 David Chang here with the Art of Thickey Smart, where we're learning to live smarter lives for tomorrow. I'm very excited today for our guest, Samantha Wasserman, and over the past 20 years she's worked as an executive coach for 4,500 executives as well as startup entrepreneurs in a wide variety of industries. And I got lucky where she's been serving as my coach and I just thought that this is a perfect opportunity to kind of share and showcase some of her skills. So Samantha, thank you so much for coming to the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, David. And then we're live on Skype right now and excited to be able to talk with you. And I just wanted to kind of give you a few minutes to just talk about your career and how you got into executive coaching. And I like the title, Talent Management. I think of talent management, I think of Hollywood, but this is where nowadays in today's economy we have to be watching our talent and who we hire and what we develop. Right. Yeah, so as for the brief career history, I started out like many people do from at least the Gen X generation, where I looked at my parents and I sort of got familiar with what they knew how to do, right? They were lawyers and I went into a career thinking that I was going to be a lawyer. But what I found along the way is that I really loved consulting and I really loved solving problems and I really loved things of a human interest. But after a while I realized that I didn't necessarily want to practice law. So I sort of took a detour and got a business degree rather than a law degree. And from there I just came out and doing consulting work in what I think is called now human capital management consulting. And that involved a whole lot of things, organization development, organization effectiveness, compensation, how do you best manage the performance of your employees and that sort of blossomed in a variety of goals to lead me where I am now as an executive coach. That's great and I really appreciate it. I've learned a lot and I recommend that anybody who wants to advance their career should consider talking to one because we have our blind spots, I know for a fact you've helped me recognize my own. And I wanted to talk today about for somebody who's trying to advance their career in the workplace, just getting in, starting a second career, or even those that are kind of a few years from retirement, what is the single most important skill or skills you would say is very important for somebody to have? Well, that's a great question. At any given point in one's career, if I were able to identify one or two skills, I would say resilience would be one of them and critical problem solving would be the other. I think that if I'm thinking about someone who's in the early stages of their career, what employers really look for is people that can come up with innovative ways to solve problems. That's what they want to see because of the technology is getting so innovative in terms of the more mundane and tactical things that can be taken care of by software programs. They're looking really for human ingenuity and the more people shine in that area, the more people are going to stand out. I also think that expertise cannot be underrated at all. And so when you're talking about people that are in more mature stages of their career, how they approach problem solving and how they're able to quickly eliminate solutions that don't have any sustainability or commercial viability is very important. And that as long as they're approaching problem solving and teaching others how to critically problem solve, I would say that those two things are incredibly important. As far as resilience, we all need resilience. As a coach, I see people get in and out. Some of the most successful business people I know have had really tough times, which is what makes them successful, quite frankly. And resilience is something that gets built over time with a lot of trial and error and quite frankly, a lot of failure. And it's a skill that nothing else can really replace. That's great. It's comforting to hear that the most successful people you have coached is through failure that they get stronger. And I always try to remind myself from my failures, great people have to accomplish or overcome great obstacles. So for somebody who is maybe, let's say, questioning their career field or looking for a career change, I recently read a statistic that our parents, grandparents, generations would stay in one career 30 plus years. The average millennial switching job every two years, two and a half. And they said they'll have 10 to 15 careers throughout their lifetime. What are the pros and cons of that? And if somebody likes that type, what would you say to them to develop and enhance their skills? Well, it's interesting. I spent the majority of my professional coming of age, if you will, in the San Francisco Bay Area. So I'm quite, during the dot com era. And I'm quite familiar with the switching at jobs. The one, I'll start with the cons and then we'll switch over to the pros. From an organizational perspective and what the global economy demands in terms of our managers and leaders, switching jobs every couple of years is detrimental to someone's development. The reason why is if you think about long term strategy and you think about how you hold people accountable for results, that's really important in any individual who's aspiring to be a leader or a manager in their growth process. You can't just go and sit in a job for 18 months and leave. And then all of a sudden expect five years later, repeat that pattern and expect five years later to be a good manager because you really probably haven't been accountable for results that are sustainable. So that's an issue from a talent management perspective, which I know we'll speak to later. One of the pros is that I think that people in this generation, a lot of the millennials will get a lot of exposure to a lot of different types of managers. So as you brought up back in the day, if you were working at GE, GE went out and they selected a certain type of leader that they wanted to season and grow within the company and it created a certain type of culture. Well, employees today get to experience a whole range of cultures and a whole range of types of people. And I think that's good from an exposure perspective and I think it's good from a breadth perspective, but it's not great for a depth perspective. That's great. And I definitely, as an entrepreneur, I instead of just switching job to job, I just start companies and then from there see what happens. So I think that I have that entrepreneurial bug in me. And coming from that vantage point, let's say that you are in a job position or you've started your own company, training is extremely important. And for me, I like to read, I like to learn, went back to school from MBA. Let's say a company doesn't have the training program needed. How can somebody do what they, what can they do to prepare for tomorrow's economy? Because things are moving so quickly. And I recently had to let somebody go just because a particular position needed Microsoft office skills and we thought that person had it, but turned out not as what we thought it was. And technology is really important. So how would you coach somebody through that to be on top of the game even if the company doesn't have the resources? Yeah, that's a great question. I work with companies all sizes. Some are globally based and have a global reach of hundreds of thousands of employees and all the way down to a client that I worked with just earlier today that only has 14 employees and as a technology company here in Los Angeles. And what I would say is some of the smaller companies that don't have the resources or are equipped to provide formal training and formal mentorship programs. So I would say the best thing for someone in that situation to do is to take the initiative and perhaps if there's no formal training, find yourself a mentor. Find someone that you admire. And you may not like the person. You may not necessarily find their style appealing, but if they have successes and if they are effective at what they do, approach them. Have a conversation. Try to schedule a quarterly lunch or coffee with them to try to get a mentoring relationship going. That's probably one of the best things that you can do. Another thing that you can do is ask people to provide you with some 360 feedback. Sometimes organizations are large enough that they have a resource dedicated to human resources or learning development. Other times they don't. But you can even self initiate that through an email process just by saying I'd really like some feedback and I'd like to call on some particular colleagues to give me that feedback just from my own development purposes. And if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to be able to follow up with questions and I would appreciate that you are being candid with me in both my strengths and things that I can do better. I think those two things are very wise things to start with. Got it. And kind of on that note, right now unemployment has been on a decline and what we're seeing is at least where I'm at, it's difficult to hire qualified people at times for certain positions. So is it something where you hire somebody who has a skill set or try to hire somebody that can develop into it? What do you kind of see? I know it depends on person to person but I think every employer has that struggle of how do I fill that talent gap and at what point do I outsource? What point do I hire in-house? What do you generally kind of, your rules of thumb that you have? Well, it's interesting that you ask this because I do have clients that try to assess their organizations without getting actual expertise on skills and capabilities needs for the future because I think people often, leaders often think in immediate terms and they go out, they know that there's a void, they have a pain point and then they try to fill the pain point. They end up with more people than they actually need oftentimes. Oftentimes it's difficult for them to screen for what they actually want and it's worthwhile to take a step back and get a strategic picture of where the organization is going in the next two to three years and really understand the capabilities. It's not just the skills that you need but the capabilities. So earlier we were sort of talking about the value of human ingenuity and the ability to figure out creative problem solving. That's something that gets developed over time. It's not something that you can take a class necessarily for. So I think that when employers are looking to hire people and looking to fill the void, they shouldn't just go with the pain point, they should really take a solid step back, look at where their organization is going in the next two to three years and think about the capabilities that are needed for either growth, downsizing, whatever it is and try to get some expertise to help them out thinking through what that talent looks like because I see all too often companies making misfires or they feel that they're getting product A and they're actually getting product B and it can be hard to reabsorb people that don't have the right skill sets in their organization, then you have to unfortunately let them go. Got it and I do wanna get back to this topic but we have to take a break right now. So thank you very much, Samantha. We're talking about how people can prepare for the future in today's economy and tomorrow's economy. We'll see you right back after our break. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. You can be the greatest, you can be the best. You can be the king, conveyin' all your chest. You can be the world, you can be the war. You could talk to God, go bangin' on his door. You can throw your hands up, you can be the king. David Chang with the Art of Thinking Smart and I'm with my guest, Samantha Wasserman who for the past 20 years has worked as an executive coach and talent management consultant and she has been talkin' about what employees, what those that are in the workplace can do to continue to develop their skill sets for tomorrow's economy. And now I wanna adjust gears a little bit and take it from the employer's perspective or managers if those are managers. And thank you, Samantha, I really again appreciate you being on the show. So okay, I'm a boss. I have about 50, 60 employees in the home care side in the financial wealth management side and we talked about okay, here's what an employee can do to develop their, if there's no training program, what should I do to help my employees develop? What are the resources put into it? I read a study that for every dollar training I as an employer put in, I will get in some cases several times back but a lot of employers or even entrepreneurs like me sometimes don't see the value or invest as we should. So I'd like to get your thoughts on that. Sure, well first I'd like to distinguish between the difference between training and other development type activities, experience-based development, things like that. So as a manager and leader of a business or even just a group within a business, one of the things you can do is look at what skills need to be developed, technical skills, things that are more tactical in nature. Those are training programs and you can certainly outsource those things. Those are things that you can find agencies to come in and fill that need. So if you have a need for technical training, you're employing a new technology, you're rolling it out, you certainly hire in those experts to come in and train your employees. That's a good example of training for a skill. Developing people to become managers, that's much more experiential-based. So one of the best things that you can do as a manager is to be able to give cross assignments to people and then coach them through those transitions. I think all too often what I see is some of these rotational programs. They don't have to be formal, but giving somebody who, for instance, may have a marketing background but wants to learn a little bit more about finance. Taking a rotation with a mentor in finance and getting some projects or responsibilities there and having a manager within finance be able to oversee the work and be able to manage performance. That's a great way to season your employees and get people ready for next-level roles. That's a fantastic way to do it. Got it. And so let's say entrepreneurs are just starting. Maybe you can have a budget to hire one or two folks. What do you recommend that, you know, they don't have resources. I guess in some cases, everyone's got to wear different hats. How, and part of your background is not only do you coach individuals, but you coach groups and group dynamics. I mean, play such an important role. I've had that issue. Once the group dynamics come into play, then how do you suggest companies move forward? Well, group dynamics, generally speaking, need to be addressed. Well, I should say this. Group dynamics that are getting to a place where there's irresolvable conflict, where there's tension and conflict, the best course of action is to hire an objective outsider to come in and help the leadership team or the working team resolve that conflict because that person is neutral and they probably should have some expertise in conflict resolution and team building. So that's probably the smartest thing in terms of addressing a team dynamic that's not productive. As far as developing up people in a team environment, certainly there are informal structures that can be put in. You mentioned just having a couple of employees. One of the best things to do in smaller teams that are even disjointed team is to really find out what people want to learn, what ways in which they want to develop. People don't come to work just to do a job. They have certain aspirations and if you can get those people to articulate what those are, you're better able as their manager to meet those needs and you're probably better able to hold on to those people over time. And on that, I probably have used quite a few sites to recruit or hire employees. And one of my favorite business books is Jim Collins, Good to Great. And one of his key principles are you gotta have the right people on the bus and also the right people in the right seat and the wrong people off. And where do you find, in your experience, how do you recommend somebody find the good team for somebody who's in the workplace that they could find a company they fit in and somebody who's a manager can hire somebody that's a good culture fit? I think culture is such a big important thing that people only look at the skill but not if they're gonna fit in well with that organization. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think objectively, two ways. Employee referrals of people that are already within a company, I know in technology this is huge. And I recently, believe it or not, went through an interview process at Amazon.com. This was last year. And I believe that they have a very strong culture and if I'm to use them as an example, one of the things that's very, very important is employee referrals. Knowing that people internally get along like being with and working with the other individuals that they're bringing in and recommending to the organization. I think that that is one very informal way that employers can go about doing that. I would say a more formal approach that works best is when you're interviewing there's something called behavioral based interviewing. And there's a lot of consulting firms that have made a lot of money based on developing methodologies, but it's very simple. When you're interviewing people, you ask for examples. If you want somebody that's a problem solver, that's a creative problem solver, you ask questions such as, tell me the last time you solved the problem, what was the outcome? Give me specific examples of the steps that you went through to do that. And you're really gonna be able to get to a level of granularity in terms of how they go about it and what skills they actually have. I think some people aren't trying to lie on their resume or trying to overstate their experience. I think they actually believe that they have that experience simply because they don't have anything else to measure their own skills again. It's on YouTube video. Because how would they know? Right, right. So it's good to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when you can really get to that level of granularity through examples, that's where you know whether you have somebody with the right capabilities and where they should actually be sitting on the bus. This is great. I like that for examples. And what companies have you seen or you've advised the coach that have done it right? A good example. And some companies that you've seen, oh, you know what, they're not doing a good job. Just kind of to compare contrast. Well, what's interesting is the companies that I've seen not do a great job. There's a lot of internal conflict about what people are looking for. So in other words, the parties that need to decide on who gets hired in aren't well-aligned. They're not well-aligned with their purpose. They're not well-aligned with what they're looking for. And in many instances, they're just including way too many people in the decision-making process. I know that I've been through some interviews, not many of late since I have my own company, but I watch other people go through interviews. And the way that it's done is you walk in the door at eight o'clock in the morning and you're done at six and every 30 to 45 minutes, you're switching people. And it's not a good way to get a glimpse into what somebody has to offer, nor is it a good way for people to be able to make good decisions. So I think the ready-fire aim. The model is something that I see gets in the way. The companies I think they do it very well is I think that they take their time. Now, sometimes this can't, sometimes people need to be hired quickly. And I understand that. But I think by the people that need to make the decisions to hire by getting aligned upfront and not waiting for the group decision after the potential employee leaves, I think it's, things can be much better, it can be a much better process for everybody involved. And when you're saying alignment, you're saying alignment on the capabilities of this person. It's almost creating, here's John Doe and we would like John Doe to have these skills and this type of, you know, how this person will fit in the company. Right, and game agreement on that almost in advance. So that everyone's looking to fit a common purpose. The companies that struggle, they don't get that agreement upfront. And it does, it can never be 100%. Sure. But anywhere between 70, 80% agreement on what they're looking for and to fill a common purpose, that's what's important. Got it. And then kind of going back out to big picture view, now that we've kind of gone into, you know, the granularity of how interviews and how to find people. What do you see as a trend? So here we are in 2017 and you know, technology is just rapidly just changing. I mean, our mobile phones now, I think this year is the first year that mobile ads will now surpass TV ads. So we're gonna continue to see that trend. Oh, what do you recommend or what do you see the future looking like and how do both employees and employers, managers prepare for it? Okay, that's a great question. I would encourage people not to get caught up in the now. I think especially with technology, there's new features and everybody's, the next release of software and everybody gets excited about what's happening in the near future. What I really think about is what's gonna be needed? Where's the demand in the distant future? And in technology that means what? Two to three years at the most. So cybersecurity. I was reading an investor report recently that the demand for cybersecurity, the market for it is somewhere in the $8 billion range right now. So think about the skills that are needed. Think about, watch the news, see the breaches going on and understand this is where critical problem solving comes in. You've got very experienced criminals out there trying to hack into pretty sophisticated systems and they're quite successful. So where's the logic behind that? It was interesting, Mark Cuban made a remark. I think he was having an interview recently in Q1 and he'd said something to the effect that coding is on its way out. So don't be thinking about coding, be thinking about a liberal arts degree. Got it, got it. Where I would actually take that a step further is, I'm not sure that I would agree with that in all situations but where I would take that a step further is, the people that I think of when I work, because I worked in technology firms, when I lived in San Francisco, I have technology clients now, I have a lot of biotechnology clients to the scientific organizations and the people that are most equipped to deal with solving complex problems while using and developing technology, these people were philosophy majors. They weren't engineers by training, they actually know how to solve problems. So that's where I would take it a step further and I would think about looking into the future as to what the world is really gonna need and so I'm placing my bets on cybersecurity. Got it and we only have a few seconds left before we have to end it. For last words, we were able to get a executive coach for top executives, 30 minutes here. Last closing words that you say, last words of advice for those of us out there. Sure, something very important that I find when companies promote people from within, I think they do a decent job of identifying good people and they, at times, especially during growth phases can promote people. Well, what they don't do is support people through those transitions to ensure successful leadership skills get built and that is one thing that whether you can find good mentors inside or hire external coaching to get somebody with some expertise specifically in transition coaching, I think that that's a wonderful idea. It will set you up for success so much further down the road over and beyond everybody else. Got it. Well, thank you so much, Samantha. I really do appreciate it, it's been a pleasure and I want to thank those of you for joining us and again, you can catch us again every Thursday at 11 a.m. Hawaii time for our next show on the Art of Thicky Smart. Thank you again so much.