LM Ep 92
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In talent, in hr, we take care of people, we support people. Have you ever had to support people who are experiencing the same personal challenges that you yourself are experiencing? If you're like me, the answer is yes. Well, in today's episode, my guest describes her experience with a situation like this and how she approached it.
My guest is Maude v Karney, who is Director of People and Culture at Zenfolio. She has over 15 years experience in organizational development and employee effectiveness. Additionally, she's a a huge proponent of female healthcare and is on the board of directors at Fit [00:03:00] Mama Fitness, which is a fem tech organization supporting women with fitness through menopause.
I know you'll find this conversation interesting as we explore the concept of unlearning in order to navigate change and transitions. Enjoy.
Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truths. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and today I'm joined by MoVI Karney, who is currently the Director of People operations and Culture at Zenfolio. Welcome to the show, MoVI. Good to see you. Good to see you, Lisa. Thanks for having me. So let's begin by having you share a little bit about who you are and and your career journey to date.
Of course. Firstly, thanks for this opportunity. You know, it, it was great hearing from you to think that all this started from a simple LinkedIn message that you sent. I think kind of shows you know, how important networking is So, the way I started in my career was [00:04:00] slightly different as compared to other HR practitioners.
I started my career in BPO or a call center in India business process outsourcing for listeners? Yes. And That was the era where a lot of businesses were outsourcing to India because, you know, we gave better rates and, you know, you got cheaper labor. So that's where I started. That was my very first job.
I finished my degree examinations on a Friday, and on Monday I gave the interview. And on Tuesday I joined Accenture as part of the b p O team. I was supporting a UK based firm selling insurance. And it was interesting because, We were taught on how to improve our soft skills by learning accents.
So we were actually taught how to inculcate the British accent. There were a few years after leaving that job where I could pull off a properly polished British accent that no one in Britain even spoke. It was the royal language where we had customers say, [00:05:00] language, why are you speaking like the royals?
No one speaks. That was what we were taught. So I did that for a few years and I moved as a trainer for the same department, right? So I started training new hires. The way I used to be a new hire and someone trained me, I started training people, and that was my first introduction to human resources in a very tangential way, because as a trainer, I did everything from hiring to recruitment to performance management, to terminations to you know, rating their performance and everything.
Right. That is considered as classic hr, but how, how long was the, was the new hire program that you were leading so, A standard new hire program lasted for three weeks of soft skills trainings, plus six weeks of hard skills. So that's around nine weeks, and we had back to back batches, which meant that, you know, in a year's time, I must have trained [00:06:00] over 200 people, which meant that was a lot of.
Practical HR knowledge without actually be knowing anything about HR laws in media. So I have to just say this is so mm-hmm. Because you and I, even though we've talked a couple times now, I didn't realize that piece cuz I was a teacher initially, but then I got started when I entered corporate in a call center, large B p o for one of the big banks in Canada.
Mm-hmm. And after being a, a CSR on the phones for about three weeks, then. I ended up doing this payment processing, led this big department that I developed from nothing. Mm-hmm. Which was so funny. Mm-hmm. And then after nine months of that was a trainer and I did the new hire training in Academy Bay and that was, you know, my entry into adult learning.
And so from, you know, teaching kids and the whole employee experience, Journey, really, as you say, like for right from recruitment, working with the agencies, bringing them in. So I'm just, I'm listening to you. I'm like, this is [00:07:00] weird, you know? And then I think our training was six or eight weeks as well. It was really, really long.
And yeah. What? Yeah, it's what a boot camp for, isn't it? For learning all the things, right? Yeah. And you're learning all of this while training others. Yeah. On a topic that you're supposed to have knowledge about, you're supposed to be an expert at it. Yeah. Right. So I did that for around a year and a half, and then I moved as an i s analyst for the same training department.
Now, what did I do as an MRS. Analyst was I dealt with numbers. I converted the people I was handling into numbers, which meant that I was tracking, you know, how many people are we hiring, how many people are we training? What's their performance like you know, what's the throughput of the batches, you know, what, what, what our attrition percentages and so on.
And that's where I learned that numbers tell a story. And numbers tell a story depending on which viewpoint you look at it from. So [00:08:00] I may be looking at the same chart as my manager, but my manager may be taking away com, something completely different as compared to what I was showing, right? And that was where I learned how to read what other people need and show them data in that manner, regardless of how I am looking at it.
So I think this. Kind of created a great basis for me to learn how HR training, you know, numbers, all of these kind of work together. They're, everything is telling us a story. How do we read that story? What are the takeaways we take from that story and how do we use those takeaways to project what's gonna happen in the future?
Is something I learned during that piece. Right. At that time I did not know how important it would be. No clue. Zero idea. So I was in Accenture, I think for around just under six years, and I was ready for a change. So I quit that job [00:09:00] and I moved in entirely out of hr, and I moved as a program manager for technology, again, dealing with numbers.
I was an old hand at this, right? Because at that time I had just come out of this job that I was supporting around 7,500 employees across five locations. Coming from that huge number to say a hundred odd employees in two locations was easy for me, very happy. I then took a career break. I had my kid, you know, all of that happened, and then I wanted to rejoin.
And that was the first time I looked at fields outside standard organizations such as tech or, you know, big pharma and so on. And that was where I found out about social enterprises. So I moved to a social enterprise side as the Dr you know, head of people and culture. That was where I found out my first learning at that in that company was What's the difference between a nonprofit, a charity, and a social [00:10:00] enterprise?
I joined the company without knowing all of that, and that was what I learned. For the first time, I had an inside view of how these companies work, right? Because they were completely differently as compared to big corporates like, you know, Accenture or, you know, small and medium sized tech firms. Oh, it's, it's nice, completely and day.
I have clients from that world and the corporate world and, and Yeah, you're, it's interesting. How about you, you break it down for, for us and for the listeners around, what is the difference in your view, having worked in, in both sides with nonprofit, charity and social enterprise? Of course. A huge aspect of social enterprises is having an ability to look at things from a very social perspective.
When you are in a corporate or when you are in a small and mediums size, smaller, medium sized business, the amount of time that you spend in looking at the social output of a company is minimal as compared [00:11:00] to the same work that's done in a social enterprise where you're looking at the social output almost 95% of the time.
Right, because everything you do. Has an effect socially on the people you're supporting. You are not just selling a business, you are selling people things or objects or you know, services that may need that they may not even be able to pay for. Right? How do you sell something to someone when they can't even afford to pay for it?
How do you figure out your way? Because you're doing good in the world, right? You're doing social good in the world. You need to have that kind of a mindset to work in those companies. If you bring a corporate mindset into a social enterprise workspace and try and implement the same over there, you're gonna find it tough because your values are gonna be very different.
So, so you said if you bring a corporate mindset into a social enterprise mm-hmm. It, it, that's gonna be really tough. So I'm just hoping you can sort of ex expand a little [00:12:00] bit. Sure. Listeners who don't have that insight, I think it'd be really interesting.
Mm-hmm. Sure. So when you work in a corporate organization, or at least the way it worked for me was when I worked in a corporate organization. All that I was bothered about or that I was asked to work on was a certain target. There was no clear understanding or a relation that we could draw as to how that target that I'm working towards leads to the social output of the company, right?
What is the social good that we are doing? How is what I am doing related directly to that work that is going to impact someone else out in the world? There was nothing related to that. So in big organizations in corporates, you're given a target, you're working towards it, right? And in the end, that is your day in, day out work.
You're not really bothered beyond that. Now switch to a [00:13:00] social side. The a social enterprise side. And you suddenly realize that every single bit of work that you do, Has an effect in impacting someone out in the world. So, for example the social enterprise I worked at was called Pollinate Energy.
Pollinate sold solar products to people living in low income communities across India and multiple locations in India. Now when we say low income, it means these are people who are living below poverty lines. They are working hard. They are, you know, these are fa small families with, yes, they may have two or more earning members, but the joint wages that they earn still keep them below poverty lines, right?
They may be living in shanty towns across cities where they don't have access to running water. They don't have access [00:14:00] to electricity, they don't have access to clean sanitation or you know, clean locations to stay in. And they struggle just to get by day-to-day. And then we are selling products to these people, which means they have to pay us for it.
How do these products make their lives better? And how do you help them figure out how to pay? How do you help them? Secondly, can I have someone who's wearing a three piece suit go and sell such products to these people? They're not even going to accept it. They're not even gonna speak to these people, As an organization, all the sales people we worked with, where people who had themselves stepped out of those poverty lines, So we had, we were hiring people who would have maybe been even below poverty line, so just above that poverty line to, because they knew the challenges, right? So not only were we employing people who needed that help, that financial assistance in getting that a stable salary [00:15:00] and so on, but we were also working with them and giving them those life skills that were needed.
Go ahead and have a successful career, and they were still supporting people who needed those products to make their lives better. Now, if you think about it, the social aspect of this, we are doing so much good in the world. How do you compare that to something that I would have done in my previous corporate job?
I could not. It needed a whole mindset shift, and that was where I first learned of this concept of what is a mindset shift? How do I bring that into my career? What lessons did I get from it? And I think it was very important that I went through it at that right stage in my career without even knowing about it.
Because just after Polly, that was when I moved to Canada. Mm, yes. Would be very important for you. A huge, huge life change. You know, as any immigrant, just moving countries is a big, big challenge. So I came to [00:16:00] Canada, started learning a lot about, you know, what works here, how do careers work here, right?
It's all brand new for me. And for the first time in my life, again, I learned something brand new, that volunteering is considered. You know, it has a lot of importance over here in Canada. Newcomers are encouraged to volunteer. I've never done that in my life. Mm. I did not know how to start. So my career in Canada did not start with a job.
It started with figuring out how in the world do I become a volunteer and what can I actually volunteer with, right? Like, what skills do I bring there? I couldn't do physical roles because one, you know, my health didn't allow me. But two, you know, I wanted to be there for my child in that huge move that we had just pulled off and so on.
So I figured out, great, let me tap into my HR knowledge. Maybe I can become a mentor for young people, right? People who are starting off their careers, they don't need employment law, knowledge. They need to know how to enter the workspace, and that's something I can train [00:17:00] them with. So I became a volunteer with Youth Employment Services.
So yes, and I spoke with a lot of people, a lot of youth but as I used to speak to them, I kind of also was working on how do I start my career And this brings me to, to this new change that again happened, right? Not only had I shifted countries, I now needed to figure out how to enter the same human resources field in Canada, right?
I did not have the knowledge of local employment law, but that was not what was standing in my way. What was standing in my way was the need for Canadian experience. Mm. So, I did not want to take my time to figure out, you know, which role suits me best. I said, let me just take the first role that comes my way and I'll start off.
I need that first step. So I was at a director level position in India when I left and when I started my job in Canada, I went down to a coordinator level. [00:18:00] Because that was the only job that I could get. Yes. I've heard this from many other immigrants from many different countries. It six. Yes. It's a really tough part of the experience.
Yeah, it is. What I did not realize would happen was the impact it would have on me on a personal basis. To me, when I took up that job, I was like, great, you know what? I'm just starting off. I'll quickly learn what I need to and move on as any career-minded person would do. I underestimated the impact it would have on my mental strength to take a role that basically pushed me back in my career almost by five years.
so this, my first job was with FoodShare Toronto, a nonprofit. Again, because nonprofits are very forgiving of international experiences, so a lot of immigrants do find it, you know, easier to get into the workspace through nonprofits as opposed to you know, regular organizations or corporates.
And something very funny happened at [00:19:00] FoodShare. So when I was hired, You know, they gave me a list of things to do saying this is the expectation, you know, you're supposed to finish this within the first year. That's our, you know, that's the desire from this role. And three months in, I go to my manager and I'm like, well, I finished whatever you told me to do.
What would you like me to work on? And he looks at me and he's like, that was your list for one entire year. I said, I've done it in three months. I don't have anything else to do. Like, you know, practically as someone who ca came from a very busy background. Yeah. I needed something to keep myself busy.
So I made work for myself. I created an audit out of thin air and you know, audited HR files and I still finished that within a month and I'm like, well, I don't have anything else to do. So, You know, I realized that, okay, I'm, I'm not being used to my full fullest potential here. And slowly by that time, you know, because of my volunteering and the social networking that I was doing on LinkedIn one of my connections then recommended me for my next [00:20:00] role.
Now this was early 2020. I joined in January Toronto Arts Gaping. I had an amazing boss and. I was lucky to get two and a half months with my HR team there. I joined as an HR business partner, and then Covid Hit right again, right? Oh, COVID. So again, a huge, huge life change, but this time it wasn't limited to me.
It impacted everyone across the world. No one was trained for how to deal with this. Yes, you may have, you know, emergency preparedness plans in organizations. Not many organizations had pandemic prep plans. So figuring out all of this took some time. But you know, again, a year and a half into the rule, my body, I think just kind of threw its hands up and said, Can you understand what you've put me through in the last four years?
Because last four years I've changed more like, you know, over three jobs. [00:21:00] I've shifted countries, I've gone through a pandemic and my body was like, you need to take a break. Yeah. It's funny your bodies do that, right? Like yeah, I've talked about that on the show before. How, you know, that's partly why I do what I do, cuz I've gone through burnout several times in and out you know, where my body just went.
Okay, Lisa, it's time to take pause. Yeah. Yes. We can only take so much if we're, if we're not. And if we're not intentional about stopping to refuel, it's, it's tricky. Correct. There's always external circumstances, but internally too, we have to Yeah. Be diligent about, about making that.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what you're going through, you know how to deal with it. If you don't, it leads to burnout. So I was completely burnt out. I went on stress leave and I said, I need a change. So what was my change? I took up two different part-time jobs, one in another nonprofit skills for Change and one with a tech firm based out of Vancouver.
You know, just to kind [00:22:00] of dip my feet into the tech world and see, okay, you know, am I cut out for this? Because I wanted to move out of the nonprofit space. I wanted to experience what, what it is like working across different fields and. This role at Zenfolio actually came about because Zenfolio in November, 2021 acquired format, which is a Canada based fund, and they were looking for the director of people, operations and culture to come in and kind of bring together the culture of the two organizations.
They needed someone who had that experience of working for two organizations, trying to bring them together. And at that time I was working for two different organizations, one tech, one nonprofit. So I was able to bring that experience into the interview. And now here I am, you know, year, almost a year and a half now into this role.
And I have to say, I, at no time would have thought that my [00:23:00] journey into HR would've brought me to this position. So tell us a bit about what zenfolio does. Mm-hmm. So Zenfolio and format on the ca on the Canadian side support photographers. Now, how do they do this? Is by helping them set up their own websites, you know, sell their.
Art, their images and so on to the public. So we have a selling platform. They can showcase their products very beautifully on custom made websites. We assist them on setting up their selling platforms the way they wanna do it, right? Because there are different types of photographers. So we have individual photographers, people like you and me, who are maybe, you know, avid photographers or people who have their own little studios.
Know who are doing, say, wedding photography or they're going to schools to take photographs of kids. On the other hand, format supports commercial photographers. Commercial photographers are those people who work with say, big organizations [00:24:00] to run, say, ad campaigns. For example, Aleta or Nike want to run an ad campaign.
They've reached out to a commercial photographer and you know, so the kind of setups that they need as compared to individual photographers is different. And that was the purpose behind the acquisition because then we could support photographers across this whole range. Right? We are now slowly expanding to non photographers as well.
People like students. You know, who are learning about photography or art or artists or, you know, big, theme parks, for example, where they can sell the photo photography services to their clients and so on. So we are trying to expand our services in the end to kind of simplify everything.
What we do is we give photographers a platform to showcase all the amazing work that they do in a way that, you know, brings them. Success and you know, allows them to sell their work. Yeah. And you had told [00:25:00] me, so there's about 80 employees, so it's small. Mm-hmm. It's a small but mighty. And then, and then about 60% of those employees are, are in the us Is that, that's correct.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. And you're a team of one. So tell us a little bit about, you know, a day in the life for you mm-hmm. As you support these employees. Of course. So let me start with how I actually met everyone, right? So when I joined the firm I knew that my standard tricks of, you know, going and meeting everyone is not gonna work because one, we are a remote only organization, which means we do not have offices in Canada or in the us.
Everyone works from home or from wherever they desire to you know, predominantly spread across different states in the US and across provinces in Canada. So how do you speak to them? Right. So my first three months I was very clear and upfront with was saying what I'm gonna do is just meet people.
I'm gonna meet with every single person in the organization. So that's exactly what I did. Set up calls with each and every single person [00:26:00] met with them. these were not calls where I did a lot of information gathering. It was more a get to know you call that I used to have with them. Saying, this is me, this is my background.
tell me a little bit about you. Just the same question you asked me right at the start of this. Right? Right. Tell me about yourself. How can I help you better? What is it that you're looking for from this person in this role? I got a lot of inputs. Because these were people who had just gone through an acquisition on the format side.
The AppFolio team was pretty settled because they were not the ones impacted by this huge change. But the format team was so got a lot of inputs that I could take some ideas from. What, what is needed to be worked upon? Do we have everything in place? You know, what are employees looking forward to?
What are they worried about? Things like that. First three months went in that the next three months I just sat and made plans. You know, what is going to work? How do we assess things? How do we track their [00:27:00] engagement? Are we tracking their engagement? if we get the results, how are we gonna showcase them?
What are the takeaways we are gonna take? How many more changes can I hit people within one year? Right? Because people need time to go through change. You hit them with too many things, it's not gonna work. And as I did that, probably with my experience and having met so many people, I could see clear trends coming up.
You know, what were these trends that people are asking for a specific thing. There are multiple people talking about, Hey, we wanna meet more frequently, or we wanna have more FaceTime with our leaders, or, you know, we wanna have learning opportunities, we wanna have growth opportunities. Now these are very, you know, generic statements.
How do I take these generic statements and give them something that actually fits the need, So this was part of my homework and just settling into the organization. And I think for any HR person, when you go to a new [00:28:00] organization, this is very, very required. If you go into a new organization and say, I'm gonna hit the ground running, I'm gonna implement all of these changes.
Be very prepared that those changes may not give you the results you're looking for because you've gone into it without any prep. Do your prep first and put the time in it. It is gonna be well worth it. Well, and nobody, yes, no organization, existing team wants to be told that they're doing things wrong.
You know what I mean? Yes. So it's take, take your time to, to sense to, to, to get to know Right. To ask. Mm-hmm. My questions. To check your assumptions, you know? Yes. Before you start making some recommendations. Yeah. Yeah. Reminds me of, you know, Marshall Goldsmiths. You know, oldie, but goodie book what got you here won't get you there, right?
Mm-hmm. So not everything will transfer. Yes. Or if it, it needs some, some adjustment for sure. Yes. So and so, you know, I, I appreciate how you, you said people need time to go through change cuz it's so true. I think we [00:29:00] tend to rush change and it takes me back to something that you and I talked about earlier, which was, you know, you told me when we first got acquainted around You know, this feeling of, this experience of when you were newer into Canada mm-hmm.
And you're an immigrant going through this transition, taking a coordinator level job, after having done more senior roles and, and moving along and then being in a position to counsel others in your organizations who were in the same boat. Yep. And I think this is such an important thing for, for listeners because.
You know, hr, that's, that's what we do, right? Yeah. We're taking care of people, but we've still got our own stuff. Mm-hmm. So tell us a little bit about, about that experience for you. Of course. This came up very strongly when I was you know, through my volunteering sessions because I was speaking to a lot of newcomers, right?
So through, yes, I was counseling new you know, new students who are getting into the workforce, but [00:30:00] I was also counseling new immigrants who were trying to enter the workforce. And probably because I learned it the hard way, I had to do a lot of unlearning. I had to unlearn what were the preconceived notions that I came with from India.
I had to replace them with what works over here. I had to do that at the same time that I was dealing with culture shock, and I had to do that the same time when I was dealing with a, a totally different perspective of networking and working. now I'm an introvert, so I find it very, very difficult to network, but that was the advice that was given to me by literally every single person I spoke to.
Oh, you have to go out there. You have to network. You have to meet people. Trust me, that's the worst advice for an introvert because you go to these sessions and you're gonna be hidden in a corner, which is exactly what I did. You just go there, you say hi, and you stand in a corner and you barely, you [00:31:00] struggle to speak to people because you don't know what to speak about, and then you come out of it thinking, well, I didn't really get anything out of it.
So the biggest thing that immigrants, I think, need to identify is what are your strengths? And is the advice that you're getting, is that playing to your strengths or not? If it is not, you need to figure out. What can you do that takes your own characteristics into account and allows you to go ahead and perform those tasks?
So the way it worked for me was I, a couple of sessions, a couple of, you know, networking sessions, and I figure out, this is not for me, it's not gonna work. I'm just gonna go and stand in a corner. So then I said, okay, let me go through the online networking route when I'm not really physically there and I can control whom I'm speaking to, the way I want to speak to, and so on.
So that's what I did. A second aspect was also being very conscious about the type of people I [00:32:00] interacted with. It's very tempting as an immigrant to, you know, say, okay, let me get in touch with as many people as possible. Who knows where am I gonna get a job from? If you go at it from the perspective of getting a job, no one will be able to recommend you because they've never worked with you.
Literally, no one is gonna do that. They haven't worked with you. How can they recommend you? Right? It's something we don't think about. Instead, Learning about how we can add value is very important, and that's something that a lot of us face challenges with because it may not be part of the culture that we have come from.
It's a lot of unlearning. People don't know how to unlearn. Yeah. Well it's interesting cuz even with just your example with networking, because you know, I work with a lot of people around networking cuz it's got a bad rap. Mm-hmm. And, and I wanna acknowledge that you decided, okay, so this, this way of networking isn't working for me.
What if there's another way that could Yeah. You know, and so you embrace the online [00:33:00] thing and it's like, you know, I'm an extrovert, so, so you would think it'd be super easy for me, but I don't like going to big events either. But I'm doing it tomorrow night. Because what I've learned is, you know, I had to ask myself the question, okay, how could I make this work for me?
Cuz I don't, I don't wanna go in and. Flat hand people. But the way I look at it is, you know, I'm just gonna talk to who's near to me. Yeah. And it's a great conversation. And I walk away with one new acquaintance, you know, in my network mm-hmm. That I feel good about, you know, and, and, and I enjoyed that, that interaction.
Yeah. That's good enough for me. I'm not looking to get 20 contacts or business cards or whatever, you know? Yeah. And that, that took the pressure off for me. So like you joining or online, that's how I've. Been able to, to make those things work for me and it Yeah. And there is, I think unlearning is such an interesting term.
You know, you unlearning well, it's that what got you here won't get you there. Mm-hmm. There's some things that, that will translate when we transition, whether it's from a country to a country or from a [00:34:00] company to a company. Some things will translate, some things don't. And that's okay. It's a new salad every day.
What do we mix in this time? Yeah. When, and this is not limited to just immigrants, right? It applies to anyone, any single person who is even shifting jobs. What you can carry forward into that job is your knowledge, your skills, What you should not carry forward into that job is preconceived notions of how things should be done or how you are going to go in there and transform the organization.
You are going in there to perform a specific job. Can you do say 75% of it? Great. That's why you've been hired. Can you learn the remaining 25% of it? Excellent. That's your growth in your, you know, probation period or in the first six months, eight months, nine months, whatever. The minute you tell yourself that, Let me be open to anything that happens around me.
Let me [00:35:00] observe what is happening and let me learn what I can take. You know, what are the good things that I can take from it, and what are the bad things I observe that I can learn from, so I should never do them again in my life, You have to tell yourself these things every time you think about changing jobs or countries or any such thing.
Right, because that's a huge aspect of unlearning is just being very clear with yourself, saying, what am I carrying forward? What am I not going to carry forward? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I do that weekly. When I do my weekly reflection, I sort of look back at, you know, every day I note down what were some, some key wins and also maybe some challenges or disappointments.
Daily, I just jot it down and then weekly, I, sometimes, it's two weeks to be honest, but I, in my journal, we'll say, okay, what's sort of my weekly review, right? If I look back at all of those notes, because we forget what we wanna celebrate. and, but then sometimes we [00:36:00] forget about what are the key learnings we wanna take with us about stuff that didn't go so well.
Mm-hmm. So that reflection allows me to figure out what do I need to unlearn? What am I letting go of this this week? Correct. And what do I want embrace? I think it's really room for that on the day-to-day as well. Yeah. So we have come to the end of our time together. Yep. Once again, just fly by.
So, you know, my last question for you is, what would you say as a professional with some really, you know, broad experience in, you know, private corporations, social enterprises, and two different countries, what would you say has been the most meaningful, personal and professional lesson for you?
I think the most meaningful lesson, and this is something I mentioned to you just at the start of our call today, is it's learning to be kind to myself. Mm-hmm. It is learning that I cannot know everything that's happening in the world and I should not try and control that [00:37:00] knowledge. It is learning that I don't need to be perfect.
I just need to learn how to mold the situation and mold myself to what the situation demands, and it is, you know, at the end of the day just stepping back and saying, you know what? I think I did a good job today. Maybe this is how I can just be slightly better tomorrow. The minute you do that, the minute I started doing that on a daily basis, at the end, when I log off for the day, yeah.
I just take those five minutes, you know, just sit and say, you know what? I think I did a good job today, or I think I messed up on something today. Maybe this is how I can do it better tomorrow. It takes away that pressure of being a hundred percent of performing at a hundred percent all the time. I am acknowledging that.
I am not going to be a hundred percent all the time when I need to. I will be, but the rest of the time, I'm okay being less than that. Well, it's more realistic. It's, it's kinda, it's thief, right? You know, it's, it [00:38:00] makes me think about, you know, this being kind to yourself. You know, it's, it's very much that's a reflective, intentional process.
Yes. And that's why, so listeners, if you haven't come to one of my monthly talent talks, you need to come because this is space. For you cuz you, you know, ma you had said to me, you know, who takes care of hr? Mm-hmm. Cuz that's the thing, you're taking care of people often while you're dealing with the same challenges that, that you're helping them with.
Yes. You know yourself, like you've experienced. I know. I've experienced that too. And so we, if we're. If we're going to accept the responsibility of helping others navigate difficult situations, then we need to accept that we've gotta be kind to ourselves and take care of ourselves. And that requires space reflection that we, community connection.
It's, it's really, really important. We've gotta let it's ourselves up in each other. Yeah, it absolutely is. I think you summarized it very well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, beautiful. Thank you so much for, for sharing your experiences with [00:39:00] us and, you know, taking us along the journey cuz I think there's a lot of a lot of wisdom here, a lot of nuggets, a lot of things that people will relate to, so I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Lisa. This has been amazing. You know, just chatting with you on these very topics. You know, our conversations just flow, but you know, I think that's part of being an HR person. We deal with Maria things all the time. But you know, I have absolutely loved chatting with you.
Thank you for this. Beautiful. My pleasure. Thank you so much. [00:40:00]
