed this a little bit. Like people aren't looking to spend every single waking hour at work with the people that they work with.
Sarah Lovelace: I hope a lot of those days are gone because probably not super healthy to, to do that, you know? And I know that it was always like a big perk, right? At like a, you know, Google or Facebook where you can do your laundry there. And like, they have medical professionals on staff and the public library will come.
Sarah Lovelace: And I think everyone knows that, Oh, it's such a cool perk. And it's like, yes it is, but it's also a way to keep you at work longer. And I, I've definitely seen a lot of that changing. And I know that a lot of people are coming back into office again, and I hope we don't fully ever get back to that point again, because I think it's also important to be a balanced human being.
Sarah Lovelace: And you know, you can, I love working, but I also really enjoy. My family and having things that I enjoy doing outside of work too.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. I, it was a badge of honor sometimes the amount of work that you would do or the amount of time you'd spend there. I would go to meeting, go to meetings at Facebook, aka Meta, go to meetings and I would see, like, they had a bike shop, they had a print shop, they had doctors, they had everything.
Shawn Pfunder: And I remember at the time thinking, great, like, that would be amazing.
Shawn Pfunder: But it's, it's a trap.
Sarah Lovelace: It is.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, it's nuts. I think, I mean, leading into a little bit when you were there, took the company public, did you feel like you had to have a different Leadership style, as you kind of move forward through startup mode into what you're doing now, besides the trying to figure out work life balance.
Shawn Pfunder: If you're leading people, what's different as you're sort of growing up as a company, I guess?
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah, I mean, I think that, and for my time at Box, I had a very, I had a very different role than I do now. When I started at Box, I started at one of the most, Like entry level roles in the company. I started as a recruiting coordinator.
Sarah Lovelace: And then by the time I was, I left, I was helping to sort of interim run the recruiting team. I had done a lot of like recruiting ops, like people ops work and with long slide presentations that are like a whole other story, uh, ops review, but. I don't know, for me personally, a whole lot changed in that time period because I wasn't necessarily part of the executive team.
Sarah Lovelace: I had joined and was there when a lot of the executives had joined. And part of the reason after seven years, it was like, or almost seven years, I was like, okay, it's time to move on, is I felt like I was ready to grow more. And Could have been very happy staying at the company, but because I had joined so early and because it was so early in my career, a lot of the executives that were at box in the early days, a lot of them are still there today, which is absolutely like fantastic and amazing.
Sarah Lovelace: But I think you also get to a certain point where you're maybe ready to grow, but people will never see you in a different light. Like I was always going to be like the, the recruiting person there, which is totally Find and it's like amazing. It's an amazing role, but I don't think I was ever going to be seen necessarily outside of that role So I don't know if my style changed a lot Maybe I was like I'll put a little bit more in a box and I wanted to be and so I sort of made this Conscious choice of I'm not unhappy here But if I am gonna grow and I wanna sort of change in how I am professionally in the workplace, it probably would be a good time to to move on.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. That's a big deal for a lot of people to leave something where they've got that love, like for them, they're comfortable, they're good, they've got the respect. Yes. And then being able to take that leap to go somewhere else or to take on more of a leadership role. It's really courageous, I think. Um, you did, I think I had also.
Sarah Lovelace: Being in the role that I was in, and again, you're early on, you're on the people team, you build a lot of relationships with people, a lot of relationships. And so I had seen a lot of people get to the point where they were a little unhappy and like disgruntled. And like, it's like they waited a little bit too long to make that exit.
Sarah Lovelace: And so I watched, I watched that happen, you know, time and time again. And I thought, you know what, I'm not, I'm like, I don't want to be that person. And so. I think I, you know, started to see some of the signs in myself that I was ready for the next thing. And I was like, okay, I think I've got about a year.
Sarah Lovelace: And so I started to look about a year in advance of, okay, I think I will be ready to sort of eject at that point. And I've also spent almost seven years building this amazing company and having great brand and really being Close with the two founders and the two technical founders, like, I don't want to damage that.
Sarah Lovelace: And so like, I knew that for myself. And I also had watched all of these people leave box to go to the next box. Oh, it's box in early days and like these things that they were going to go and try and recreate. And so I knew when I left, I was like, I'm going to go find something that's completely the antithesis.
Sarah Lovelace: I don't want to go try and recreate that in any way, shape, or form. And I didn't. And that ended up being Plenty, which is a vertical indoor farming company. That was definitely different.
Sarah Lovelace: It was definitely like, it was completely different in every single way. And just a. Like, absolute, like, burst of learning and experience.
Shawn Pfunder: So, a follow up question to your leadership. I mean, related to your leadership style. You said you knew, like, a year before, which is nuts to me, that you could sort of figure that out. Do you work that way also as a leader? Now at Airbase, do you look forward a year as you make decisions and come up with what the solutions might be or increasing employee engagement or?
Sarah Lovelace: There is nothing that I would love to say more than like, absolutely yes. But I think the truth of the matter is especially, and maybe for folks, I've never been a public company CPO. I would love to kind of go through that journey with a company one day. Maybe when you get to a slightly larger organization, right, it takes longer to put programs into place.
Sarah Lovelace: Right? And so you have, you're having to think farther in advance. There's more, I'm assuming there's more predictability within the business, I think, especially when you're in startup mode, whether you're six people, you're 60 people, you're 350 people, you just don't have that predictability in the business yet.
Sarah Lovelace: And so whatever plan you always need to have a plan that goes out about 12 months, but especially if you're not revisiting it at least every quarter. And you are going to go way off course. And so a lot of the things that, you know, that we'll do on the people team, yes, sure, there are some things that we will sort of put on the calendar a year in advance, right?
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Open enrollment.
Sarah Lovelace: Open enrollment, compensation, like compensation cycle.
Shawn Pfunder: Performance reviews.
Sarah Lovelace: We don't believe in the performance review.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, that doesn't, you don't do it. Yeah,
Sarah Lovelace: We don't, we don't do, no, we don't do it. And so, you know, you're always thinking about those things.
Sarah Lovelace: And I would say sort of like the. Most like foresight, I think at least at a 350 person company that you can have is sort of knowing like your schedule of when things roughly are going to happen during the year that are required to happen when you have those, you know, moments of space to, to go back and fix and to, you know, work on the debt that you've built up.
Sarah Lovelace: And then also knowing that the thing that you sort of like put out, like the first version of it. Knowing, okay, what are the things that I'm going to do differently when I do it next year? And how am I sort of like going to build on top of it? I think in a startup, that's honestly like the most you could ever ask for.
Sarah Lovelace: And I would say the only other thing that you really do have to try to have a lot of foresight in is like your executive and leadership team and know making sure you have the right people in place for at least the next 18 to 24 months. And if you think you don't, you have to start almost two years. In advance of that, because it does take a while to hire the right person to onboard the right person to get their sort of like leadership mentality and like the way that they lead, right?
Sarah Lovelace: You may be all looking for the same outcome, but the way that one person is going to get there is going to be very different than someone else. So I think that probably is a place where you have to. Be a little bit more predictive and I think everything else you have to just look at it in real time.
Shawn Pfunder: I had heard, that's great for the long term, I'd heard you do something a little bit more short term, uh, for you personally and that you try to do something different every quarter. Is that what it was?
Sarah Lovelace: Every quarter. Yes. Yes. I, I think that like on, on paper, it probably doesn't look like my job has changed every quarter. Because it hasn't. What the things that I'm responsible, responsible for haven't changed. But mentally, I do try and shift up my role a little bit every single quarter.
Sarah Lovelace: And so I think sort of like early on in my career, one of the really cool special things about being at Vox, everyone was sort of in the same, We're in different sort of phases of their life, but Box did a really great job of having a lot of like learning and like having different departments sort of share what they were working on.
Sarah Lovelace: And so, you know, I remember sitting in these all hands, like, I mean, just taking like copious amounts of notes about like, like digital marketing and lead gen and branding or what the finance team was doing and thinking, okay, how, like, how does a lot of this fit apply to like what I'm doing. And so there were some quarters where I was like, okay, like this is going to be my data quarter.
Sarah Lovelace: I taught myself, it was at the time Excel, obviously it's Google Sheets now, but I taught myself how like, How to model. I think I'm a low key, pretty good modeler today.
Shawn Pfunder: Low key, pretty good. I think that means you're a good modeler. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Lovelace: And I, like, like low key love to spend time with my, my spreadsheets.
Sarah Lovelace: I mean, I could tinker away for hours at them, but you know, I thought, okay, like I'm going to teach myself how to do this. And I'm going to teach myself how to forecast a recruiting funnel, or I'm going to take different things that I've heard the marketing team talk about I have, okay, I'm going to try and understand like those concepts and, and that lingo and then apply it to how we're doing maybe branding on the recruiting side, or there's something in the sales journey.
Sarah Lovelace: Of how they're talking about like qualified leads. How can we think about that from like, from a hiring perspective? Okay. The product management team is talking about the first version of a product that's going to go out there and how they think about getting user adoption. How can we think about, you know, when we're rolling out a new learning and development program or an engagement survey or trying to get adoption within the company, how can I use some of those, like those principles?
Sarah Lovelace: And so it's not that fundamentally the. Things that I was actually doing changed. But I think sometimes it's just about like slightly shifting the mindset and maybe you're not going to do something different or get a different result, but it will, it mentally keeps you engaged and the more engaged you are and excited about what you're doing, the better the work product is going to be.
Sarah Lovelace: And it's also fun. I think that's part of the reason why I love. Being a people leader is that it's all about finding like the connections of different things. And so it's really fun to find connections and what other departments are doing and what I'm doing. Do you really enjoy doing quite a bit?
Shawn Pfunder: No, I love it.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Engagement. That sounds so silly for me to be like engagement, huge. But like, I wonder. One of the pieces of that, we talk about this a lot on the show, and I want to do it a little bit different. So instead of just, how do you build trust with people? Because that's, that's important in what you're talking about.
Shawn Pfunder: Let's go the other way, because you mentioned spreadsheets. How do you measure trust at a company? And kind of a, kind of a, Expose then what it is going that direction.
Sarah Lovelace: I think measuring it can be so hard to do and I don't think, I don't know, maybe other people feel differently about this.
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah. I, I don't know if it's necessarily like one, like one metric that you're putting in place to say Yes, we're building trust with the employee base, but I think you see it show up in, in a lot of different ways.
Sarah Lovelace: I think you ultimately see it in tenure and in attrition.
Sarah Lovelace: While I don't think that if you have low tenure and high attrition, you know, do I think it means that like you haven't built trust in the organization? Maybe not, but I think that if you do tend to have higher tenure, lower attrition rates, you know, A lot of it can be because, ultimately, the people at the company trust the vision that the CEO and ultimately, like, the executive team has, and I think that's sort of your, your standard marker at the end.
Sarah Lovelace: I also think that you see it show up in engagement surveys,
Sarah Lovelace: you see it show up in Glassdoor, you see it show up more qualitatively in comments in, in the general channel in Slack, or the questions, the questions that people ask in all hands meetings, or also just candidly, the questions that people ask, we're the people team at Airbase, but the questions that people one on one.
Sarah Lovelace: Ask the people team, right? And sort of how those sort of show up and percolate. I think it's one thing to be one way in an open forum, and then sometimes people get behind closed doors and can sometimes be very different. And so I think if you build ultimately trust within the organization, you see people show up in the same way across all the different forums.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Well, well, two things. You're, you sort of bring to mind for me, and I really appreciate one of the, it's, it sounds like in the way that you describe it, especially general channel reactions, comments, questions that come up, like they're almost, maybe it's not a number or maybe it is, maybe somebody can come up with a number, but imagine reporting on that.
Shawn Pfunder: Like for the team, they have their monthly business review and you show up and you'll be like, all right, here's what our trust score is. Yeah. And everybody believes it and everybody. Everybody trusts it. That would be, I mean, just super, super, super powerful.
Sarah Lovelace: But then can you trust the trust score?
Shawn Pfunder: I know. I guess it depends on which executive you're talking to.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Lovelace: I just, I think it is, I think you have to look at ultimately in like a very, like in a very holistic way. Cause it's a, I think trust is a, trust is a big thing and the way that you measure it should also be. Be a big thing as well. And I don't think that one thing is ever fully gonna, gonna tell the story, right?
Sarah Lovelace: Like I always tell people like, yes, the spreadsheets and the numbers, they're absolutely amazing and you need them for everything. But like our job as the people team is to have the data, to have the information, to be able to pull it together ourselves, to be able Quantify it, but we also have to be able to tell the story of what's happening in that, you know, cell in a spreadsheet as well.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, yeah. When you talk about all the different areas, one of the things that comes to mind, it's almost like maybe there's not a trust score in how you measure or how you develop trust with folks at your, at your company, but it affects everything else. So if you're getting business results, if people are sticking around, if you're able to move at speed, everybody talks about high performance culture or something that goes with that.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, I think that comes sort of that, that happens when people trust each other.
Sarah Lovelace: It does. And I think a lot of it really ultimately, and I think sort of, you know, trust and culture, they can, they honestly go, they go hand in hand. And a lot of it really comes from. You know, people can say it's a sort of, it is shared ultimately at the end of the day between everyone within the company, but ultimately it comes from the top down and it comes from the CEO and organizations, employees, they're, they're made within like the sun of their of their leader.
Sarah Lovelace: And I think one thing at Airbase that our CEO Tejo has just done an incredible job with is building trust within the organization. And the way that he has done that, especially in a remote environment, you're very open with our customer. I think like transparent is like a little bit above like a buzzy, as a buzzy word, a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
Sarah Lovelace: But the way that that shows up for us, we talk a lot about like the decisions that we make, why we make the decisions. You know, we go through our financials with the organization every single quarter. If we're making changes and decisions in, in our product roadmap. We'll talk about why we're doing it, why we think it's important, not because we want necessarily like every, everyone doesn't need to agree with it, but we want people to understand the thought process behind it.
Sarah Lovelace: We'll share all of our, as much as we can, we'll share our board materials with the organization to sort of like demystify that part of it. And it's sort of like, All these little like building blocks that you put in place so that we, oh, we talk about how, like how we do our comp, why we do it, our philosophy.
Sarah Lovelace: Not everybody agrees with it, which is totally okay, but we talk a lot about it and we put those building blocks in place so that when you do ever have like road bumps within the organization or, you know, like a year, like last year, which I think for most startups was a little bit challenging, right? You can have those road bumps.
Sarah Lovelace: You can talk to the organization about it and it doesn't have to become like this sort of like big explosive effect because you've been there. Lay the groundwork, like you don't ultimately just get to wake up one day and say, I'm going to have the organization. Trust me, like it takes years of doing it and it takes years of putting all the right things in place.
Sarah Lovelace: We have this thing also called like the newspaper test, where you want to make sure that the Again, like the decisions that you are making that maybe are not like fully public. Well, let's say that it did go public, right? And like the way, maybe it's the way that you're treating someone on the way out or the decisions that you're making when the one person comes to you and asks for a raise.
Sarah Lovelace: What if you do say yes out of cycle? What if everyone else finds out? All right. What if that is just something Splash up on the headlines of the newspaper. Like can you defend it? Is it like, is it fair? And so I think it's, again, all those things over time that just help you as a leadership team ultimately build trust with the people who've chosen to come and work for you.
Shawn Pfunder: The newspaper test.
Sarah Lovelace: The newspaper test.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that. I've never, yeah, I haven't heard that. I haven't heard that before. And we talk about it from a sense of like I've worked with PR, I worked with big comms teams. We talk about it in that sense. But from a people. That totally makes sense to look at something like that.
Shawn Pfunder: And one of the values, it seems, I don't know exactly what it might be at Airbase, this, this tell the truth or be open as much as you can on, on what you're working on. What are the other values that drive? The people team and what you do at Airbase and how does that affect then the results?
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah. I mean, I think that like ultimately at the end of the day, as a people team, you have to like the people and you have to, right.
Sarah Lovelace: You have to want to treat everyone with the sense of being a good, like a good human. Right. And I think that's just sort of, that sounds so silly to say, but you know, I have met People in people roles and they get annoyed by the people. And you know, ultimately, and I don't say this to diminish the work of what we do as a team and an organization, but ultimately, like we are part of GNA with finance and legal and an IT and like we're the backbone operation of the company.
Sarah Lovelace: Which is ultimately like it's part of a, like a service organization. And so I think you have to really, you have to be really there to help support people. It doesn't mean that you're a doormat, but you have to ultimately like, you know, enjoy interacting with people on a day to day basis.
Shawn Pfunder: It shouldn't be, you're right.
Shawn Pfunder: It shouldn't be easier said than done. You would assume that if people choose that type of career and want to do that, that. They like people, but I've experienced that a thousand percent. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah. And I think, you know, you also, you're also always constantly in this place where there always is going to be some like push and pull between maybe some of the things that you want to do.
Sarah Lovelace: And then also the things that are like right for the business as well. And, you know, sometimes you have to think about them in two separate buckets and then find ways to, to marry the two together. But I think some, uh, trap also that. People get into is, Oh, well, to be a really good people leader, I have to make sure that people like me and I have to go like put in like all of these well over the top programs, like the ping pong tables and the slides and, you know, free lunch and, you know, and all of these, like all of these types of things, but they also have to like marry in with the business as well.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Something that, that comes to mind when you said that is that, that when you legitimately, like, thoroughly care about the people you're working with, like, even regardless of their, like, you assume their performance, there's something else going on other than they don't want to be at the company.
Shawn Pfunder: That's all of the programs you come up with, so professional development or learning and development, working on all hands, working with executives. None of that is then a check, a check box. Like, Oh, I did it. Oh, we set this goal for the year. It always has a. We're doing this so that we, cause we care about the success of our employees, which is much more motivating to me, I guess.
Sarah Lovelace: I mean, I think, so like, ultimately, yes, like you do those things because you care about your employees, but like, ultimately, at the end of the day, like, the reason that you do all of those different things is because you care about like, We're here to run a business, right? Sure. And like you care about, right?
Sarah Lovelace: Ultimately, like the success of the business and the more engaged your team is, the more they're learning. You have the right people in the right roles. Of course, then hopefully that means success in the, in the business as well, but those things aren't a checkbox. I heard, I heard someone say this and I mean, I cannot take credit for this, but I think it's such a.
Sarah Lovelace: It has really helped me think about the types of things and the programs that we do, but I like to think of our team and like the programs that we do, like we are the product managers. And our product is the people, right? And so as we think about the different, like, it's not a comp process, it's a comp program.
Sarah Lovelace: And our job is to share the structure, share the timeline, right? Make sure that people kind of understand it holistically, and then they can help solve it. Sort of move through it and then the outcome of it then helps drive like the next iteration of it. But it becomes about like all these different programs and getting and getting adoption in them and getting buy in in them versus just like the thing to do.
Sarah Lovelace: And constantly in programs, you don't just do them and check a box, right? And with a product, for example, like you're always measuring the success and the adoption and the pass rates and the stickiness of it. And then how do you keep doing the things that are super sticky and that people really like and then get rid of the things that are just like no longer serving you.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. So it's more literal MVP in that situation instead of just a metaphor or figure exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. That's really powerful. So moving on, just, we talked about it a little bit at the top, your experience as a leader and how that's informed the way that you operate now, what do you do at Airbase?
Shawn Pfunder: Is there anything unique that you do at Airbase to develop you? Leaders to develop managers. I know a lot of time we like to separate those and there's a difference between, but what do you do to support them so that they then can support the, your employees?
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah. I mean, I think that, okay. A little controversial.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, fantastic. Go for it.
Sarah Lovelace: Okay. So there's like, and I say, this was sort of like, uh, do I fully believe this now, but I sort of,
Shawn Pfunder: What a preface.
Sarah Lovelace: Well, I mean, so I think like fundamentally, I think that, oh my gosh, I can't believe how good this is. I think that most learning and development programs are just complete bulls—t.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, we're good friends. We need to continue to connect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sarah Lovelace: And I think that a lot of the times that they are, they're put out there as like a checkbox to the organization to say like, we did it. And this is like, this is the thing that we've done. And I think a lot of the times they're just completely wrong.
Sarah Lovelace: That's just what they're there for. And I have been to some really like amazing, like amazing sort of leadership development programs and done the full day workshops. I think that there are, through the years that I've done them, where I have been a participant, there's probably about three things ultimately, I think that I can remember from those, like, that's it.
Sarah Lovelace: And so I think at Airbase, a lot of what we've really tried to do, and again, awesome. We're very stage appropriate. We're 350 people. Someone asked me recently, like, well, who's your leader? Like L and D person. And I'm like, what? Like, we're 350 people. We're 350 people.
Sarah Lovelace: If I hired, we're a global organization, if I hired an L& D person at 350 people, if I thought as a people leader, that was a really good idea as like, you know, one of the core fundamental people.
Sarah Lovelace: I think you should look at me and say, what kind of decisions are you making? But, you know, what we've tried to do at Airbus, and what I hope we've been able to accomplish, a lot of the learning For managers and form leaders. I mean, it comes from like the day to day things that you're doing and experiencing, right?
Sarah Lovelace: Like, you know, where you have a sticky employee situation come up and what ultimately, like, to me, those programs do, they actually just help connect people and they help bond them together. And they help them get to know each other so that when you're having an issue as an engineering manager, and you remember from this L and D class, there's a really amazing manager in marketing or in sales or in product.
Sarah Lovelace: Oh, I remember they actually had some good advice about something like that. Let me just go like, reach out to that person and actually helps your managers get to know each other so that they can like in real time problem solve, because that's ultimately like what's going to help people learn and develop.
Sarah Lovelace: Isn't those situations and I think it's managers. There's no, there's sure there's some things that you can like fast track, but like,
Sarah Lovelace: And again, I heard someone say this one. I don't know if I like the expression, but I think it really works in this case. As a manager, I think it equates to the same thing as you can't put nine pregnant women in a room and get a baby in a month.
Sarah Lovelace: Like it still takes nine months to like bake the baby.
Sarah Lovelace: Well, over nine months, really. But like,
Sarah Lovelace: as a manager, like you can't fast track that experience. Like you have to go through all of the seasons and you have to go through the reviews. You have to go through having a first heart conversation with an employee.
Sarah Lovelace: And sometimes there's just not a time limit on that. And so I think ultimately those L& D programs sometimes aim to like fast track that and I think some of them are like, they really, truly are amazing and I've, some of the facilities here is like absolutely amazing. I have truly found like the best value is again, getting to know managers and so at Airbase, you know, we've done a few things here and there for the last about year, we've done about one a quarter, roughly, so we've done like four or five at this point.
Sarah Lovelace: Which is a hundred percent appropriate for our stage of the organization. And it's one of the things, like fundamentally that, and the fact that I just don't believe in performance, like these sort of big fundamental performance reviews, it's one of the things that I aligned on before starting at Airbase.
Sarah Lovelace: With our CEO. Cause I thought, Hey, if he is looking for someone who wants to build out these like amazing, like L and D programs, like it's not my jam and it's not my thing. And if I don't fundamentally buy into it, I should not be the person running the people team for your organization.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Shawn Pfunder: The way you describe it. Learning and development programs are bulls—t, but the way you describe it sounds a little bit like sometimes like the difference maybe between a trade school and like a liberal arts education and if you're learning how to program or there's a specific task or something, you still want creative thinking and everything, but that's more like.
Shawn Pfunder: You can learn how to be a mechanic and here's the process for learning how to be a mechanic and put those things together. Yes. Not to say there's not an art to being a mechanic. Yeah. But then when it comes to leadership, it's almost like you wanna coach or train people to, to use their resources, grow on your own, go through the processes.
Shawn Pfunder: It's like liberal arts college is teaching people how to learn. Mm-Hmm. kind of thing. It's a little bit, bit exactly. Little different.
Sarah Lovelace: Yes. And that is going to like, ultimately, right? Like be the thing that ultimately like makes a really great leader is you have to find like your own gift of your own voice and like what's authentic to you.
Sarah Lovelace: And the only way that you do that is by going on your own self guided journey through figuring out how to do that. Like no one can give you the blueprint to you. Like you have to go figure out that for yourself.
Shawn Pfunder: No one can give you the blueprint to you. I'm writing that one down. Yeah. Self discovery.
Shawn Pfunder: You've got to figure that out. And especially if you're going to be a leader at working with other people. Yeah. That's there's much more art to that unless do this and this will happen, do this and this will happen, do this and this will happen.
Sarah Lovelace: Yeah.
Sarah Lovelace: Life just doesn't, life doesn't work that way. And, you know, and humans aren't robots.
Sarah Lovelace: So it just doesn't work out like that.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, not yet. No. I'm kidding. Not yet. I know. Not yet. No. That soon. Soon. Very soon. So in wrapping up, what are gonna be the challenges for. for us, for people, teams, engagement teams in the next three years. What are we going to, what are we going to run into? Do you think?
Sarah Lovelace: I think that, um, I think that every, I think everyone in the workplace right now, I think people are trying to sort of figure out this, like this, like blending and molding between hybrid in person remote work and just sort of. Resettling whatever a new normal is. I think that if one thing that we hopefully, one positive I think that came out of the pandemic, I think you will see and continue to see more and more of global workforces, which I think just continues to create like more interesting challenges and problems sort of tactically for people.
Sarah Lovelace: People teams to solve, whether it's around compensation and headcount management and engagement and you know, building trust. I think you're going to see a lot of, a lot. And there's a lot of companies I think that are sort of like pushing a little bit in this space where I think comp is like, it's such a It is such a big thing, but it's such a big thing now globally, right?
Sarah Lovelace: And sort of, how do you build out these like big global programs? I think you're going to see a lot, gosh, I hope a lot more integration between like, between systems and where they sort of all like marry and come together. So I think you're going to see a lot of those, those trends start to show up.
Shawn Pfunder: Right.
Shawn Pfunder: And then where can we keep in touch with you? Where can we follow you learn more about Airbase?
Sarah Lovelace: You can find me on LinkedIn. I am there. I wouldn't say I'm like the most active, but, but I am there.
Shawn Pfunder: That's perfect.
Sarah Lovelace: And if you want to see pictures of my dog, you can find me on Instagram.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, fantastic. Frank, we love you.
Shawn Pfunder: Thanks for being with us, Sarah.
Sarah Lovelace: Ah, thanks so much. This was really fun. Thank you, Shawn.