Nia Thomas [00:00:00]:
Hi, listeners. Welcome to year two of the Knowing Self, Knowing Others podcast, where we discuss self aware leadership with thinkers from around the globe. Remember that in year two, we’re going to be doing things a little differently. Our conversations are going to be more fluid, a little bit longer, more frequent. Join me on my learning journey as we talk to today’s guest listeners. I’m joined today by Amy Zhang. Amy, it’s lovely to have you here.
Amy [00:00:25]:
Thank you so much.
Nia Thomas [00:00:26]:
Amy is the founder of the Command Shift, and she’s based in New York. She spent the last decade in operations and HR, and in March 23, she took a big step and quit her high paying hedge fund job to help more organizations scale and build out their operations. She says that her secret source is simple. She takes a people aspect into operations and aims to support organizations to really ensure that people are happy at their jobs and performing at their maximum potential. She believes that people are the most valuable asset to an organization’s outcomes, and she’s dedicated to helping early stage and growing companies achieve better outcomes through their existing workforce. Amy’s, a Certified Scrum Master. She has built three teams in the last five years. She was promoted six times.
Nia Thomas [00:01:14]:
At her last company, she’s transformed over 100 business processes, and she’s broken company records. Wow, amy, it’s lovely to have you here.
Amy [00:01:22]:
Thanks for having me. I’m really happy to be here. I’m Amy. I’m the founder of the Command Shift Company. The goal of the company is to help small businesses scale their operations. We provide operations as a service for small businesses who don’t have time to think about the mundane processes and governance and management overhead and let founders be founders. So it’s anywhere from helping a seltzer company grow their brand, and they need to focus on marketing. I’ll focus on inventory and supply or a gardening or landscaping company that wants to expand their trucks but doesn’t have a great hiring process to think about that and doesn’t have a good systemized way of managing their people, scaling their invoicing, creating a new territory.
Amy [00:02:11]:
So it’s stuff like that. And the reason I left my previous company was because I believe I’m a builder. I want to help people. I think that I have a really cool perspective in how to think about operations. Usually when people think about operations, it’s very mundane, boring, process oriented. But how I do it is through team building, using my HR background, thinking about how people are motivated, what their values are, what the company’s values are, and how we combine that to create synergy such that everyone’s happy. We reduce burnout, we increase employee morale and productivity, and then overall company efficiency. So why don’t we all do it?
Nia Thomas [00:02:55]:
Yeah, I so agree. So, Amy, if we think about our particular interest here today is self aware leadership and self awareness in organizations. If we think about operational HR. In that case, how has self awareness evolved in the context of operational HR, and particularly during this post COVID era?
Amy [00:03:16]:
The idea of self awareness is very interesting because when I went to market originally my target was more of the startup environment and tech companies and more and more what I found was that the people who work for these companies. So employees or newly promoted managers deeply wanted and needed the help and were completely aware of all the problems and they are really facing the brunt of that. Whereas founders weren’t necessarily prioritizing it or were not aware of it. So it became then a question of education. So then I had to go to market, really teaching a lot of founders, hey, this is importance, this is why you should think about employee culture, this is why you should think about employee environment. And it was kind of an uphill battle switching focus. Now I mostly target smaller scale companies that are owner led and they do realize and have the need for more employee programming, development, training and upskilling that I find very interesting. And not to say that all tech founders, for example, don’t have awareness.
Amy [00:04:27]:
I would say maybe 5% of the leadership that I interviewed and did market research on really got it and wanted to prioritize it. And then the other portion honestly was just inundated with so much work in terms of revenue generating items, in terms of fundraising. And so I think that this world that we’re in right now, especially with post COVID, especially with the economy and where we are right now in the labor market, there’s just not enough resources, there’s not enough jobs. It’s putting pressure on everyone, not just employees, but also founders. And then it’s creating an environment where people have to choose. And then unfortunately, a lot of times the choice is to not pay attention to certain things or not have a people centric focus because your main goal is to survive.
Nia Thomas [00:05:19]:
As you were talking, I’m thinking, I’ve spoken to a few people on their podcast who’ve talked about does it make sense to separate out the function? So you mentioned founders. Should we be leaving? Founders do the things that they’re good at and should we be ensuring that the people management sits with somebody else in an organization? Is that something that you found?
Amy [00:05:41]:
Generally, yes, but it depends on what level of maturity your organization is at and if they’re ready to do that. So typically, and I agree with this approach, founders should keep their responsibilities because they want to create their identity, not just their brand identity, but their employee identity, the way the culture, the environment and set that up, and then the things that they’re not great at, of course, hiring partners in, but only if that makes sense. And so the problem that I’m seeing is that it doesn’t make sense right now because we’re not growing as fast as we want to because we’re not getting as much funding as we want to. So then a lot of founders are really handcuffed and those who truly believe and have that EQ and priority when it comes to people and team building, those are the ones that are like, yes, I need someone’s help and I want to do something about it, or I’ll do something about it myself. And the others who are kind of in the middle of like yes, I care about it, but I can’t right now. There’s a huge population of them and then of course, there’s the population of people that don’t care and it’s not a priority. And the priority is product. And that’s what we’re going to focus on right now.
Amy [00:06:50]:
And there’s no shame to that.
Nia Thomas [00:06:51]:
With remote work becoming more popular, if we think about self aware leadership, how can those practices really contribute to building a more cohesive and I guess a more engaged workforce? Whilst, as you mentioned earlier, trying to mitigate burnout?
Amy [00:07:08]:
In my personal experience, it was really hard when COVID hit and everyone became remote. And then as a middle manager, I was asked to handle so much more than I ever thought I needed to do. And it was an aspect of how do you think about community when it’s remote? How do you think about mental health when it’s remote? How do you think about productivity and measuring productivity? What are the boundaries that you need to stand up? And so a little bit less about leadership and a little bit more about management in general. There’s a huge pressure on any people manager during this time, especially the shift on ambiguity in terms of remote work versus onsite work versus hybrid versus what does flexibility mean. And I think that from a leadership perspective, there’s lack of clarity because leaders don’t know and leaders don’t want to take a very harsh stance. And then they say, hey, I want to empower managers because, you know, you’re a team the best. Tell me what you think is the best. Which is great because managers are now empowered and they have the ability to decide.
Amy [00:08:16]:
But that also puts on a huge amount of pressure in so many dynamics and aspects that managers aren’t trained on typically. And so the concept of remote work being more prevalent and the intersection of self awareness, even for me, my personal experience, was really difficult. So I had to take an incredibly personalized approach, which is really time consuming and a lot of people don’t have that time right now. But the way I did it was understanding every individual under me, even layers under me. Their values, their home situation, their wants, their motivations. And that’s not just related to one component of remote work versus not remote work. That was also in terms of what their career aspirations were, what attributes were they developing for themselves and what path were they on, where are they in their personal lives? Are they new parents and they’re developing a whole set of new skills that they pretty much need to focus on? Or did some traumatic life event happen? There’s a bunch of people losing homes right now because of wildflowers in the US. So did something happen like that and being flexible and figuring out a good way to match up? Okay, what do you not have in your personal life that you can get in your work life to create a holistic balance for that person? And that feels almost really intrusive.
Amy [00:09:44]:
And when I tell even my parents, the people from the 80s, corporate America that philosophy, it’s like, wow, that’s getting too involved. Which might be the case. Honestly, I’m still experimenting, I feel like as much as the other person. But my experience is that that it works. It’s a tiny bit more upfront effort. But when you combine that with what goals we have to achieve in the business because there’s endless amount of work for people to do right now, I doubt there’s a company that’s like, we’re overstaffed. People have cut and cut and cut. There’s way more work than there are people.
Amy [00:10:22]:
And so, for example, if there’s complete uncertainty in someone’s personal life and they are like, listen, I just can’t spend all of my time developing all of these new attributes and skills and I need some certainty. Give them projects you know, they’ll crush. Give them projects that are proven and great in their current skill set. Make them feel great about it because they’ll be more excited to go do that work because their personal life is filled with ambiguity and new learnings. Like, let’s say you’re a new parent. Give them a project that they’re already proven and tested in. Whereas if someone else is saying, hey, I don’t plan on having any major life changes and I really want to get to this other point in my life, I have this goal of opening a bakery or something like that. It’s like, okay, great.
Amy [00:11:18]:
We’re going to teach you about invoicing or something like that. We’re going to teach you something that’s completely applicable to your goal, but maybe not be something that’s very interesting to everyone else. It’s like, oh, deal with the invoicing issue in our company. It’s like, oh man, nobody wants to do that. But so if you connect it to that person’s goal and mission, they’re more likely to want to do and be more motivated to work. And so that’s kind of the approach that I took, especially when the world kind of went crazy during COVID And now there’s so much uncertainty with regards to remote work versus on site. My opinion is that the world hasn’t settled yet. There is not going to be a concrete answer to the debate that I think everyone is looking for a concrete answer.
Amy [00:12:03]:
And then when companies do give a concrete answer, all people do is debate it and get upset with it. And that just creates another debate for people where there’s already social justice issues that our people are already debating. And so reducing the noise is the most effective way to increase productivity and keep people moving.
Nia Thomas [00:12:23]:
I love that description, Amy. That is so insightful, the way you say that companies desperately want to give an answer, but actually the world shifts tomorrow and your answer has to change. So how can you set out your stall as an organization to be flexible enough to deal with the stuff you’ve no idea that’s coming at you tomorrow? And you mentioned the wildfires that we talk about in the UK particularly we talk about COVID because we haven’t had those same climate impact. I’m glad to say we’ve been pretty safe in the UK. But how do organizations begin to think about those things such as climate change? Because some organizations in some countries have way moved past COVID. They are now in our employees. Our colleagues don’t have homes. Everything they had has been burnt to a cinder.
Nia Thomas [00:13:18]:
How do we support them? What do we do to keep ourselves afloat as an organization and support them? How do they even start doing that?
Amy [00:13:26]:
Yeah, it’s a really interesting topic. There was a recent study that came out and it was called the Global Trust Report. It didn’t just talk about companies, it talked about trust. Holistically. So trust with institutions, with brands that like brand loyalty and do trust how much what people are telling you through media like television, radio, et cetera. And the overall trust rating globally has significantly dropped this last year, which I found was very interesting with the exception of few Asian countries that have remained in the positive, but mostly across Africa, Europe and South America, it has dropped to negative levels, which I thought was very interesting. And then one of the comments was that more and more employees are looking to their companies as a way of trust to push their social impact issues and that could be interpreted in so many different ways. Right? And then I think this report came out around Pride Month and then there was a lot of narrative and literature that came out around.
Amy [00:14:38]:
Don’t just put a rainbow logo on LinkedIn and call yourself inclusive, like actually do something about it. Which was very interesting for me to kind of observe because that was exactly what the report was saying. So people are looking to their institutions, companies being one of them, to amplify the causes that they care about. And Wildfires is just an example of one of them. Inclusion is another example of them. Poverty, especially in New York City. Like, how are companies thinking about poverty and the refugees that are coming in New York City? There’s so many of these very micro and macro social and climate and environmental issues that employees are now looking to their companies to solve for. And solve for doesn’t mean to completely abolish.
Amy [00:15:35]:
It means to do something about it or have great policies. I just spoke to this woman who started her head of global affairs job four months ago, and she said that one of the biggest things that she thought was so interesting was that in their vendor portfolio, a lot of employees were asking for diversity in their vendors and that was so important to them. And she thought that that was so interesting because a lot of people don’t have insight into who your vendors are and your company just kind of exists in the world and then people are asking her for vendor diversity and she looked into it and it’s not diverse. And so she was like, is that something that we should be doing? And so there’s so many little things that people could care about that companies could do something about. And so, to be honest, to answer your question, what should companies do? I don’t know. I don’t have a great answer. It’s really difficult. I think it’s a really hard and unscoped problem because it’s so broad and it could mean so many things and you could do everything right but do everything wrong.
Amy [00:16:38]:
And so I think that from a company perspective, it’s really difficult. And I really empathize with that issue.
Nia Thomas [00:16:45]:
I’m very interested in your conversation about trust, but trusting an organization as opposed to trusting an individual. So I’m in the process of developing a self awareness compass, and one of those compass directions is trust. And maybe I suppose I’m thinking about it from an individual perspective, but maybe there is a commentary of the social responsibility and how that creates trust within an organization. And if you are a leader that supports that and makes the social responsibility a priority of yours as a leader, you are creating greater integrity and you’re building that trust.
Amy [00:17:23]:
Yeah, and I think one of the things that people want less of is a broad stroke action. So I think let’s make our logo rainbow but not do anything else. Or let’s pay for a float on the pride parade, but not do anything else is more annoying for people than actually doing those more meaningful things. For example, I know a company, they founded a program to donate all of their used tech to inner city schools. So like iPads and stuff like that, which was awesome. People were really behind it once they started publicizing it outside of the company, outside of the company newsletter, people started to hate it because they’re doing it for show. You’re doing it so that you tell other people how socially responsible you are and how you deserve all of this applause. That’s when employees started getting more disengaged and upset.
Amy [00:18:20]:
Whereas when you were doing it internally and you published it in your company newsletter, people were like, that’s awesome. That’s so cool that we’re doing that. Can we do more with that school because now that we have a relationship, maybe we can volunteer with them. And so people started getting excited about that.
Nia Thomas [00:18:37]:
The workplace dynamic changes. What strategies can HR leaders really adopt to cultivate a culture of greater self awareness in their teams?
Amy [00:18:49]:
I think that what I described earlier about that personal development has really worked in my experience. And then the concept of flexibility in the workforce really needs to be discussed and understood by each employee population. And so there’s this broad term of flexibility which most people then assume or relate to working from home. And that’s not necessarily what people need. It might have been Deloitte that just published a survey and in 2023 flexibility now ranked as a higher priority than compensation and benefits to employers in the US. And that was kind of interesting and a lot of it was discussing how the impact of more gen z and millennials who are waking up are thinking about the workforce. It’s not a means to make money anymore. It’s a means for people to live their own career, have self fulfillment gain tools so that they can open up a bakery like we discussed.
Amy [00:19:55]:
And so the concept of understanding people’s values with also understanding what does it truly mean for flexibility for our workforce, I think will inherently make self aware leaders.
Nia Thomas [00:20:10]:
How do you see self awareness and self aware leadership in that case aligning to broader organizational goals, especially in terms of navigating this uncertainty and adapting to this constant change that we’ve been talking about?
Amy [00:20:25]:
I spoke to this one company once, I interviewed a few employees and I was looking at this company as a potential client and resounding amount of manager level and below really had an issue with the management style of one founder. The other co founder, people revered, really respected, and obviously they had strengths and weaknesses in different departments under them. But this other co founder, one of the biggest issues was his lack of self awareness. And so the resounding feedback was you could really help this one person. And then I asked the question, do you believe this one person wants to be helped? And then they were kind of taken aback and unanimously said no. So I was kind of like, it’s not going to be a good client for me because he didn’t want to admit any of his weaknesses because he wanted to be perceived as strong and this leader and he didn’t want to reduce any of his power. And I think that’s really interesting. When you get a leader who is self aware enough, people will follow you because they admire that vulnerability.
Amy [00:21:43]:
They admire your openness to speaking. They trust you more like we talked about trust because you’re telling them something that is a weakness of yourself and they are more likely to share weaknesses of themselves. Whereas if you’re not self aware and not creating that culture, then you’re not opening up any doors for people to give you feedback either. And so you’re creating this culture of closed doors, and then eventually all of the doors will be closed and you’ll have a team of averages versus having a team of open people who express their weaknesses and express their personal lives and flex accordingly, and not having a unanimous team of job titles. Essentially.
Nia Thomas [00:22:31]:
I’m interested in your thoughts. My view on those individuals who are not willing to change, don’t want to give up their power, that there is an underlying fear and a lack of confidence, because as you said, if you can get over that, actually, if you demonstrate vulnerability, humility, people will follow you. What is your view about those individuals that are really not prepared to even consider their blind spots? What are you discovering about them?
Amy [00:23:06]:
I’m mostly putting it into the bucket of not a viable client for myself, because I think that those leaders need to have some level of self awareness. Otherwise anything I implement won’t be good either, because you won’t see the value in it, because the way that I implement these teams and think about culture, you’re not going to prioritize those actions because you don’t care for those things. So mostly I don’t engage too much with them. But I did ask one of my friends in this example, do you truly think he doesn’t know? And she said, no, he knows he really needs help, but he will never admit that. And so there’s an interesting component there of like, you know, you’re just choosing to continue your life that way. And I think that’s harder because you have made that choice to be that person, and no other force will be able to help you change unless you’re like, no, I’m now making an active choice to not be this person.
Nia Thomas [00:24:09]:
Yeah, and maybe something big has to happen in that individual’s life or to go, actually, do you know what? I really need to do something here because I’m part of this problem. I have to be a part of the solution. Burnout has become a really significant concern in the current work environment. How can HR leaders really leverage self awareness to identify signs of burnout early and maybe implement preventative measures?
Amy [00:24:38]:
I still think the golden ticket is an excellent employee engagement survey. There are a lot of really interesting ways to read that data. And I think the problem is not the implementation, the problem is the analysis. And so a lot of times people don’t really know where to look or how to interpret that data. But through time, data is really important. So for example, if you have a new hire onboarding survey, typically new hires rate everything a ten or five, whatever your scale is when they first start, then there’s a period where they start adjusting and they understand what the scale means and people explain it to them. And so they get back to that number. That number will be the trend.
Amy [00:25:23]:
So anything that dips from it, even if a little bit, you should ask, you should probe that question. But a lot of people make the mistake of, oh, they’re still adjusting. It’s like, no, they don’t. They’ll adjust once, and then once it dips again, there’s something you need to dig in and ask for, ask more information about similarly with the annual employee survey report. And I actually think companies should do it biannually. But if you see scores through time of like, how happy are you with your job? And usually people put maybe four out of five, and then one year they put three. If you just analyze the exit data with the trend data. So not the physical number, because a lot of people do, oh, like four is good.
Amy [00:26:08]:
So if someone keeps putting five, five, five, and then puts four, that’s a trend. So it’s the difference data, trend data against exits. You’ll find that a lot of people who are leaving or have left already signaled that they were going to in the trend. And so I think a lot of people mistake these surveys in the way that they analyze them, because they don’t look at trends. They look at the number. It’s like, four still great. That’s awesome. This person’s super happy.
Amy [00:26:40]:
It’s like, no, you’re looking at it incorrectly. They consistently put fives. Look how they answer in general, and then this one they answered for why everything else was five. And so I think that’s the way to think about employee engagement surveys that I think that is a big gap currently in the industry.
Nia Thomas [00:27:00]:
One of the big challenges with employee surveys is the information privacy. How do you ensure that you are tracking the scores that individuals are giving by quarter or by year or however often that survey is done, as well as looking at the anonymized data?
Amy [00:27:21]:
Yeah, the employee surveys that I implement are all named and required. And then there’s an anonymous survey, and I usually use the anonymous survey as a way to understand company and organizational complaints, things that people care about. And I use that more at an aggregate and average level, which is like, we still haven’t gotten dei right according to our employees, or they don’t think our onboarding is good enough according to our new hires. And so more broad stroke things in the anonymous employee surveys versus more specific individualized issues in the employees name survey. And then the other thing I think that is kind of a turn off to employees is if the survey comes out, it’s published, and your manager immediately starts probing you on it. I think that’s a really bad technique, too, because it freezes people. You should look at it through time, looking at different signs. You should check in on your regularly scheduled check ins.
Amy [00:28:24]:
For example, if there was some kind of metric about management and they rated it low, you shouldn’t be like, what do you not like about my management? What’s going on? I want to fix it. Even if your intentions aren’t great, it’s going to freeze them because then it feels attacky and then they’re going to want to defend themselves. Instead. Go to your regularly scheduled one on ones. Go. Okay, here. Let’s talk about your development plans, development goals. How can I as a manager help you more in terms of your goals? Is there anything from my management style that is not helpful to you? I want to make sure we’re resetting so it’s already in some cadence and it’s not kind of randomized probing.
Amy [00:29:04]:
Does that make sense?
Nia Thomas [00:29:05]:
It does, definitely. Listeners, I would be really interested to know what you think about this because we’re very used to doing anonymized surveys. What would happen if you started to do named surveys in your organizations? How would your employees respond to that? Amy and I are on LinkedIn. Please do post underneath our promotion of this podcast and let us know what you think, whether you think that is a viable or has potential in your organization, that your employee surveys will become named as well as anonymous section before you go, you have an ebook coming out, am I right?
Amy [00:29:44]:
Yes, I do have an ebook.
Nia Thomas [00:29:45]:
Pellet.
Amy [00:29:46]:
It is called your shortcut to startup operations. It is all about how you think about optimizing outcomes, operations, processes, through amplifying your existing workforce, how to motivate your teams, how to create excellent team builders, who are change agents for your organization, who are self correcting and high ownership simply through excellent management, excellent delegating, aligning values and goals of both the people and the business, as well as creating that culture, dynamic and environment for your company to be successful in the long run.
Nia Thomas [00:30:26]:
Amazing. Listeners, make sure that you check Amy’s website out and you get hold of that book. Amy, before you go, I’m thinking about the future workforce and the future requirements that people are going to have of leaders and self aware leaders specifically. What are your thoughts and what are you seeing that people are going to want from individuals?
Amy [00:30:49]:
I think the biggest shift that people are not addressing right now is the selling of the career ladder is completely done. Employees don’t want to hear about that anymore. They have their own career ladder in mind and they respect and trust and follow leaders, managers, supervisors who can see their career ladder, not the one that’s prescribed by an organization that was very prominent in the as something that people really wanted and strove for. Whereas especially in the younger generation, people have their own idea of what success is, their own idea of flexibility. And leaders who can address that and understand that and help them build towards their own personal goals and understand that they might leave because of it are more respected and productive and efficient leaders.
Nia Thomas [00:31:47]:
Very interesting and very good advice. I think. That’s something that as leaders, particularly I’m in my late forty s, and as you were talking, I’m thinking the National Health Service pathways through employment and progression pathways were very important. So maybe rather than career pathways, we need to think about people pathways and we need to start with the individual at the center, right?
Amy [00:32:09]:
Exactly.
Nia Thomas [00:32:10]:
Amy, it’s been wonderful. Thank you for joining me in. A really interesting conversation, listeners.
Amy [00:32:15]:
Amy Zhang thank you so much for having me.
Nia Thomas [00:32:20]:
Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast player. Remember to sign up to my newsletter on Knowingselfknowingovers co UK and remember to join me on my learning journey in next week’s episode so that we can develop more self aware leaders around the globe and generate kinder, more respectful and creative working relationships through reflection, recognition and regulation. The knowing self knowing others podcast is available on Goodpods Spotify, google Podcasts Goodpods Podchaser amazon Music Podcast Index.
Looking forward to having you on my learning journey!
