Engagement Without Burnout: A Smarter Way to Retain Talent with Pete Schramm on Shally's Alley

Oh my God, is it December already?

We've made it.

Oh, this is the end. We are at the end, the end of the world as we know it.

This is not where we are.

That's right, the end of the year. All right, well folks, you are live on Shelly's Alley, or you're watching a recording of live on Shelly's Alley with our guest today, Pete Sram. And we are excited to have Pete. He— Pete has his own, uh, podcast and everything. So like, I'm finally like arrived because I, I have famous people that come on my podcast now.

Like, and, and Pete.

And also Pete is sometimes here. He showed up. I mean, you know, right on time, but he showed up. Um, excellent. Well, thanks. We're glad to have you here today. And, uh, for folks that don't know you, uh, give us a 30-second EVP.

Yeah, uh, so Peach Tram, easy way to remember my name and to say it is with two emojis, a peach and a ram. The ram plays into my upbringing, grew up on a farm in western Pennsylvania. Might be one of your tallest guests, clocking in at 80 inches above sea level, and you'll have to see where that fits in. Remember like your grandma's house where you had the doorway and you do your little pencil marks, right? So we'd go above the doorway for my gram's house. Whenever we were going through that. Yep, yep, yep. Very blessed, very fortunate. Hailing from Western Pennsylvania. Yes, I am a Steelers fan out there. And my path from, you know, the farm went into college sports and two engineering degrees, then into defense contracting. We share that background. We were both at Lockheed Martin and both did some work in sourcing. Me from the material side, you from the talent side. So it's cool how those paths are always looping across. Yeah. So as I was there, I said, hey boss, how can I be the best employee? Told me to get a mentor, had no idea what that meant. Went on a self-exploration journey to figure it out. A couple years later, started my own company focused on connecting people inside the organization.

And then all of a sudden you're in recruiting.

Yeah, well, keep, keep moving forward. And then I wrote a book on this topic as well because people are like, hey, you're talking about this stuff around mentorship. What do you mean? And so I said, hey, career map, personal board of advisors, do a lot of speaking. And shout out to Will Tincup for bringing us together and the Work Defined podcast group.

That's right. That's how we know each other. Introduced that way. Oh, looks like we got— oh yeah, we got, we got a funny chat already. I told you there was going to be a few of those. Well, thanks. So bring me all the way back to like talent acquisition. What's the connection there?

Yeah. So I used to hate it and be so frustrated by TA as the—

Those of us that work in it probably still do.

Well, I've— hey, to each their own. And that's kind of the head of the dragon, right? Of the piece of, man, I applied to hundreds of jobs throughout my professional career. Not, not yet today. Maybe this afternoon. Wait till Friday evening. And I I said, my goodness, why are we not hearing back? And so there's just lots of different pieces in the process. So overall, TA, I've come to work with them a lot, hiring hundreds of people, uh, letting hundreds of people go, finding lots of others, and even being a middleman for hundreds of people. So lots of connections in that regard. What I found is that we have to look at it from the TA individual, and then the candidate as well, right? Internal, external. And the link here is how can we make the recruiter and the person performing the TA make their life easier so that it's less complex, less difficult to attract talent. Yeah, yeah, make it super simple. So these concepts that we'll talk about, how How do we say, hey, here's what's going on in our organization. It's not something that you want to miss out on. We invest in our people. We don't just talk about it. Look at what's actually happening here. And then from the other side, some of the things that we can plant seeds for those going through this interview and candidate process to say, hey, what are you guys doing over there at your organization? Because I've, you know, just talked to so-and-so and they were Really, really cool benchmarking kind of thing. So hitting on both sides of the equation, benchmarking the candidacy.

That's an interesting word, candidacy. Is— why isn't it application? Application-ship? Why is it candidacy, not application-ship? It's actually really more application, or it's more like waiting-ship.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, the whole thing is just a situation-ship, right?

Yes, that's right. People stuck in that really bad ship, I think. I want to get off this ship. So you said mentorship, or you have been quoted to say— I don't, I wasn't there when this happened— but you've said mentorship is one of the most underrated drivers of retention. Case in point, you had no idea what it was and you left. So what, what are companies actually missing about how career guidance really works in the real world. I mean, like, bust some myths here.

Yeah, well, let's, let's talk about some stats and facts, right? If you're talking to somebody with a grad degree in, uh, engineering, right? I like facts and stats and data.

That's good, but yeah, they don't exist in HR.

Well, let's talk about a couple. So whenever we have a, uh, persistent and consistent structured formal mentorship program, right, people are connecting. What the data tells us is that those mentees are like, you know, 3, 4 times more likely to stay at the organization.

Interesting.

They're going to get promoted about 5 times as often as those not. And the other cool part of the equation is those mentors, the folks that are sharing that information, guidance, advice, support, insights, they're 2 or 3 times as likely to stay at the organization.

So does this end when one of them leaves?

Well, that's where the whole paradigm of a personal board comes in. Not just one mentor.

Right, like my mentor just left. I'm out of here. See ya.

And sometimes that happens. But how do we eliminate and reduce those single points of failure? That's what we're trying to accomplish here. The key word there. So whenever I started this talent development, professional development work about 7 years ago, March 4th, 2018, was whenever I drew a line in my notebook while, you know, at 9 o'clock at night and said, I'm going to start a business. And then I Googled how to start a business, right? The thing is, so around that time, it was about 7 out of 10 of the Fortune 500 companies had a mentorship program. Now the number's above 90%. As you talk to a lot of those big organizations, a lot of these mentorship programs run on the magical power of Excel and sit in a closet and collect dust, and all it does is frustrate people. So whenever we talk about those success stories and those factoids of goodness, that's where we really have to be making sure that we're doing this the right way. We're intentional about it. Are those the ones that don't have it running on Excel? Well, I, I think it— the, the tool— you can have a lot of success with Excel. It's just what are we doing with this process? And so we can talk about a few of those different pieces. But as people are listening to this, watching right now, listening later, think about some of those guides that have been so helpful and pivotal in supporting your journey along the way. What did they share? What were some of the things that they said, hey, you know, Shally, go and do this, think about this, here's my experience from XYZ situation, role, Project. And here's some things not to do. And that's where these guides can be so, so valuable along the way, where you can go and grow, but also those paths that are just pitfalls and dead ends and booby traps.

Where not to go.

Where not to go.

Did you just say booby on my show?

Booby traps.

Okay, um, this is completely an R-rated show, by the way, because Nobody cares, but I can answer some of those questions. Yeah, um, so unfortunately I am probably not the right— I don't know, maybe I, I have no idea. I have no idea whether I am or not the right, like, case study for this. I've always— this is a personal thing, initiative-wise— I've always sought out to surround myself with people that can kick my ass.

Yeah, right.

I, I— it's always been like, I— in martial arts, I always, you know, pick the fights with the bigger, stronger guys. I, I always, you know, went and I asked for the extra whatever, you know, whenever that was available. So for me, it's, it's almost been like this has been— my career has, has had this trajectory that has involved all kinds of different mentors in different ways. Even when I didn't ask for it. So I've had that opportunity, and I don't know if that's normal or not. That's why I'm saying I don't know if I'm the right, the right, um, case study for this. But I can tell you that work-wise, as in on the job, um, there was in my very first job in the industry somebody that I would, I would in retrospect call a mentor. Not my boss, somebody else. And that person did have, um, a really big formative impact on my career development, but it was very short-lasting, uh, the relationship, because they basically like left 2 months after I got this job. However, they left behind this spark of like, you're not gonna make it if you don't do these things. Yeah. So I hear what you're saying, but then I left there and went to another company where someone took me under their wing, and that was the first true I would say mentor that actually, um, really did like take me— like she was just the big, the big bird kind of spreading her wings around, around me. And, and like really I felt like I was being, um, guided in the right direction. She happened to also be my boss, but I met her not as my boss but as someone who attended a class with me, and we got along really well. And she said, you really are not getting very good guidance and feedback where you are. You need, you know, you need a place to go where somebody can actually nurture and understand where you're trying to go. And yeah, so she's like, why don't you come work with me? And I'm like, okay, sure, great. So I did that and that took off. Um, but I can tell you that there's, there's always been somebody that's either been behind the scenes as a guiding light. However, it's almost never been in my field. In other words, Um, very, very rarely has it actually— like, my first job, that person was in sales. At my second job, the one I'm describing now, she was in human resources, nothing to do with recruiting.

Yep.

I mean, she ran recruiting, but, you know, like, she was never a recruiter. So is that weird?

Is that not weird? So, okay, a couple of things I heard from that, jotting down a few, few notes here, right? You got to be open. Very infrequently are these folks going to come knock on your door as a junior individual and say, yeah, come on over here, right? So being open. You talked about multiple people. We fashion that as a mosaic of mentors, those different perspectives that are building up who we are. And I talk about as a personal board of advisors. You see the little diagram, a little worksheet we go through, those couple of folks, right?

And people join the advisory board and people leave the advisory board.

And that's exactly it. So, it goes through phases, right? Not everybody's meant to be here for every single chapter of our lives. And you might have some flyby mentoring. You might have some folks that you're like, I don't really know if you're my mentor. Maybe you're not in my inner circle on my PBA, personal board of advisors, but I want to keep you in my ecosystem, right? I want to have you in that outer circle and, you know, have those relationships. 100%. Sometimes you find them, sometimes they find you. Whenever we're looking at those different board seats, it's usually the advocate, the super connector, the somebody who's going to be your sponsor of sorts. Yep. That's the one who really says, oh my gosh, this Shally person has got his stuff together.

Or, or they could be somewhere if they just put one foot in front of the other. And yeah, that, that's kind of it, right?

And you walk right up to it. Getting back to your piece of, uh, yeah, we're gonna answer that one in just a second. On the, the folks from HR helping, folks from other functions helping. We call that a cross-functional mentor. I think it's extremely helpful. You got your functional, right? They were in TA, you're in TA, they work for your boss, you're working for your boss, they're a couple years ahead of you. Boom, got it. That's your typical, right, uh, mentorship program. Love what you've been able to experience where it's like, hey, I want to get it from a little bit of a different perspective.

Because I was seeking it out. Yes, on purpose. Except for— I do want to say, except for two places: Cisco and Microsoft. Cisco had a very formal mentorship program that part of the program was, if you take advantage of the program and have a mentor, um, there is a point at which you will have to pay it back.

Yeah.

So like, the commitment is, we'll sign you up for this, you get a mentor, but then after you've been mentored, you become the, you know, the mentor. And it was very formal, and it was— it's specifically typically not in your— like, they told you find someone in the mentorship program that is not in your vertical or in your line of, you know, direct, um, responsibility. That was very, very intentional. And then at Microsoft, also similarly, it was, uh, someone who intentionally is in— not in your field, but they did require that they were in a field that you're interested in. So someone that is Like, say for example, in recruiting, for me, they— that person was in, in competitive intelligence.

They were—

they worked for marketing, not TA, and their job was to, you know, find out what other companies are doing with products that are similar. And so related, but a whole different vertical. Those two were signed. They were set up by the organization on purpose. And paid for by the organization in, in terms of like both of those mentors got incentives in their compensation to be part of this. So it was the, the companies both put their money where the money— it wasn't just a spreadsheet where, hey Pete, meet Charlie, uh, Charlie, you're gonna mentor Pete for the next year or whatever, great, see ya. You know, it was actually like, it's in your development plan, it's in your You know, if you don't achieve certain steps, you can actually get bad marks on your annual review, stuff like that. So, but I mean, you were saying that it's mosaic, the mosaic is what, that's, that's desired or that's normal, or where was that going?

Not normal. It's not normal. But it is what is desired. We think about any project or program or initiative that we work on and, you know, life, we don't want to have single points of failure. Same thing happens and comes to it whenever we're thinking about our guides and our support system. If my boss is also my manager, is also— or sorry, if my boss is also my functional mentor, is also my accountability partner, is also my advocate and connector, that's 4 out of those potential 10. We usually try and get people to 6 to 8, but 4 out of 8, that's half. If my boss leaves the organization, that's 50% of my personal board. My mosaic has just walked out the door. So we encourage folks, hey, think about these 8 to 10 different roles. And over the next 12 months, how— maybe your boss is filling 2 or 3 of those board seats initially, but how might you find a different name for each seat on that personal board over the next 12 months? It's not a super simple thing, and it's like dating as well. You're not going to hit it off with everybody, right? You get some fakes and franks and phonies along the way, and those are the people that they look great on paper, and we start having a conversation and we're like, man, I cannot wait to get away from you. This is not— we're not aligned on our values, our motivations, the way that I ask for feedback or never ask for feedback, and you provide feedback to me. It is so disjointed and disconnected. Nobody wants to be part of that.

So then, um, if your organization, you know, give, give this to me in the terms of like TA, right? If your organization doesn't have a mentorship program that's formal, um, as a recruiter, as a talent advisor, what should we do? Should we, should we seek one out, or should we advocate for the company to, to build one? Should You know, what's your advice there?

I think to first, as an individual, we can say, hey, do I have enough time to do this? Who has been a guide to me along the way? Go get a copy of my book and learn about the different roles along, you know, that you can start to fill in. You know, reach out to me. I'll send you some ideas and thoughts and figure out, hey, does this make sense for me at this point in time? Then we go from self to team. So then ask some of the folks in your immediate circle, hey, are you— and I like to ask like 3, 4, 5 questions. Do you have an idea of where you want to go and grow? Getting into the career map piece of things.

Okay.

Do you have an idea of what those steps are to, to get there?

I'm gonna guess no.

Well, a lot of people say no. And then the third piece is, do you have an idea of who can help you to—

I'm gonna say hell no.

Right. And that's usually what we hear. One of the, uh, excuse me, surveys that we provide in the Latitude software actually measures organizational quantity and quality of mentorship as a baseline. And then we do it twice a year. And we haven't yet found an organization that's green on quality and quantity of those various different kinds of advisory. So now we're asking our team, right? Our circle has expanded from self to team. And we're starting to feel like, OK, Shally, there's not a lot of this going on. We got a couple hundred employees. A small side note here is that Dunbar's number— you familiar with that? You can have about 150 to 250 relationships scientifically on average. That number aligns pretty nicely from research and some other stats of the minimum size for a mentoring program cohort.

Interesting.

So yeah, we're able to increase the quality of those matches and suggestions whenever we get into those triple digits. OK, got it. Now, as we begin to expand from my team, maybe it's my business area or a portion of the organization, and we can start to ask more people. There's going to be some folks that have mentors and guides along the way. And so we're understanding, hey, what's, what's going on for us? And we're building a little bit of a business case. So as we get into, you know, the directors, VPs, SVPs levels, and asking them about the strategy, hey, what do we have planned? Right? Is there a way for me to find a mentor in this organization? Reach out to your HR business partner and ask them, hey, I'm over in TA. Can you help connect me to a mentor? And it's going to be really interesting what they say back. A lot of times they say, oh my gosh, we have this mentorship program we talked to you about, you know, Day 1, part 2, hour 3, slide 17. And you probably never went back to it ever again. Okay, got it. Well, can you help me out today, Shelly? And so that's whenever they may have something on their roadmap for 2026. They may also say, hey, I was on Shelly's Alley and I heard the Shram guy talking about this idea of mentorship. Maybe we can have a talk with them to talk about our strategy and put a plan together. For next year. So that's the piece is figure out who can guide you. Ask, hey, can I just, you know, grab a couple minutes of your time? I'm trying— blame me, say Pete said I need to go get some, some mentors. Do you have an idea who might be a good fit for me? Here's kind of sort of what I'm all about and what I enjoy doing. Want to go over— should I answer kind of question 1, question 2 that we came in from the comments there, shall we?

Yeah, let's do 1 and 2. 1 is probably a pretty easy one.

Yeah, go ahead. So the question—

the question for everybody, as you might not be able to see the— here we go. Um, you know, I had an undergrad degree in engineering, and, uh, I kind of don't know what to do. Yeah, feel like I wasted 2 to 3 years of my life already without any job and don't have a big dream to chase.

Okay, so, uh, I was in engineering. I did 6 years of schooling in 5 years, and then worked with engineers for the past more than a decade. And I think to ask yourself about the questions of the IKIGAI is the first piece. And for anybody that's not familiar with that, I-K-I-G-A-I, talk about it as part 1 of the book. And you ask yourself these 4 questions: What are you good at? What do you love doing? What does the world need? What can you get paid for? And you can also Google ChatGPT. You can do a lot of other things. You use the Latitude tool to help suggest things that I could potentially do in the future based on where I've been. Also think about who are some of the folks that you look up to professionally and like, yeah, I could kind of sort of want to be in that role. So figure out, do you want to work with people? Do you not want to work with people? Do you want to be at a desk? Do you not want to be at a desk? Do you want to be using your hands or not? Do I want to kind of sort of be in a healthcare industry, professional services? What does that look like? The nice thing, if you said you were in an engineering degree, you can do just about anything with that and go into just about anything because of those transferable skills and the thinking process that it did. I'd suggest to have a lot of informational interviews and just ask people about the work that they do. Ask people about what they like and what they dislike. Ask people about why did they go into a certain role and why did they leave a certain role. And then do, do that. Maybe go have 10 conversations and shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Let me know how it's going. Shoot Shelly a message on LinkedIn and let us know how it's going as you start that process. But there's a self-exploration and then there's an exploring a little bit beyond. Ask how these people found success on their journey. That's how we'll close up number 1. If we want to get into number 2, if you don't have anything else to add yourself, shall we?

I don't. That's pretty good, uh, that's pretty good advice. I think it might be uncomfortable for some to go and ask, but that's kind of the thing you have to get over, is because it was for— I mean, I'm an introvert, and, and even though I was saying before that I pursued, you know, mentorship intentionally with people, it was not professionally. It was always in other areas, and it was, you know, areas of interest but not professionally. So it wasn't until professionally I actually had someone reach out and say, let me be your mentor, that I realized, oh, I could do that here too. Yeah, but it was difficult to go out and, you know, approach. It was like, especially that first conversation, like, hey, I need a mentor. Okay, let's set up a meeting. Okay, what do you need?

Uh, that's where the career map comes in. That's where the checklist comes in. That's where our prep comes in. That's where some of these different pieces come in.

And now you can do on your own.

Yeah. And you can exactly have the, I mean, at least draw it out.

Like it may not be complete, but yeah. So I think that's a perfect answer. I can't add to that. The other question, is there information on how having outside mentors impact an employee retention? As in, I'm assuming not mentors that are within your same company, but like hiring an executive coach, or—

Yeah, so do you want to pull up the, the second piece of this? I think it's, uh, might not fit. Yeah, so that gets, that gets an idea, and I'll kind of recap this, make sure I'm understanding it appropriately. Is there information about somebody on the outside of your organization helping with internal retention? So if I'm an employee at Company A and I'm looking for advice and guidance in, uh, from somewhere else, XYZ, right? And maybe I don't feel comfortable, uh, letting my current leadership know that I'm asking for advice and guidance on the outside. My response to that is, uh, after meeting with tens of thousands and speaking to tens of thousands of leaders around the globe, I've only had one person that said I don't want my folks talking to people from the outside. So great leaders want to help their workforce diversify those insights, perspectives, and experiences. And so I say it's, it's very helpful to understand, just like you were talking about doing with, uh, one of your teams, right? They were looking at the capabilities and how other organizations were doing things, some, you know, in, in external benchmarking. Same thing for this. Shelly, what's helping you grow over at Boeing? I'm over here at Lockheed Martin, and this is what my professional development cycle looks like. You're over, you know, at HP in procurement and supply chain. I'm over here at Cisco in cybersecurity. What does success look like to you in 5 years? How are you doing some of this work-life balance stuff? How do you go about whenever you're super frustrated with your boss, not just walking out slamming and doing something silly. These are the kinds of conversations that we're able to just have as, you know, people working through certain things. Now, whenever it comes to some of those more technical skills, like, hey, I gotta, uh, work towards getting my PE, Professional Engineering, uh, certification, I have to go through and do certain projects, pass certain tests, maybe that individual is going to be internal to your organization if it's a specific process or SOP that you're going through. But as far as, is there information of having people on the outside? Yeah. And you can take thousands of data points from work that we've done over the last few years that people encourage it. And I'll also share that if I'm working in an organization, and I'm not confident, confident enough that my people are happy, and I'm not doing enough stay interviews, that they're giving me reassurance that, hey, I'm doing everything that I can. They're happy as all get out here. They gave me no ideas for improvements or ways that I could help better retain them. I encourage my folks to always be networking, always have conversations. And if I'm not doing a good enough job here and the grass really is greener, then hey, shame on me. I gotta learn, learn my lesson that way. But I'm not going to be able to just sprinkle on some last-minute mentorship to make these sins of the past go away, right?

Somebody's already looking at 15 minutes of mentorship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Swipe my card and get like a little— yeah, right. Yeah, I'm gonna go to the gym once, lift out, you know, lift up 10 pounds. Yeah, you're like, yeah, I'm buff.

Yeah, you're not. It's, it's, it's a very comparable analogy, right? January 1st, everybody says, I'm gonna do my New Year's resolution, and by January 21st Uh, people have usually stopped. Well, kind of like mentorship. It's funny, January is National Mentoring Month.

No way.

People— yep, yep, think about going to the gym and, you know, I'm gonna talk to a mentor, and then they either get super busy with work or they forget about it or it just isn't a high enough priority. So we got a lot to share on that front. Anything else to add on that one, Shelly?

Man, um That's a, that's, that's a big one. I mean, it's a big question. I think, um, it's tough because I— and this is the paid advisory situation, um, so one of the leaders that I reported up to, um, who I would say is a friend and a mentor and has been, um, they suggested that I get an executive coach. I don't know if folks know what an executive coach does. It's a role where an individual knows a lot about just emotional intelligence and positioning and framing. It's, it's really not like, it's not like a career coach necessarily. It's someone that really helps you with appearing in a more— not appearing to be, but appear or showing up in a more executive kind of role, which helps with credibility, which helps with all kinds of things. And the recommendation was made because that's something that is really very much a specialization. So, you know, we wouldn't have anybody internally that— there probably could have been, people internally, but this is really a very dedicated specialization, very similar to myself as a mentor. People reach out to me and ask me to mentor them in sourcing. It's very specialized. You may not have someone, um, that is, you know, that has that capability to mentor in that area. So just kind of tying it back to— I, I sought outside counsel for executive coaching, much like people seek me out for for sourcing coaching and mentorship because there isn't one. Your organization is, is very unlikely to have someone with my capacity and caliber to teach you or coach you or mentor you in this particular field because there's not that many and it's a specialization. I think you really don't have a choice. I guess what I'm saying is the information that I would provide is when you're looking for that kind of specialization, you really are better off going externally when that is a very specialized role.

Otherwise, you're just gonna get whatever you get, you know, jack of all trades, half an inch deep, maybe hopefully not half an inch deep and half an inch deep.

Yeah. But a little bit, but you know, and that may be professional mentorship, but not in a discipline. So that's kind of where, you know, where I'm going.

Look real quick on the executive coach side. I think once we get, you know, 5, 10 years into our professional journeys, we should start to explore a coach in various different aspects. Yeah, I agree.

It's expensive.

Well, and, and is our organization going to cover it for us?

Sometimes they do.

Sometimes they do. It's always worth asking. But I've had a coach for, you know, how to do social media and LinkedIn. Shout out to Corey. I've had a coach for sales, uh, you know, shout out to Dan and Len on, on that regard, right?

Coach had 3 coaches, you know, he had a swing coach, he had an athlete like a, like an exercise coach, and he had a weight training coach. Yeah, I mean, he might still, but I mean, when he was competing, I'm saying, you know, even the most elite athletes in their field, even the most elite performers in their field, you know, have coaches. A singer, a top singer probably has a voice coach. I mean, it's just, I think it's, it's how you, it's the next level of training. Like, you can train, you can educate, right? Education and training being very different. Education being preparing you for the unknown in the future, meaning being preparing you to do something specifically. Like, I can train someone how to swing a bat, but that's not education necessarily, right?

Yeah.

So that— those two. And I think mentorship is a— is the third. So you get your education, which forms you for the future, for whatever you don't know yet.

Then you get your specialized training that prepares you for that field, and OJT with it.

Yep, that's right. And then you get the— and then you get the coach that is your—

the tweaking and massage along the way. I saw that, uh, our, our pal Kim, uh, you know, gave a plus one, uh, to the external support. So thanks for listening today, Kim. She's in the, the Pittsburgh area working for an amazing organization. And also got to give a shout out to our local SHRM chapter, PHRA, uh, Pittsburgh Human Resources Association. Amazing, amazing people. And I think we got another plus one over here.

We got another one. Yeah, we definitely— I think we nailed that one. Um, when you look at the data across organizations that are using the structured mentorship— doesn't have to be the software that you guys produce, but, you know, structured with a spreadsheet, structured with Stratsoft, whatever, but really structured, um, and maybe even compensated, right, for external mentorship— are there any behavior changes, or more specifically, what behavior changes do you see in the employees who stay the retention side of it versus those who don't?

Yeah, the, the, the— when it's done— go ahead—

from the mentorship. Sorry, I wasn't clear. Because of the mentorship, what behavior changes do you see in those people who stay?

Yeah, so when it's done the right way, the, the results are fantastic. We have hard benefits and we have soft benefits as well. Let's talk about the hard ones real quick.

Behavioral changes.

Well, that gets into the soft, the soft, soft sides of it. So on the hard side, people are able to do more, right? They're learning. There's fewer points of failure. Yep. So we have, we have that piece. Faster to get up and running and performing revenue-generating activities. Productivity goes up. Profitability goes up. What about retention?

What about like lateral moves?

Yep, yep, yep. The cycle time to fill internal roles goes down. As a result of increased connection as well. So we're having some savings on that, usually down by 30% to 40% for internal and lateral career mobility moves along, along those lines. And then from the soft side, we got this, you know, sense of belonging, right? This— we see that organizational citizenship behaviors, kind of those stretch assignments, willingness to help a pal out even whenever it's not on my specific job request. That number goes up whenever I have this, uh, you know, bit of mentorship. The engagement is going up. My connections, of course, we said those are, are increasing, uh, but the well-being of me as an individual improves, and that puts me in a more welcoming, better, uh, mindset. I'm also more open to be a mentor for others. You talked about it and said, hey, Shelly, we're only going to let you into this program if you're going to commit to pay it forward. We found that the best mentors are those that can create mentors that lead other people. So mentor a mentor that mentors, and that's whenever you can say, hey, I did this the right way. So the behaviors are we're shifting that mindset from me, I, to becoming a mentor for us, to being us and we and our.

And really, really quickly though, touch on the benefit of being a mentor, just Yeah, I think it really connects to this, and then we can go back to—

Yeah, of course. So I— people bring up these ideas of, I need to have a cheerleader, I need to have a naysayer, I need to have a, um, you know, somebody else that is a reverse mentor. And I say, build those three kinds of characteristics into each of your mentoring relationships. You need to say, hey, I need you to put on your cheerleader hat today, I need you to put on your devil's advocate or naysayer hat today, I need you to put on, you know, the reverse mentoring hat. So whenever I'm able to provide guidance and share that information, it gives me, as a mentor, a chance to reflect on my journey up to this point. And sometimes it's cool to say, oh my gosh, yeah, I have done quite a few things. Right? That little psychological dose of reflection can be extremely valuable to us as individuals. It feels good to help other people, right? It feels good to connect. There's also the piece of, as you're asking me questions, I'm the mentor, you're the mentee, I'm able to say, whoa, I never thought about something like that. And if you're having these questions, why am I not more proactively sharing some of these thoughts and ideas and concepts with others ahead of time? So, it's helpful from that regard. And I can also be a little selfish and say, hey, you want to stretch assignment over there? I got this project that I've been trying to accomplish for a while. So it can also be helpful from getting a little bit more done and also saying, hey, you know, usually a good mentee is going to ask the question of how can I help you as well? And if you want to say, hey, I want to connect to others, right? Each of us, every conversation, we can work to build those personal boards. Who else would it be helpful for me to send an introduction to?

Right.

Who else are you trying to connect to? To that individual that asked the question earlier.

Right?

You get into a conversation, you say, "Hey, what other kinds of opportunities might I explore as I am going through this, you know, adventure of, 'I don't want to waste my time anymore'?" Is it always really, "I don't want to waste my time anymore," though? I think in that, those were the words, right, that were on the screen, right? Feels like I wasted my time. Yeah.

Right, right, right. That's good. That's true, tying it back to that. But I think it's always I think it's not always, but I think there are very different reasons for it, you know. And, and, um, something that I learned from my experience in joining and enlisting in the Peace Corps— yeah, um, there are many reasons people seek out enlistment in the Peace Corps, but there's only a few legitimate ones that make it through, that actually survive what, what's called close of service and go all the way through the entire 27 months. It's very difficult to get through. It's not an easy job. It's— as I think I have a poster here— yep, uh, still the toughest job you'll ever love. I, I agree, it is, it is an extremely difficult job. So many of the motivations that get us into applying for it, um, do not carry you through, right? You either find other ones to replace those, or you have ones that you brought with you that, that help carry through. But the point about that is that it is very much— I mean, the Peace Corps is 100%, 100% all about mentorship. It's not financial. You don't go as a Peace Corps volunteer to, uh, an underdeveloped country where people need assistance and just bring a wad of cash and hand it out. There's no cost to, you know, participating with a volunteer, to working with a volunteer. There cannot be. It's not monetary. So it is definitely a mentorship. One of the first things that they teach you is this is circular mentorship. This is mentorship where you mentor others that then carry forward because you only have 27 months. You only have 2 years really realistically to make a difference, and then you're gone. They might send another volunteer, But that volunteer to the same site, when they come in, is they're going to have a different program, they're going to have a different initiative. They're not going to just pick up where you left off necessarily. They can, but so seeking out to be a mentor, um, in the case of being a volunteer, which, yeah, I said is actually that, um, the motivation is 100% non-financial. And if you think that you're doing it because it's going to be good on paper and it looks good on your resume, I can guarantee you that is the number one reason that people fail, is because they go into it thinking that this is going to look good on paper. Sure, it does look good on paper, but really, 30 years later, it doesn't look good on paper anymore. It doesn't look like anything on paper.

But I think that alone, if it was an empty line on the resume that we're not able to talk to, and just like anything else on the resume, just like anything else we want to reference Okay. Hey, you worked at this company for 12 months. What's that mean? Well, I led a team of 7. What's that mean? Well, let me actually tell you. Through mentoring 6 out of those 7 consistently for 9 of those 12 months in the first year, 2 of them got promoted, 2 of them found other opportunities inside the organization for a lateral. Others took on stretch assignments. And as a result, we increased our throughput by 50%. So adding some more of that juice and that oomph, meat and potatoes to it, that's whenever— just like anything else, right? Helping people, same idea. Go into it with the right intentions and try and add a little bit of structure.

And if you're helping people by giving them money, that's fine, but there's going to be the structure. Yeah. So what I was going back to saying is the mentorship motivation. Um, I think if you go into becoming a mentor because you think it looks good on paper or it looks good on your resume, you're probably not going to make it.

Yeah, I'm with you.

That's kind of what I'm saying. I'm sorry if that's controversial or people disagree, but you got to go into it for much more reasons than that, or other reasons. Or maybe that's one of the reasons that you start out with, but I'm telling you, that's not the reason that you end up with. 20 years later of mentorship, you're not still doing it because it looks good on your resume.

Yeah, not just that. Yeah, I'm with you. Also, quick side note, I had no idea that you were in the Peace Corps. I had no idea that you did that. I also had no idea what all the Peace Corps entails. I got a little homework assignment. That's nice.

That's very difficult. Very, very difficult. But it is one of those things that's very rewarding.

Yeah.

All these reasons that don't start when you go, when you first join, you know, people who are motivated to go into it and close out service and are what we call returned Peace Corps volunteers. The right to call yourself a returned Peace Corps volunteer is that you finished, you completed your service, and you did a COS. And like I said, it's not a— it's not all of them. A lot of folks quit. A lot of folks don't make it through. The, the, the, the things that you learn from completing that, um, never come up on a resume. They just don't. It's, it's complete— it's life-changing in so many ways that are not any of the way— most of the time, any of the ways that you first signed up, you know. Um, but you're also not doing it to save the world because you're not— you're, you're really not saving the world. You're making a difference somewhere. Hopefully that's the best you can do, is to make a difference somewhere. And my point back to what you were saying is the people that you mentored carry that forward. That's really the— that's the impact that it has in the long term because You can't sit there and build a well and expect that to have a long-lasting effect. It will have a really good effect if the town needs clean water, right? But it's a lot better if you show people why they need clean water and show them how to build a well and build a well with them enough times that they learn how to build a well. And then for the next however many life cycles or generations, that town will have well— wells built. Well. Did I say that right? Did I say that well? Those wells will be well built, right? And that's the difference. It's not the well you built, it's the wells that they will build in the future. That's the beauty of, I think, mentorship. And I don't know if that necessarily ties back to retention in my example, but I think it does tie back to the performance aspects that you were talking about, the difference that it makes in the hard numbers So I think the retention part of it kind of might've gotten a little lost there. I was looking for what is the behavior change that a mentee exhibits when they stay, right? Like what is, and I think what we, the answer to that going back is they learned how to be a mentor. Maybe that's one of them.

Yeah.

Maybe there's, so are there anything else?

What to do and also what not to do.

OK.

I think it's, it's, it's to, to get those, And that perspective of, hey, somebody took a shot on me. It's my duty. It's the right thing to help and pay it forward and to continue to inspire. We talk about 8 steps of an hiring process through the personal board. And to inspire is to pay it forward. Yeah, to inquire, to hire, to fire, to retire. And going through that, which is just kind of like the life cycle of any individual on your personal board. I got to explore and figure out who's a good fit. I have to continue to grow and then hire them onto my board. At some point, we're going to either retire them or fire them. I have to be able to pay it forward and I have to be able to rewire my board. So, throughout the book, we talk about that as one of the other concepts, the hiring. Process. Is it overly formal? No. Is it, you know, uh, you know, in the, the SHRM handbook yet? No. But does it help and does it make a lot of sense to— hey, where am I at the process with each of my mentors and guides and advisors? Try it on for size.

What's the biggest blocker that prevents leaders from, you know, giving meaningful career guidance in, in this way?

Time. Yeah, it's, it's time. Yeah, we've, we've worked with, uh, organizations as small as, you know, 10 to 12 employees up to, you know, Army, Air Force, Space Force, a lot of people over there. And the piece that comes back is a lot of times, yeah, time. And so why is that?

So what, what is the overcome for that? What is it?

Well, what one of the things that we incorporate to many of the programs is Mentoring Mondays. And people say, Pete, I don't want to have it on a Monday. I'm like, okay, have your Mentoring Monday on a Tuesday. But it's where we say, hey, across the organization, this 30-minute slot, maybe it's a 60-minute slot, is for everybody to have a conversation with their mentor. So we're building this into our, you know, uh, 40-ish hours week span. And actually 160 hours, right? Once a month.

Calendar.

All I'm asking for, yeah, is less than 1%, uh, of that, uh, monthly, monthly cycle to say, hey, everybody's gonna go and do this. And we might even do something crazy, shall we, and say we're gonna do it twice a month, right? But to— and then whenever Excuse me, the other way to look at this is whenever the leadership in the C-suite, those folks that are super busy, they have no time for anything else, when they talk about interactions with their mentors and their mentees along the way, that's whenever they're able to say, oh my gosh, that's Will Tin Cup over there and he has no time. He's super, super busy, but he's still making time for this mentoring stuff. My gosh. And I liken this to the behaviors that we see on a repeated basis is what we, uh, begin to adopt and turn into routine for ourselves over time. For example, at Disney— you ever been down there? There's no trash anywhere. An executive is not allowed to walk past a piece of trash, because if I see an executive or a leader or another cast member walk past a piece of trash 3 times, then I, at any level in the organization, said, hey, He or she did it. I can probably do it as well. So by sharing these success stories and letting others know, hey, not only am I doing this, but my door's open. Another question that comes up at that point is, I reached out to somebody, I didn't hear back. Okay, try again in 3 months. I heard back and they said no, not right now. That's not a no, that's a not yet. So try again in another 3 months.

A lot about That's amazing. Um, yeah, I didn't know that about Disney. That's, that's, that's pretty cool. I definitely subscribe to the don't leave the trash laying there.

Um, lead by example, walk the walk, talk the talk.

So that's the opposite of that's not my job.

We called it this, the, the professional salute, right?

Not me, somebody else, them or them or them. But yeah, but for every finger you point forwards, 3 pointing back at you, right? Um, well, we are pretty much running out of time here, and I, uh, I did want to have a little, um, behind-the-scenes, after-hours conversation with you. So I wanted to kind of close things out here, and hopefully we have— you have time for a few more questions after the show. Yeah, backstage pass, uh, type stuff, folks. If you want to get access to the backstage pass and resources and handouts and things like that, I encourage you to check out the TSI University, tsiuniversity.com. It is my lifetime achievement. I'm putting everything into it, and I am making that my place to go and pour out everything that, that I know how to do, from recruiting and sourcing and leadership and mentoring and everything. Plus, you get extra access to some backstage stuff from the show. So check it out, it's free to join and check out some of the free content. But of course, we do have our paid curriculum as well. Ah, someone joined. I wonder who. Can't tell. I definitely did not get a notification about that. Thanks, Pete. So before we wrap up and go into the overtime here, who should be our next guest?

I think we should bring on somebody who has had a unique, uh, journey. I think it would be interesting to talk about somebody who is going to give the audience something to think about as we invest in them. And I just got done reading this book. I'm trying to find his book over here so that I can Show it, show it to you. Uh, where did it— here it is. All right, shall we? I'm Ice Bucket Challenge calling out John Mitchell to come on and talk about how 12 minutes a day he developed this missing secret routine. He was just on the Pathfinders podcast recently, and he 20x'd his 6-figure salary by doing this.

Oh, the, the book that he wrote is about having done it.

And then gives access to a tool that helps each of us be able to do it for ourselves as well. Pretty unique. How does that help me as a TA individual? Uh, it's something that I can do to improve the work that I'm doing, whether I'm at an organization, how I can help others. It's good self-growth. Own your mornings, own your day, and take advantage and rewire your autopilot for the 90, 95% of what's going on in your head of that subconscious. That's what it's all about in here. So I find value. I think it's a good one.

Definitely will reach out. Thanks a lot. Of course, appreciate you spending some time with us. So glad you were able to make it. Thanks for coming by. Thank you.

Thanks everybody for listening. Please, as you're watching this, add a like, add a comment, because Shelly puts a lot of work into it. And the more we're able to help grow, uh, the community that he's put together, uh, the more he's able to help other groups and other people and share their story.

Talk about mentorship. This is where I mentor. If you want, if you want mentorship from me, go to tsiuniversity.com and I'm happy to help. Um, please stay on, don't hang up. I'll, I'll, uh, I have a couple more questions for you after the show. All right everybody, thanks a lot. We will see you next week. If you're curious, we have Martin Burns— that should ring a bell— and he's going to be coming on our show. So come on back. Take care everybody.