Leadership through change with Global Head of TA at IKEA

Hi, everybody. So I'm here today to speak with you about leadership in change. And before I jump into that, I just want to tell you a bit about me and where I come from. So I have the honor of working for ikea. We believe people are our biggest asset. And when it comes to our vision, we are really looking to create a better everyday life for the many. And so everything that we do is stitched within that. And specifically, I work with the Inka Group, which is, if you guys don't know, IKEA is actually a franchise organization. They have 12 franchisees. And I work with Inka, which represents 160,000 of the 200,000 employees that work for our brand. And within that, I have the responsibility of leading the recruiting and sourcing organization. And we hire over 45,000 external employees each year. We help facilitate the assessment of over 10,000 internals, the entire talent acquisition platform, as well as onboarding. And you may be wondering why I'm talking about leadership today. We obviously do a lot of hiring. We have a lot of things going on, but the reality is, right now, we are going through a massive change within the recruiting organization. So we've gone from a completely decentralized recruiting model, where each of our locations was doing their own recruitment and sourcing, to a centralized country team across 30 countries that now report into global. And so what we're finding through that is that a system and a solution and a tool are not actually helping us. What our people are telling us they need is leadership. They need someone to help them kind of see through the tunnel to the other side, because they're feeling a bit stuck and they don't totally know whether they should stay in the tunnel and go back from whence they came or come all the way through. And so what we're working on today is really how do we lead and inspire our teams? And as I take you through this, what I'm going to talk to you about today are actually two things. So why I developed my personal leadership philosophy, and then a bit more about what we're doing within Inka, around building Future Chros. And what I'd like to ask you guys to do maybe for the next 10 minutes or so, is just think about you. So let go of your company, let go of your teams, and just think about you and your leadership. Because so often as leaders and even specifically within hiring, so when we're trying to drive hiring excellence, we are so often focused on everything else happening around us. The metrics, the results, the that we need to drive or Pursue. And I would say, and I said this earlier, I'm a bit biased, but I don't think there are many other spaces in HR where you can take on a new role and be expected to lead, inspire, drive teams, get to know teams, and still meet all of the goals and expectations that are in front of you. Because recruiting, by and large, is a capacity game. We have to perform. If we don't perform, our companies don't get the talent that they need. And when we think about change specifically, and part of why I want you guys to kind of think about your change is often when we talk about change, we talk about it in really grandiose terms. So my company is going through this huge change. Change is inevitable. Change is everywhere. But the reality is, for you as an individual, the change is different than what it is maybe for the person sitting next to you or for your company. And as a leader of an organization, when we speak to our co workers, what we find is that their definition of change is not that our company is changing. Their definition of change is what they are experiencing both personally and professionally in that moment. And as a leader, you need to understand that and specifically understand it for you so that you can help really inspire and pull people through. And then the second piece, which I'll spend a bit more time talking about, is why I believe everyone should have a personal leadership philosophy. And for me, this journey started five years ago. So I was still with my past company. I'd been offered a new role. I was super excited, and my leader brought me into his office and said, okay, Shannon, we're going to announce you tomorrow morning. And when we announce you, I want you to share your leadership philosophy. And up to that moment, if you're anything like me, I could talk about a ton of things about my leadership, my leadership style, my strengths, my opportunities. But I couldn't succinctly create one phrase or statement that actually galvanized or anchored who I was. And at the time, maybe that wasn't a big deal. But what I'm going to share with you is that by going through this journey, I've become a more confident and articulate leader with my teams, with the organizations that has led us to be able to achieve better results quicker. So when I got this assignment, it was a Monday, and they were announcing it the next morning at 8:30am So I had a lot of time to put into trying to figure this out. So I went home that evening and I actually googled leadership philosophy. And what I'll tell you is if You Google it, you're going to get a lot of information back. Some of it's highly academic. There's a lot of literature. But I had about two hours left of brain space, so I ended up taking a bit of a different approach. And I just googled leadership and philosophy separately. And what really kind of caught me was the definition. This is the second definition of philosophy, which is a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding behavior. So, again, up until this moment, I could explain to everyone I knew. I had just gone through an interview process and explained my behaviors, but I had not articulated the theory or attitude that I had as a leader. And when I went into the room the next day with my team and they had not made the announcement, and I had to, you know, say this, I shared my leadership philosophy. And, you know, at the time, it was. It felt a little awkward, if I'm being honest. It's a strange thing to share in front of a room full of people. But what I wasn't expecting coming out of that room was two things. So, first and foremost, and I'm sorry my slides aren't kind of moving forward, but my philosophy is that everyone with the right leadership development and willingness can achieve their full potential. And I shared this with my team. And again, I didn't think anything would come of it. But what happened when I left that room were two really interesting things. So, first of all, I had people that I worked with for years come up and say, I get it now. Now I understand. Now I get why you do the things you do. Now I understand this nuance that maybe I did not before this moment. And what I wasn't expecting was that I actually had much more confidence in what I was saying, and I could now move forward and go into a room and not say this verbatim by any means, but really articulate what at the core of my behaviors was important. And honestly, it's changed a bit. So it's a little simpler at this point. But what I would encourage you all to do is take time and invest in yourself, ensure you understand kind of what actually makes you tick. Because an honest leadership philosophy gives clarity to all of the people you work with, why you do what you do. And to be honest, it should represent you on your best and worst days. And maybe you're thinking about, like, hey, you're saying that everybody can achieve their full potential. That seems pretty rosy and nice, but it doesn't play out that way all the time. So how I am described as a leader is I'm driven I'm results oriented. I'm tenacious, I'm relentless. I have high expectations of the people that sit around me. I push people to the brink. I push people to achieve things they didn't know they could achieve. And on my best days, I'm the positive aspects, and on my worst days, I'm pushing people too far, too fast. And it's strange saying all of this in front of you, but what I want to kind of exude is the amount of confidence and understanding that I have in myself as a leader. I'm fully comfortable articulating who I am. I the good and the bad and the indifferent. And as I've progressed in my career, what knowing this and being able to articulate it has done for me is that it has enabled me to choose companies, choose positions, choose roles that truly meet and align with who I am as a person. And we so often as leaders put ourselves in situations where we've just kind of landed there and we haven't taken the time to really understand if we can be our most successful self. So again, trying to kind of give yourself the freedom and clarity is what we're going after. And then within Inka, what we're doing right now is we have a program that is called Fit for Transformation. And what you may not know is that Inka, again, we sit in over 30 countries, but we actually employ over 30 CHROs. And we have recently launched a program to help develop, develop the chros of the future. Because if you can imagine, having succession for that many global HR leaders is quite substantial and a little daunting at times. So we've created a program that focuses with our people and culture, so our HR leaders to grow their competence and development and ensure that they're able to meet the future needs of our business, but also the changing world. So. So in this program, we focus a lot externally as well as internally. And what I kind of was walking through earlier is kind of this self piece. So there's four different buckets. The first one is leading self. So who are you as a leader? What is your philosophy? What do you need? What are kind of your motivations? The second phase of this training is really all around how do you lead your team? How do you understand your organization? The third piece is your broader organizational awareness. So how are you leading them? And then the last piece is the world. Again, we employ people globally and so it's important to us that we create trainings that can actually help our leaders support different markets. And. And, yeah, and with that, I just, I want to thank you guys for the time and I hope that your takeaways from this are again, invest in yourself. IKEA does quite a bit of work to do this. Ensure that you really understand who you are as a leader. It makes you better. It will make you better for your teams. It will create clarity. Share your leadership philosophy once you create it, and don't be afraid to change it. And I'm happy to answer any questions you guys may have.