Three Employee Retention Drivers You’re Snoozing On with Courtney Ramsey

Are you losing staff? Believe it or not, you have more power than you think you have when it comes to retaining your top talent. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome for joining me today. I am so glad you are along for this ride. My guest for this this episode is leadership development expert Courtney Ramsey. And today, we will be talking about how business operators and managers can tip the scales on employee turnover. So, stay with us and we will uncover how you as a leader can be more impactful in creating the kind of work environment where people want to stay. And no, it doesn't mean lowering your standards. Before we get into it, I just want to do a quick shout out to all those of you who took the time to leave comments and reviews on this channel. Thank you so much. I know that when you tune in and think, wow, this is great, it takes really— it really does take intentionality to come back and put your thoughts down, go back to the episode and actually leave a review. So for those people who do it, I can't thank you enough. I really appreciate it when you give me your comments, your suggestions. And actually, your suggestions for future content as well. It's absolutely fantastic. When I moved from Montreal to Edmonton, Alberta in 1999, I was hired on as the Food and Beverage Director for the Palace Casino in West Edmonton Mall. The department had a 300% labor turnover. That means that each of the 63 positions in the department turned over 3 times in 1 year. To compensate, that means that they would have had to hire 189 people in 1 year and was a revolving door of disengagement and dissatisfaction. At a minimum, the cost to the business was $10,000 per employee. That's what it cost in lost revenues and so on in order to compensate for that. To put that into perspective, that means that the labor turnover was costing them just shy of $1.9 million a year. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. Do you know what your labor turnover cost is costing you? Do you have a strategy to stem the bleeding and make engagement and retention a priority? Okay, well, that was 2 questions. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead and wherever you're consuming this content, go ahead, share it on social media and put the hashtag #ExperienceLeadership in the comments along with your comments. Today's guest has made it her mission to turn the tide on retention and leadership issues. Courtney Ramsey is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in the learning and development and human resources field. As a sought-after speaker and trainer, Courtney brings a wealth of knowledge to audiences with her experiential programs that have a real impact on business results that inspire real change. Courtney is the author of the book Share Your Genius: 35 Tips to Create Training That Transforms. Courtney, I am so glad you were on the show. This has been a long time coming.

It has. It's been on our calendars for months now. And I just have to say, Marc, can you introduce me all the time? You are a pro. It's like you do this for a living or something.

Hmm. Maybe this is episode 130. So I've done— I've had 129 different episodes to fail.

Man, I'm just like, I just need to put you in my pocket. You're going to go to every keynote I ever do, every training session, because I'm ready to hear me speak. I don't even know. Like, this is crazy.

Oh, I don't know. I think you're being a little modest because your brilliance is going to shine today before this hour is over. Hey, but before we get into today's topic, could you tell us a little bit about actually how you serve your clients?

Yes. I'm that person you bring in when you realize that fantastic individual contributor That was like the rock star of your team, has been promoted into a leadership role, and they have no idea of what to do. They're the person who you're seeing them kind of sink versus swim, and you don't want to lose them. You also don't want their lack of leadership ability to have a direct impact, a negative impact on their team. So, you bring me in to give them those skills they need to transition successfully. from individual contributor to amazing leader people actually want to follow.

Love it. So today we're talking a little bit off-brand, a little bit, because we're talking specifically today about retention and being able to engage and retain people. Why do you think this topic of engagement and retention is so important today?

Yes, well, you know, you say it's off-brand, but really— and maybe I did a bad job of kind of describing this— I mean, The reason you want your leaders to be able to have those skills is directly tied to retention engagement. And we're seeing so many companies nowadays, especially in the last 3 years or so, struggle with retention and engagement. From everything from the job cushioning we're hearing nowadays and the quiet quitting, the great—

Great resignation.

I just can't wait. We're kind of— thank you. I'm struggling for that. Yeah, the great resignation. But even just what we're calling the great shuffle, the great reshuffling, I think I've heard a couple of times too. There's so many things we're calling it nowadays. But we're seeing these companies realize exactly what you said in the introduction, that there's an actual financial cost to someone walking out the door. And from what I typically quote in my own business, as well as some work I do with a company called Magnet Culture, we see at least a $5,000 cost for someone who's at the very front line, who maybe you just hired a month ago. When they walk out the door, it's costing your business around 5 grand. And to your point, The higher up the chain of command we go from like a leadership position, now we're seeing it cost between, you know, $15,000, $25,000. And again, sometimes the stats are saying between half that person's salary and 1.5 times that person's salary. So, the astronomical cost of losing people, not to mention what it does to your client experience and the morale of your team, that's why I'm seeing people really focus on this now.

So, let's delve into because some people might be looking at this and going, oh, it's a minimum wage employee. The cost is only X dollars per hour. But there's like, it's more than just the cost of paying people. There are other costs associated with losing that. Can you talk a little bit about what are some of the costs that are affecting the operational cost when we lose the knowledge, when we lose the hands, when we lose the hearts out of our businesses?

Right, right. Well, think about just what happens if someone calls in and says, you know what, boss, I'm not coming in today.

Bye.

Right? Just that itself. Now we have to dial and beg someone else to come in and potentially cover that person's shift. We have to potentially pay our team overtime to cover that hole we have on the schedule. We have to now pay to put that job posting up. We have to pay the lack of productivity we now have with hiring someone else new. Maybe that person was ramped up and they were 100% productive. Now, we have to bring someone else in who's not going to be productive out of the gate. We have to pay training time for them to essentially shadow and learn all the new things. Think about what it costs for the leaders to go through applications, to dial and see if this person is still interested, the interviewing, the second-round interviewing, putting them in the system for HR. All those different things we don't think about. I mean, even it comes down to potentially uniform costs and costs to like get someone up and running to actually do their job. We don't think about all those things, but all those numbers go into replacing someone, and that's how you get that 5 grand out the gate.

Yes, and it's so easy. And in the studies I've done, it's been way more than half an annual salary when it comes to it. And when you think about, you know, as a leader, you have things that you need to be doing, but now this is what you're doing. Now you're pulling yourself out to make those phone calls. Now you're scoping through resumes and having to put out the fires of being short-staffed and the infliction that the rest of the team suffers because they're working short-staffed. I mean, look at healthcare. I mean, you look at what's happening.

Oh my gosh.

And I don't know how it is in the United States, but in Canada, our healthcare system, I mean, after COVID, I mean, we are losing nurses. We're losing doctors hand over fist. And we don't have enough people to be able to support our healthcare system now. It's a scary time.

It's bad in healthcare and it's bad. I've seen it also hit the senior care, senior living industry really hard for the same reasons. You need to have those skilled practitioners and nurses. And my goodness, when people leave, it's just, it's a bad situation.

Yeah. It's so funny when I talk to business operators and, and especially junior leaders, a lot of, well, I can't even say they're junior leaders, people who've been leaders for a while, but I often hear the excuse that turnover happens because, oh, people are lazy or people don't wanna work, or turnover is the price of doing business. What are your thoughts when you hear stuff like that?

You know, it's interesting because I understand where they're coming from and to some degree. I understand that there's a perception out there that people don't want to work, people are lazy, whatever it might be. But it's funny, I just did a LinkedIn post on this last night. The more I think about it and reflect on it, I think it's not so much that people are just suddenly lazy and don't want to work. I think people have just had a perspective shift over the last few years. And we're seeing people raise their hand where whether before they might have stayed quiet and said, oh, this is just— I have to have a job. I'm just going to put up with it. We've had people do this perspective shift where they're realizing life is short and life is hard and my family is really important. My health is really important. I'm going to push back now and figure out how to do this work-life balance, or at least work-life blend, if you will. And that's what we're seeing more. We're seeing people be more vocal about what they really want and less risk-averse now because to some degree, there's still lots of choices out there. And they can leave a job where they're just getting a paycheck and it's nothing necessarily tying them there and go down the street for the same money, if not better. So we're seeing people be a little bit less risk-averse and more vocal.

Yes. You know, and it's interesting because we see now one of the trends that we're seeing in recruitment now is that people are putting out recruitment videos because now they're marketing to their people and giving people kind of a, a brand of what they're gonna be stepping into as a culture.

Mm-hmm.

Rather than Going down the street for a few bucks more. It's more about, oh, is this company gonna deliver what I need personally in order to grow, in order to support my work-life integration or my work-life balance? You know, they're looking at that aspect of it. And so recruitment videos now are, are really taking off and really kind of help sustaining that. But where I think people are falling down is you do the recruitment video, but then are you delivering on the other side of that?

Exactly. Exactly. It's like watching the movie trailer. It looks amazing. Then you go to the movie and you realize all the best parts were in the trailer, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And you're like, this is not what I signed up for. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's so true. And delivering that employee experience is something we have to pay more attention to.

Yeah. And it's so funny because I, I talked to a baby boomer leader, and when I talked about, you know, we have to create experience— employee experiences— he looks at me, he goes, I give them a damn paycheck. That's my role is to give them a paycheck. They come in and do the work and I give them a paycheck. And it's so funny how it's switched over the years because of course, we have evolved. Our workplaces have evolved now, right? Are there any myths about engagement and turnover that you're hearing out there that you think need to be busted?

One of the biggest myths I would want employers to know about is it's not just the money situation.

Hmm.

I look back at studies from back in the day where there's a specific study that talks about how money is a satisfier. It's not a motivator. And by that, I mean, you have to be competitive, right? You have to have a salary that is in line with what the market is paying. But once you get to that point, that's not what's going to keep someone in that job. You have to have the other things that truly motivate them intrinsically and extrinsically to keep working there. So, what we're finding is that first and foremost, close relationships with the people you work with, having those bonds, that is huge. Recognition and appreciation is huge. And then talent development and knowing that you have a place to grow with this business if that's what you desire, because not everyone wants to be like climbing the corporate ladder, but knowing that if that's what you want and people are going to have positions for you to grow into and they're willing to invest in you. That is what I'm seeing as the true things. The myth is that the money is going to keep people there. But I'm sure you're just like me. You know, people who had high-paying jobs as lawyers who are now teachers working for what they feel is, is desirable and giving back to the community and making significantly less money.

Yes.

People walk away from huge salaries every day.

Yeah. And again, mm-hmm, the salary makes a big difference when you first get it. After you've lived with it for a while, it doesn't matter anymore.

Right?

It's just expected.

Yeah, exactly. You're like, well, this is great, but especially if I'm working 24/7 and I don't have time to even spend that money or see my family, what's the point?

Exactly. I'd like to get into some strategies leaders can take to increase retention and engagement within their teams, and I'd like to do that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights!

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today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back! I am speaking with author and keynote speaker Courtney Ramsey. Courtney, can we talk a little bit about how employee and leadership expectations have changed? since the pandemic? Because I think this is really a new era for us.

Absolutely. I think one of the biggest changes we're seeing is that we're— employees are expecting their leaders to understand their personal side more. And by that, I mean 2 things. Understand that I actually do have a personal life, and it is something that maybe I can't just leave at the door when I walk into my place of business. And then they want them to know them more And truly their personality and what keeps them up at night and really what they need specifically. Again, I work with Magnet Culture who does a lot of work on retention and engagement as well. And we always have to say that one size no longer fits all. When back in the day, especially when we talked to our boomer leaders like you were referring to earlier, I think we were even taught back in the day, treat everyone the same, be consistent in your leadership practices. What you do for one, you should do for all. You know, obviously when it comes to legalities and certainly things like that, we wouldn't, that we wouldn't be true. That's, that's still true. But employees want their bosses to get to know them more and to really have a relationship. Cuz again, it goes all back to those relationships that drive the loyalty that keeps people at, at their place of business and keeps them engaged.

And to your point, I think one of the things that working remote working did for people was it gave bosses an insight into how their staff live. It gives it— because all of a sudden now they had— you found out that they had kittens, or you found out that they had a dog, or they found out they had children, or, you know, like you found out something because you were literally in meetings invited into people's homes. And all of a sudden you had it, you had this. So now the barrier broke down between kind of work and home, and it came to— it kind of came together. And I think leaders had a new understanding of—

Yeah.

what it was for their employee to be a single mom or somebody who had, you know, had to do education from home, right? Because their kids were now being homeschooled and all that sort of stuff, right? Yeah.

That was the worst, by the way. That was the worst. But you're exactly right, because now that I realize you're a single mom, for example, now I know why— oh my gosh, you are like watching the clock and you are leaving no later than 5 every day. Because now I get that if you're not at that daycare by 4:30 to pick up your kiddo, You're going to be charged $10 a minute for every minute you're late. And God forbid there's traffic, right? So, it does make a lot more sense. But I will also say that remote work has, in some ways, also driven back up some silos because you don't have those chances to walk down to get coffee together every morning or to have lunch together as easily. You have to be more purposeful and really act with a lot of intent to try to maintain that water cooler chat.

Yeah.

So it goes both ways. It became less siloed and yet more siloed way.

Yep. And we completely missed out on the creative, constructive collisions that happened around the water cooler. So true. And in the lunchroom. Personally, I, I've always believed that everyone brings their own superpower to the forefront, and if we are good as leaders, we can really tap into people's geniuses. What would you suggest leaders do to tap into and prepare their high potential people for success?

First and foremost, let them know that they are considered high potential and that you want to keep them with your business. There is something so magical about just saying that outright. And I'm not saying make lots of promises you can't necessarily keep, because of course, performance will still come into play. So, you have to be aware of how you word it. But for someone to sit me down, for example, and say things like, hey, Courtney, you are doing a fantastic job. Just so you know, we're succession planning you into this role. Doesn't mean you have to take it, but that's how we see you growing with us. I think there's magic to be said there. And I think the other thing is to have just lots of open dialogue about what this person really loves about their job and what this person would change about their job as well. Because the more we can maximize the things they truly love to do, their superpowers, right? And kind of minimize the things that don't bring them joy and that feeling of fulfillment. the better off we have a chance at keeping them long-term.

Yeah. Just in that little segment, you brought so many different things to the forefront. This idea, you know, the recognition factor. You know, I truly believe, especially when it's behavioral issues, that what gets recognized and rewarded gets repeated. It's a great way to positively impact your business just through being very intentional with how we recognize people. Yesterday, I had the absolute pleasure of doing a session for some Northern Canadian Indigenous youth. These youths are in these northern communities completely isolated from everything. We never know if they're even going to have internet. That's how isolated they are. And I'm working with them with a colleague of mine, and we're teaching them public speaking skills to help them gain confidence and that sort of thing. And it was absolutely amazing. They did their very first presentation yesterday, and they were nervous, and they went through it. And they're absolutely blown. You could see their face light up when you mentioned anything positive. And I thought right there is the true indication of the effect that somebody coming to you and say something to your point, Courtney, you know what? To me, you are one of the highest performing people that we have. I'm really loving this. I'd love to sit down and figure out how you want to proceed with us because I know that investing in you is going to be our future.

Wow. Exactly. We all have that basic human need. And there's so many studies out there that say, really, we want to hear something positive at least daily, several times a day, right? When we think as leaders, how often are we really doing that? Are we really telling people thank you for even just for showing up, for being that steady Eddie, even they're the B+ player who is just the consistent one? I mean, maybe they're not the rock star, they're not going to be the CEO one day, but they're the person who you kind of sleep better at night. 'Cause you know, they're consistent, they're reliable, they're gonna be there. Are we even telling those people thank you as often as we should? Or is it kind of like your boomer leader says, well, they get a paycheck, that's fine.

Right, right.

That's all the thank you they need.

And it's so interesting because, you know, the culture of recognition, when you have an appreciative culture, it goes a long way because all of a sudden people are thanking each other for, oh, thank you for making the fresh pot of coffee, or, or thank you for filling up the paper in the photocopier and this type of thing, right? And all of a sudden you have a culture of appreciation that everybody's feeling better. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't have to be this whole stress thing.

Exactly.

Training. I have had people time and time again, especially when it's revolving door, where it's like we're gonna bring in the lowest common denominator. We have to put together enough of a system to get people up and running quickly. And then the whole philosophy about training, well, if I train them, then I'll give them skills that they're gonna take somewhere else. They might leave. And of course, you know, the adage is, well, if they stay, you know, if you don't train them, they might stay. What role, what role does training have in everything that we've been talking about today?

Yeah. Well, you're talking to someone who is by nature in talent development and has a long history of training. It is my heart and soul. So, I might be a little biased, but I personally believe that training and development is one of the biggest things any company can do. To not only have an employee experience that's positive, have a client experience that is positive, but also reduce that turnover number and increase engagement. Because it goes back to what we were just saying. Inherently, training and development is actually a way to recognize people, especially when you frame it in the right way. Occasionally, training might be seen as something I have to do, right? And there are some kinds of training that you're like, I'd really rather not, right? Compliance training and things like that. But when you tell someone, hey, Marc, I'm sending you to this communications class because I see great things in you. I want to give you some extra tools to get you even better than you already are. And when you become a better communicator, this is how that can affect your career positively. Suddenly, you're like, oh, okay, let's do that. Right? So, I really love training and development. I think if you don't have it, you are asking for a lot of trouble in your business. And what I need companies to know too is, you know, a lot of times when things like the recessions hit, training and development is one of those things that we cut first because we think, well, we won't have money for that. That's a mistake because now we're going to have those added costs of people leaving where they feel like they're not being invested in. So, think long-term and think about those numbers you don't always see hitting your profit and loss statement. When someone just walks, it's costing you at least $5,000. That's the first thing. But also be aware that training and development does not have to be expensive. I really think there's a connotation that you have to bring someone like you or me in, Marc, to do training and development, and we have to pay thousands of dollars. Really, training and development, when done well, can be as simple as properly delegating something to someone to grow their skillset, right? So, that's free.

Yeah.

And in most cases, taking something off of a leader's very full plate and delegating it down to someone who's capable, even if it's just a portion of that activity that can be helpful to the leader and the person they're leading.

Well, and what's interesting, you know, you came down to about the cost. It doesn't have to cost them something. In Canada, we have a federal program that's paired up with the provinces. It's called the— so in Alberta, it's called the Canada Alberta Job Grant. And the government will give you up to $10,000 per employee to train your employee. They'll cover 3/4 of the training. Up to a maximum of $10,000, as long as it is a certification. There's a certification at the end, and it's under 52 weeks. And it's like, so you take— isn't that great? So literally, literally, you could take a— send somebody to $30,000 worth of training and pay only $10,000 for it, and the government covers the rest. It's like, so you get one more reason Canada gets it right.

Just one more way. Y'all have the healthcare and this. That's amazing.

So it's, it's really interesting because just putting it out there that when people fall back and go, we can't afford to train people, I have to argue you can't afford not to. My goodness. It just— you get rid of all these places. Courtney, this is absolutely fantastic. If people are watching this and they say, you know, I want to get— I want to— I need to have a discussion with Courtney, how can they get in contact with you?

Absolutely. So my website is probably the best way to get ahold of me and to see kind of what I have to offer. That is courtneyramseyspeaks.com.

Okay.

And from there, you can find my phone number as well as my email.

Excellent. And the links are in the show notes. So, thanks for that. I have a tagline that I, when I wrote my book, I just came to the forefront about having leaders go from onboarding to forever boarding. That onboarding never ends. What are your thoughts about that?

I love that because what I hear when you tell me that, Marc, is that it's not just training. We don't just load them up with training the first week or the first month. We are always developing people and we are always thinking of ways to make them better and keep them engaged. So, I am with you on that. I think this should be a constant thing. If you're not offering some sort of a training experience to your employees monthly, I think you can start. And there are easy, again, simple ways to do that that do not have to cost a lot. The other thing I want to make sure leaders are aware of is you can't overload someone in the very beginning.

Right.

Because you really have to think through, What do they need to know now? What can be saved for later? What can we do in 30, 60, 90, or above? And that's another way you can get a better ROI on your training. When I was at JCPenney, we did some things for our retail leaders of our Sephora division when we had it in that store. And we realized we were trying to give them far too much in the first 30 days. So, we backed off of that and we kind of really paced it out for them better to where their training was done well over the first 6 months, and then we would bring 'em into the home office and do deeper dives and things that we could only do in person. And we found the retention of that information and even just the overall experience was so much better.

Because it had relevancy to the journey that the person was on with you to be able to incorporate it. Correct. And, you know, and to your point, you know, I think that we bring people on, it's like, yeah, we now have a staff member. Let's just give 'em all the information because now we can check it off the list. And right, the challenge with that is that you— to your point— is then it means nothing. And at the end of it, they haven't retained it. And no, and no, but people on an evolutionary journey with us, so you could actually schedule it in a way that would work better. So yeah, it's incredible.

Correct. That and retaining— think about too, sometimes we send people off to a training class and they're— they love it, they, they got a lot out of it. But then they get back to the real world and it basically gets put on a shelf and nothing happens. The other thing I always recommend, and something that differentiates me as a trainer and a speaker, is that we have to have some sort of accountability in there. So, whether it's conversations that we have with our leaders, like the leader has some certain questions to make sure they ask during touch bases to help this person retain, that's one way we can do things, or just follow-up sessions, accountability kind of group coaching sessions. That's a great way to keep that content on the forefront because, again, you don't want to waste money giving someone training that would be great if they implemented it, but they don't actually do it.

Yeah. It's really interesting because now we're getting rid of all, basically all the excuses and probably a better implementation of training programs. I was just speaking at an association conference about how our business culture now has gone from transactional to relational. So this idea with the, with the, with the training of, you know, okay, so we have a checklist for onboarding. Mm-hmm. We have to check all these things off.

Mm-hmm.

So once we do that, it's gone. But now, you know, this idea that we are more in a relational business culture than we've ever been before, it means we need to step up as leaders and, and kind of support that. Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts with that?

Mm-hmm. I think you nailed it. And I think that's, we were kind of going back to that question you were asking about how employees have changed. That is such a great way to even encapsulate that. Employees want relationships, both with their leaders and their peers at work. And the thing I have noticed, and I got to tell you, Marc, I got to raise my hand on this one, not everyone is amazing at building and nurturing relationships.

Yeah.

It is a skill for many of us that you have to learn, and you have to treat it as a priority. One of my favorite catchphrases is, we have to quit hitting snooze on things that are uncomfortable for us or things that we think are not the biggest priority that day because there's always a fire, right? Especially, you used to work in food and beverage and I used to work in retail and food and beverage. There's always a fire you have to put out.

Yep.

So, we have this tendency to put relationships on this back burner and we hit the snooze button on them when really that should be our priority because if we have that and we have a relationship of trust and authenticity, that's how we're going to be the most successful. So you nailed it.

Yeah, it's so interesting. It really is. You know, I so love that you, you know, we're born of the same cloth. I love this conversation and I'd like to get more into it, and we'll do that right after this. Yeah.

Attention meeting and event planners. Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective on what it takes to Ready to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group at That's M-A-R-C-H-A-I-N-E dot com.

I am speaking with the fantastic Courtney Ramsey. And as you can tell, Courtney and I are absolutely passionate about helping entrepreneurs and business managers just like you. So, if you belong to an industry association or an organization that is planning a conference or a leadership retreat and you feel that we could be of service, Feel free to drop us a line. Do a connection request. Our contact information is in the show notes. We've talked a lot about today, Courtney. We've talked a lot about best practices when it comes to leadership through recognition, being able to take people through recognition to training programs, being able to understand where people are driven and that sort of thing. For people who might be watching this, are there any cautionaries about people who might want to say, You know what? I just learned some things on this podcast and I wanna implement it right away and I just wanna be better. Any cautionaries as people jump into this?

And are we talking from a leadership perspective? Like, I just wanna be a better leader?

Yes.

I think the biggest thing I would say to be cautionary on is always share the why. And I would even, I, my second thing is there's always a way you could, you could say even where this change of behavior might came from. When I had people come to my training sessions and they're going back and, and maybe I'm encouraging them to try something different, like, give more feedback or give more recognition or have more one-on-one touch bases. I always say blame the training because your employees might wonder what happened to Marc. Like, why is there like a 180 in behavior? So blame the training. In this case, you can blame the podcast. You can say, oh my gosh, I was listening to this fantastic podcast that really woke me up to a few things. And then share the why behind it. So if you're suddenly delegating more, for example, that might not be normal. And your employees might be like, wait, wait, I already have enough on my plate. Why is My boss suddenly giving me more. Tell them why. I believe in you. I want to develop you. I want to expand your skillset. No, I'm not just dumping things on you. The reason I'm giving you this is because I'm going to help make you better and help you get into that position you want to move into next. So, the more we can give the why behind things, especially for shifts in our behavior that might be a little out of the blue, the better.

Yeah. You know, and I will even challenge the people who are consuming this content today, that if you're getting anything from this episode at all, one of the things you could do as a really easy training event is take this episode, sit with your team, rewatch it, pause it, and have discussions. Because you'd be amazed just at what Courtney has talked about today. You'd be amazed at some of the ideas that will come to the forefront on how people's expectations can be better fulfilled. How leaders can, uh, bring forward new initiatives and create an understanding with your team. My goodness.

Right. My goodness, Marc, you just, you really just kind of read my mind in terms of, this is a great way when I was talking about how training doesn't have to cost a lot. Things like this, there are so many free resources out there that you really can on YouTube view a video with your team, listen to a podcast with your team, and like you said, just discuss it. And it's a way of, of getting conversations going, which in turn build those relationships we were talking about. It's team building. It's all those things wrapped up in a lovely free bow.

Yep.

So I love it.

And it clarifies expectations. It's a perfect way once you get, you know, there's something to be said about breaking bread. There was a quote somewhere about breaking bread is probably the, the best human connection you can have. But shared, I think it's more about shared experiences. Is what we can do about that.

It is.

Being a baby boomer and having grown up as a baby boomer manager and so on, I get a lot of baby boomers. And the idea for some leaders to be vulnerable in the context of kind of telling people that they don't necessarily have all the answers can be a real challenge. When it comes down to this idea of people wanting to build new skill sets, What do you think is the magic key there?

And are we talking about being like, how are you more vulnerable and how do you admit almost to that?

Yeah. Like, how do we get over ourselves as being the leader that should know it all versus the leader that doesn't know it all?

Gotcha. So, I think the first thing is to recognize that failure is not fatal, right? You're probably raised like me, Marc. We were probably— I don't know that I was the smartest kid in school, but I definitely looked at anything below a B as like, And especially a failing grade, I just died inside. And I think school, unfortunately, does a really unfortunate thing. They tell us that failure is not acceptable and it's not okay. And we get that in our head.

Right.

But what we don't realize is that really failure is the only way of learning and growing and becoming more. And quite frankly, if we're not failing, we're probably not taking enough risk. We're probably not thinking big enough, right? So, we have to get over ourselves in terms of failure first and foremost. And I think that the second thing is really understanding that the more we can talk to our teams and peers about the things that we want to get better at, the more buy-in we're going to have from those teams, the more support we're going to have from them. And it really creates that culture of, again, relationships, which is the underlying theme here, right? Create the relationship. And you will get the results.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So I love the idea of vulnerability, and I think we shouldn't be scared to just say little things like, this is what I'm working on. Do you mind giving me some feedback? Will you hold me accountable? What can I help you with? It, it goes a long way.

And to your point, the vulnerability part of it, when, again, when you create a culture around where failing is okay, because again, mm-hmm, you know, to your point, like, I don't know anybody who stepped on a skateboard for the very first time was able to do the half loop, right? I mean, you do it, you fall, you do it, you fall. You, it's all, we learn through failure.

Yeah.

And to your point, It was school that made us fear failure because it ranked us against everybody else. And it got tied to our self-esteem that we're not good enough because we got this mark. But within the context of teams, this idea of failing forward when it comes down to retention and engagement, I think is so key. What can people do? Like how does a leader look at the component of Letting people fail forward, but do it in a way so that it enhances the culture so people wanna stay rather than learning through osmosis. Oh, I've been bad today.

Yeah. You know, I think one thing we can do in terms of setting people up for success to fail forward is, is let them know what the underlying need is. Like kind of get them some, um, constraints, if you will. Some, maybe some questions you can ask yourself so they know their boundaries. Because if I know that, Marc, for example, we work in retail, and I know that I can issue a refund without asking my leader for up to $50, right? Just to make the customer happy and have that loyal customer come back. But I can't go over $50, or I can do certain things, but I can't do others. That gives me lots of autonomy to some degree to make my own decisions. And then from there, once I kind of have these boundaries, to let the person know that really, again, Failure is the only way you're going to learn. So to try new things, especially if you're trying to become a leader of people one day, we're going to have to try some things. You're not going to do it perfect the first time, and that's okay. That's okay. I really think even with my 9-year-old 4th grader, I'm trying to teach him now, you cannot be perfect at everything from the get-go. You're going to have to try some things. So the sooner we can say those things out loud and kind of put in that psychological safety, That failure is not a bad thing. If we fail forward and we learn and grow, the better.

Yes. Oh my goodness. This has been such a great conversation, Courtney. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today? It just seems like we've just kind of tipped over the fire hose.

Yeah, I know, right? I would just say the biggest thing I would say is focus on those relationships, both as leaders and even as individual contributors. So much of your influence is going to come from those relationships, which again took me a long time to realize when I was working in the corporate world. So sometimes you think you are wasting time or you could be more productive at your desk. Get out from behind your desk, go grab that cup of coffee, have those conversations, and build that level of trust with those relationships because that is going to get you the farthest. The second thing I would say is the biggest take-home is training and development does not have to be expensive. It can be Free 99, as one of my best friends say, and we can do better. And your, your employees not only expect it, but they deserve it.

Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Purposeful, intentional, and full of a— again, I'm, I'm just giddy. I could go on forever with this show. Courtney, I wanna thank you so much for sharing your passion and experience expertise with us today. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get ahold of you?

Absolutely. You can find me on my website, courtneyramsey.com. You can also find me through email, through some of my socials. I'm not going to go through all the socials, but if you Google Courtney Ramsey Speaks, hopefully I'll pop up for you. But my email and phone number are both online, and I would love to take a discovery call with anyone, even just to chat.

Courtney, thank you so much. This has been absolutely brilliant. Thanks for doing this with us today.

I loved it. Thank you, Marc. Thanks for having me.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value for you and to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that is marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment or a review about this episode. I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Did you have some key takeaways that you can apply to your business? I'd love to hear about it. My name is Marc Haine. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.

Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Leadership. Make sure you visit markhain.com for a full directory of available episodes. While you're at it, if you found today's content valuable, please share it and tell your friends about the show. As Mark says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode. Please stay. Stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.