Building Better Workplaces Through World-class Learning with Johnny Campbell

angela_r_howard (00:02.23)

All right, hello everyone. Today I am with Johnny Campbell. He is the co-founder of Social Talent, a world-leading platform for building better workplaces and elevating hiring teams and experts. First and foremost, we had a great conversation, not just about your product and your platform, but also about your perspective and philosophy around work and the future of work. So I'm excited to learn more about you.

Johnny, your story, your background, but also we're gonna dig into this a little bit. So tell us more about you and what's the impact you're looking to make on the world.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (00:39.366)

So it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Angela. I'll start with me now. I'm a father of four young boys who are four, eight, and 14. Married the last 15, 16 years to Jill. We've had a small dog. We're a big dog person with dogs all my life. I now only have one dog after our last two died a few years ago. And we picked up a small dog. And I live in Dublin, Ireland, with my family. And...

angela_r_howard (01:02.018)

So.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (01:08.29)

I have lived, in Ireland most of my life, and lived in the Cayman Islands for a few years as well, back just before we set up Social Talent. I'm a runner, so I run to keep sane rather than fit if that makes sense. Fitness is a nice consequence that hopefully I get sometimes, but I moved remotely after the pandemic and I largely work from home, visit our remote, or,

angela_r_howard (01:19.864)

Hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (01:33.782)

co-working space every couple of weeks to meet up with folks and like to go out and meet customers and our team for lunch and breakfast. I'm a big breakfast person. That's me today. My background, I started life as a professional recruiter out of university, fell into recruiting accidentally, went for a job to get a job, and realized I was being interviewed to be the recruiter. So I winged it and five interviews later, in 1998, I became a recruiter. And then after 10 years or so of doing that,

I told you everything. So I thought I'd set up my own recruitment company and met somebody else I wanted to do that with. I didn't want to do it by myself. Vince, my business partner, and I set up a recruitment business just after them, or just going into the recession that was 08 that we didn't know was a recession. Through those trials and tribulations, we spun out social talent, moved it online, and grew the business over the last decade or so.

angela_r_howard (02:20.898)

Hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (02:30.066)

to we service about 120 very large customers globally and their teams with several hundred thousand users logging into the platform every day to learn. And we help teams in the areas of hiring, leadership, and employee development through our online platform. And I kind of accidentally ended up there. My roots, I grew up working from a...

I have a middle-class background, but we had ups and downs where we had no money. I had the type of no money that other people go, oh yeah, no money. Go, no, no. Like the sheriff came to our door to take all our possessions and repossess the house. My mother had to beg them not to several times. That kind of no money. And I went out and got my first job at 11. And by 14, I had seven employers while I was in school. I worked before school. I worked after school.

angela_r_howard (03:12.482)

Hmm.

angela_r_howard (03:18.327)

Yeah.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (03:27.262)

evenings and I worked weekends. Not because my parents were sending me to work in a coal mine but because I loved working and doing my own thing. And that stood out to me all my life. All my career apart from once, my employers were all women. I grew up seeing strong women all around me. So the default is that women are typically better at managing decisions, running things, you know, that's all I had seen growing up.

angela_r_howard (03:50.39)

True, very true.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (03:56.894)

My father was an entrepreneur, not successful, but I kind of had that bug about doing my own thing. And I guess I kind of always had a chip on my shoulder. I ended up going to good schools because I got scholarships, but I didn't have the economic status of my peers. So I kind of always had a chip on my shoulder about, we never had that privilege from a financial perspective, but I was surrounded by it in school. And I guess I went into the working world.

not liking these injustices, you know, for the women I used to work for who ran their businesses, who were fantastic entrepreneurs, for family members, my mother who had to try and fight to maintain her wages against, you know, recruitment agencies that were trying to squeeze her contracts and do all these different things, when she was just trying to put food on the table for us. And I guess I saw that then further in recruiting, I saw further injustices, injustices

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (04:55.454)

built the platform, you know, we were training recruiters initially on how to recruit. Very early on, we started adding in what I guess you'd call today diversity content. And we kind of snuck it in, we met with a bunch of folks who are super passionate and more knowledgeable about this in our area. And we felt it was important content to have, we could see the influence that recruiters and recruiting teams had on big organizations as the gatekeepers of the front door. We kind of felt like there was a lot of good education that they needed.

angela_r_howard (05:07.234)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (05:25.538)

they weren't asking for it. So we kind of just snuck it in and sprinkled it around the stuff we knew they did want. And that grew legs over the years. And that's a real passion area of mine, is trying to look at the content that the learning and knowledge that not only people need, but are not only the people want, but we think they need. So, our content curriculum as a learning library, we think about, we've got training courses on how to hire folks, on how to develop.

talent in an organization, how to lead and manage talent. It very much has an agenda, Angela, and that ties into a better workplace piece. We have a strong view of what the right way to build a workplace and a culture is. And for most of our customers, we're proud to work with, they agree with that. But if an organization comes along that says, that's not really for us, have you got a different version? The answer is no. We don't do a different version. We do the version we think is right and that's important to us.

angela_r_howard (05:59.586)

Hmm.

angela_r_howard (06:17.26)

Hmm.

angela_r_howard (06:22.414)

Love that. I love the integrity around what you've built. I am in a similar spot. I work with organizations on their culture more from a consulting perspective. It's really difficult to kind of pierce the integrity of methodology that you've built over time that includes these concepts. I always tell people, we kind of have the formula around this stuff. We've studied it, we've tried, we've tested it. So I'm glad to hear that you have this integrity. And your story is...

So fascinating how you got here and the perspective. I love the idea of recruiters hiring teams as gateways into organizations and thus kind of being that first point of contact. So I'd love to hear that piece connected with The future workplace which is kind of here, right? I know we're saying like the future of work I keep saying like we've just because of Kovat because of

many other factors we've kind of leaped. What are some of the skills you're building other than, you know, DE and I, what are some of the other skills that you're future-proofing, hiring teams, recruiting teams to better, be better gatekeepers essentially?

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (07:38.726)

So our focus is on what we call core skills or what most people maybe would call soft skills. And what is a soft or core skill? To me, it is a skill that transcends all roles, whereas let's say the opposite will be a hard skill, that is particular to a career or job. So learning accountancy and debits and credits is particular to accountancy. And that's a hard skill or marketing.

traditional marketing might be a hard skill. Whereas leadership, and hiring, how do you prioritize work? How do you manage teams? These are all kinds of general or core skills that are required in every profession and every role. And that's kind of where we focus our attention on those core skills, first of all. When you look at hiring, it's kind of looking from the employee journey perspective. It's like, you're gonna get hired, you're gonna wanna develop.

and you're going to be led. And everything comes from doing those three things right. So getting the hiring right, which is not just the decision-making around the hiring, the process, but the onboarding, but it's all of those things. The right processes, and there are different stakeholders get involved in that. There are professional TA or recruiting teams. There are hiring managers, there are interview panelists. There are HR folks, a whole bunch of folks who get involved in that decision. And if they're aligned and doing it right, you can make great decisions.

where you hire the right people and the right people deliver, they're motivated, they're happy, they perform for the organization, they develop further in the organization. That's what right looks like if you like. And then you've got leaders. Leaders have a big role in hiring for sure, but they have a bigger role in onboarding, developing, and bringing the best out of that talent. And I always look more at the sports coaching method, which is, if you look at...

any sort of team or individual sport, the coach is forgotten about. Like, who's the coach for some of the Olympians that we celebrate? Who's Usain Bolt's coach? Like nothing is spoken of her or him, because that's the right job of a coach is to allow the star, which is the talent, to shine and to support that person, motivate that person, drive that person, and make sure that person has everything they need to succeed, including motivation, including resources.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (10:03.654)

and to succeed. That's what a leader looks like. A leader doesn't necessarily take the limelight, right? They allow others to perform. That's the job of management. And then you've got the development piece. And then the development piece, you know, we live in a world where there's a massive shortage of so many skills and not just STEM skills, which is what most people think about, but skills in everything. There are a lot of businesses that focus on upskilling and re-skilling folks and some great platforms that can teach you to be a software developer or a marketeer.

But what we focus on, again, because they're hard skills, we focus on all the soft skills that people forget about. You know, if I say to you, Angela, you could be a computer engineer tomorrow, and here's an online training that could turn you into a Ruby on Rails developer. First of all, do you want to be? Is that the thing you should do? Great, if I do this training, how do I then get the job? How do I succeed in that job? How do I network with folks who might be hiring for those roles? What does that look like?

angela_r_howard (10:49.673)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (11:00.438)

There's a whole lot of stuff that's necessary around that, that no one addresses. They assume that by sitting in front of a computer and watching videos about how to do some hard skills, that person is gonna be successful in their career there. That's just not the truth, right? So we focus on the soft skills or the core skills around that, that drive better mobility for folks, give them more opportunity, better thinking. How do you, because getting a job, is maybe 20, 30% around the skills you have. It's about...

access, network, how you position yourself, and all those other things. And someone needs to do a good job at teaching people how to do that well. Because just like you said about the work you do with organizations around culture, where you kind of go, there's a right and wrong way. It's been written down before. This isn't a mystery. It's not a mystery how to be successful in career mobility and career progression. It's just not well distributed, that knowledge. So I'm all about distributing that a little more evenly to folks who perhaps have no access to it today.

angela_r_howard (11:53.209)

Mm.

angela_r_howard (12:00.214)

Hmm, no, that's wonderful. And I think these, you know, I love core skills versus soft skills because I usually call them like hard AF skills. After all, you know, they are the hardest of all skills. Technical skills, sure, they're difficult to obtain, but those core skills are so important and in reality, they are what drives a business forward, but they also provides

skills that people use when it comes to motivation, feeling like they're contributing, feeling like they're a part of something larger than themselves. So I would love to shift our conversation a little bit too, you know, from a talent perspective, right? So we've talked about some of the skills that you're infiltrating within organizations, through hiring teams, through recruiters, through broader teams. But we're at a very interesting spot right now when it comes to the market and talent. And we've heard a lot of

different terms, right? We just love the buzzwords these days. You know, like a decade ago it was a war on talent, now it's the great resignation and quiet quitting and all sorts of stuff. What are your thoughts on that? Where are we in the state of talent what are we getting right and what are we getting wrong when it comes to attracting them?

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (13:20.282)

So at the time of recording in early 23, where we are right now, the great resignation of 2022 is over. It is gone. And I say that because I talk to our top customers who employ between 10 and 700,000 employees, 10,000 and 700,000 employees, big employers. And those individuals shared with me that they had attrition rates up to 25% last year. And those attrition rates fell to less than 5% as the year closed. So...

there was so much movement of talent last year, like numbers we've never seen before. The CEO of LinkedIn shared this at their Talent Connect event last October when they saw this movement rate go fourfold on the LinkedIn platform, it like just a measure of people changing their employer on LinkedIn, right? Across their, whatever, number of 100 million members, it's pretty statistically valid, and it went 4X in a year. They didn't ever see the history of their platform, right? So we all felt this.

That's gone. Fears about the economy, inflation, war in Europe, around different things have led to, for whatever reasons, folks just not moving jobs as much. But there are still very few talented people available just wandering around and looking for a job with all the skills that employers are looking for. We still have these big skill gaps. The skill gaps are in so many industries. In every industry we don't think about, like hospitality.

in manufacturing distribution and retail, you can't get retail staff. You cannot get F&B servers in a restaurant anywhere in the world today. Right. So like it's not just, you know, these highly skilled office jobs, which maybe we would have traditionally only thought of just everywhere. It's really hard to get folks to do anything. Because, you know, we have almost full employment in most markets in the U.S. We have. Yes, we have some high inflation.

We have other economic indicators that perhaps aren't great, but employment, employment is great. You know, it's still really strong. It's just it's amongst the strongest levels as being in two decades. Right. And so to a macro level, you have this situation where whilst the movement within the market has slowed right down, there's there isn't any net new talent out there. So it's still really difficult to find talent. But what happened last year because

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (15:41.65)

we were just moving the chairs. We were playing this game of musical chairs all year long and then started the previous year, this great resignation. We constantly had people shifting in and out of our organizations. And we were just constantly trying to make them happy, both to keep them because we were afraid of everyone leaving because if one in four in your team is likely to leave this year, you want to keep everyone. And then you knew people coming in, and we're like, we have to make them happy, because they're just in the door, let's make them so happy.

And I think in 2022, for all these reasons, a lot of companies perhaps lost their focus and they shifted their focus from a people and ops perspective to just make everyone happy, satisfy their demands no matter what because that's gonna solve our problems. That's an understandable reaction. Salaries went up, which contributed to inflation, right? Don't get me wrong.

But also the terms and conditions expanded, which for a lot of folks was necessary and good. But companies started doing things that were never done before, like providing support that was unheard of even three years previous. Right. And we talked before we went on air about, you know, ERGs that popped up for surprising topics. It's kind of like there was almost an ERG for everything as opposed to

angela_r_howard (16:42.51)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (17:06.174)

ERGs for folks who needed or were marginalized or disenfranchised are not given the same opportunity. There seem to be these new clubs and communities and resource groups for kind of everything because everyone needed a club. Everyone needed a badge and needed to get rewarded and told they were brilliant. Everyone, every manager was just looking for their teams just give them top scores. Great manager. Love you.

And, you know, because the companies are going, well, you can't have your people leave. That's disastrous for us. And you can't keep these new people. We spend so much time hiring. And that doesn't create a positive culture, right? It doesn't create the kind of culture that I've seen work. I can expand on what is a good culture versus that. But I think we are suffering from that in early 23, a bit of a hangover of that. As companies retrench and trim staff, reorganize.

angela_r_howard (17:42.325)

Mm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (17:58.802)

It's being felt everywhere. It's just a shock to the way people in ops teams and organizations were treating folks last year, that gap, that dissonance is unsettling for people this year.

angela_r_howard (18:13.85)

Yeah, it feels a bit scattered, I would agree. And this kind of reflects, I think, some of them when I'm working with clients in particular, when we're coming in and they've tapped us to say, you know, help us with a strategic approach around our culture. We often step into, you know, things like, you know, the tea station or the food trucks or the ping pong tables and all these surface-level things

In theory, sure, they're fun, they're great. They might make people happy, but what you're getting to, I think, is a more sustainable, positive, healthy culture, how do we put our energy towards closing gaps in a strategic way, and doing things that create equity? And we talk about equity, you know, it's equal outcomes. So sometimes we get equality and equity confused, and a lot of times, I think, organizations are looking at

equality, like let's just peanut butter it all over the place and see what happens when in reality you need to get to know your people as humans and that helps you understand what they need versus maybe just this like happiness satisfaction play that you're talking about. So I would love to hear more about good culture, how you kind of parallel that to what you just talked about and what would good culture look like from your perspective.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (19:37.846)

So to me, the ideal business, right? So when we talk about building better workplaces, what does a better workplace look like? To me, a better workplace is trying to balance the four typical stakeholders in any organization, right? And in any organization you can think of, you have, I'd argue, these four stakeholders. You have employees, you have shareholders, you have customers, and then you've got society at large, right? And they're the four...

vested interests in any organization that you have. And ideally, you are maxing out the opportunity for all of those four stakeholders. What usually happens though is somebody suffers, right? So you have great profits, you've got a great product and great employees, but you're destroying the environment, right? You're doing great stuff for the environment, maybe you're really happy employees, but you can't make a profit. So your shareholders are disappointed, right? And so somebody usually has to trade off against somebody else.

But I believe you can make all four happy. You can max all four. The only way to do it, and I think there is only one way to do it, is by focusing on one of those stakeholders, which is the employee. By being employee-centric in the right way, which is how you motivate people, and provide them with the right resources, and the right environment to thrive, they will produce great products and services that typically can be sold at high margins, that are...

done so in a responsible way that drives internal employee satisfaction, that drives great results for shareholders that produce happy customers with great products and society at large is happy with the outcome as well. I think if you focus on any of the other three, you won't achieve that balance. You'll always trade somebody off, right? So the key is to be employee-focused, right? Is your kind of primary deliverable. But that's where the confusion kind of typically comes in because there's a lot of nuance to that.

on its own, that idea is brilliant. So make employees happy and everyone's happy. It's like that, no, not what I'm saying. And this is where I came up in the conversation last week, we're talking about the difference between a culture that's a family from a work perspective. You know, people kind of always say, I want to work for a family. I could feel like a family. I could treat it like a family, right? Unfortunately, it's like in a family, you can't sack your brother or your sister. You can't say, mom.

angela_r_howard (22:00.201)

Thanks.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (22:01.978)

you're just not doing your jobs or bringing a new one in. It's not how it works. Families have to stick together. You gotta make it work through thick and thin. In an organization though, the reality is you do change out the folks. Your brother can get the sack. It's like, you know what? We found another brother who's just better than you. Or we found a brother that has different skills that we now know and we don't need your skills anymore. We just changed directions. Sorry about that. That's life. That's more what a professional sports team is like.

In a professional sports team, you know, everything I read, I just feel more comfortable with that as the right analogy. Because in a professional sports team, you support your colleagues, right? You're there for them through thick and thin. If they've got personal crisis issues, you make space for them. You know, you support them. And as long as they're turning up and showing the commitment, that's appropriate, right? If when they can train, they train, they put that commitment into the team, they're loyal, they support you as well.

So you have that kind of healthy balance, which is that you know, we're there for you, but you know, you got to be there for us as well. Not always at the same time, but like we got to be in this together and because we got to, you know, win. Winning can be, you know, winning with customers, with products, whatever that might be, because that is, that's the reality of a business, particularly a private organization. And that can work well. And you know, you can exit out of a sports team and move to a different sports team that doesn't suit you, right? And you mentioned culture.

angela_r_howard (23:13.961)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (23:29.182)

I remember last year I came across this concept of kind of three or four types of culture, right? And it was described to me as you got a negative culture, right, which nobody wants, right? And that's not good. You've got a neutral culture where, listen, you know, you're not messing up, but you're not doing anything great. And you've got a positive culture, whichever it goes on. I want a positive culture. It's brilliant. But then there's a fourth, which is a strategically aligned culture. And I was like, well, what's that?

angela_r_howard (23:43.625)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (23:58.502)

And, you know, there was a bunch of us, 30 kind of founders in the room, and we're asked to rate ourselves and what our culture was. I put my hand up and said, I think I have a positive culture, but I don't even understand what a strategically aligned culture means. So I can't claim that one. And we dug into it. We used Netflix as an example. Everyone uses Netflix's culture, unfortunately, as an example. I know we've read Aaron Meyers' latest book with Reed Hastings, but Aaron Meyers' book is really good. It's a kind of update of the Paddy McCord work from years ago.

angela_r_howard (24:17.582)

I'm going to go to bed.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (24:29.03)

that she published last year. It's really interesting because it examines Netflix culture, which just for the record, I wouldn't work in Netflix. Not the culture for me, but it is a very strategically aligned culture. Their principles and values and how they've built the culture are very deliberate for the market they're in and the position they're taking. I massively respect that. And I think that is probably the optimal, which is, again, positive culture might be the kind of...

angela_r_howard (24:37.303)

Hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (24:57.714)

Let's make everyone happy. Where strategically aligned is we have a goal and we have a way of winning in our area and therefore we're gonna align everything to it. And I think, you know, the transparency of Netflix's culture has been positive for them in that, you know, they don't pretend to be anything other than what they are. So if you sign up to work for them, you kind of know what you're getting, right? So you buy into that. Other businesses like Tesla,

angela_r_howard (25:24.341)

Mm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (25:26.982)

is known to have a culture that I know I wouldn't work in, right? But they're quite open about this, that they're there to save humanity from itself and get off the planet if necessary. Therefore every resource possible goes into that, including your hours your life, and your time. And if you believe in the cause, we're here to save humanity from itself, you'll do that. But if you're not like, this isn't a paycheck company, this isn't a, I work for a fancy company, go somewhere else, right?

So again, whilst I wouldn't want to work there, I respect the fact that they understand what they're trying to do. They are strategically aligned. I think that's what that kind of organization is when I talk about your folks at the employee, they're very clear on how getting it right around the employee to align to their strategy works. And they commit to that and they do it very consistently. That's probably, you know, that drives the best outcomes for those companies and those employees that want to opt into those courses.

angela_r_howard (26:21.166)

Hmm. Yeah, I think you bring up a great point about opting in and the clarity around culture and how it's aligned. Because I do think, although we are focused on being employee-focused, I do agree with you. Throwing spaghetti at the wall around making employees happy to see what sticks is not culture-building. That's just throwing spaghetti at the wall and making things messy sometimes.

But being specific about why something like psychological safety is an important element to the way we get work done here, for example. If we are trying to aim for innovation and creativity, we know that building a safe culture is important for that. So how do we do that? How does that show up with behaviors? How does that show up with leadership? That is more of a strategic approach to creating a culture. And it's also, you know,

Because of culture, I always think about it as it's also a groundswell. So it's also a culmination of the people you've brought on, but if you're not clear about who you're bringing on, or you're not clear about your culture, people don't have the opportunity to opt-out. And I've seen a lot of organizations try to mirror or mimic other cultures at the surface. Right, so it's kind of that performative like the words are beautiful.

But then it's like, you get that buyer's remorse when you walk into the organization. It's like, this is not what I signed up for. And that is damaging to the culture.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (27:56.346)

massively. And you look at, you know, the idea of an inclusive culture, inclusive team, right, is noble. And it's one I aspire for as well. It can be divisive, right? Straight away, you have a whole group of folks who get their back up thinking, you know, I got to do this inclusive leadership training. And they're kind of going, well, I know what this is about. This is some diversity initiative and blah, blah.

And so therefore they're resistant and you're going to be in trouble, which means the only people who buy into it are the people who probably don't need it in the first place because they're already aligned to the right, most of the right ideas. So, language can be really important to just set things up, right? But it's also not very helpful to say to somebody, you need to be a more inclusive leader because it doesn't break down what that means. Like saying, you need to be a high-performing sales team. Like, well, who doesn't want to be a high-performing sales team? But like, how do I get there? What does that mean? Right.

Um, you need to be okay. As opposed to what? Like, no, it doesn't help people. Whereas I do like psychological safety as a kind of, um, a sub-component of that, because there's a lot more clarity around what that means. And it's also less divisive, right? Because you don't have to be on a side to support psychological safety. It's like, we want to create an environment where folks are happy, you know, feel comfortable to engage in discourse and discuss without retribution. It's like.

angela_r_howard (28:52.458)

Or be a team player, right? Yeah.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (29:22.138)

whatever side of something you're on, that feels like you want to be part of that, right? So that's helpful. And there are more ground rules then in terms of those right ways of doing things and wrong ways of doing things in that kind of environment that's proven to work over time. And you can adopt those techniques to create a safe environment. And it's not a consensus environment either, right? That's not what we're trying to create with psychological safety. We're saying that we want to be able to encourage discourse. We want to be able to effectively argue and allow

good arguments, but we're gonna also have a decision-making process and when we make a decision we're gonna move on from it and we're gonna also feel safe about that too and not to keep coming back to it. So you have tactics you can use to create psychological safety and you know all of the evidence suggests that doing so in a team will lead to more inclusivity in the team members, right? So inclusivity is more of an outcome in that situation from a tactic that's easier to get your head around.

And that's where, you know, I think concepts like psychological safety work well because folks can get their heads around it, can adopt it. You can you can operationalize that. It's really hard to operationalize inclusivity. Like what does that mean? Right. Allyship, again, is another good concept I like because it's quite tactical. How do you show up and be an ally to your colleagues? There are very specific tactics you can employ to be a good ally.

Right. And therefore you can break it down as a colleague and go, I should do these things and I can recognize these scenarios. And there's a thing I can do that makes me a better ally. And the thing I can choose not to do that makes me a poor colleague or a poor ally to somebody. So it becomes more clear and you can break it down to those concepts and give people real tools to help their colleagues, help their workplace, and help themselves. So I think it's breaking down bigger concepts into more digestible operationally.

easy-to-understand concepts is what our job needs to be.

angela_r_howard (31:24.526)

Well, I'm glad you said that because as an organizational psychologist, that makes me happy. We focus on behavior change, right? Behavior. So we get to, if I was rolling a camera, what would I see? What would I see? What would I feel? And that's how culture change happens. You have to get past that level of surface values or core values, you know, that are like posted on the wall. We have to talk about what it looks like.

but also what it doesn't look like. And that's equally as important. And I'm sure your product uses that approach to create additional learning for your audiences. So I love the, oh, go ahead.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (32:02.774)

What do you have to do? Well, it's why I hate bias training. Like bias training is like, what the heck is bias training, right? You're just telling people about the problems we have, and then you're shutting it down, you know if that's where it ends. And unfortunately, that bias training just ends there. You know, it's like, okay, how do we fix this? I've always been a future-forward person. It's like, I don't like sitting there and trying to, you know, assign blame or figure out why it went wrong. It's like, well, how do we fix it?

angela_r_howard (32:18.562)

Mm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (32:30.87)

What's the way forward, right? I've always been a fixer. If you have that mindset, which is how do we, how do we get ourselves out of this? As opposed to, you know, there's a certain amount of understanding about why we're in it that is potentially helpful, but we don't connect that to a behavior that you can then, you know, change in a certain situation. It's wasted, right? It is just, that this is how the human mind works. Okay, there you go, the lesson's over. Everyone feels good or somebody.

angela_r_howard (32:48.406)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (32:58.122)

leadership feels good that we rolled out some bias training. Like no, that's not enough. You need to connect that to, well knowing this is how your brain works, how can we change that? How can we not be reliant on our reptilian brain and its primeval functions and the biases and heuristics that we have? How can we stop that from happening and take more control of our decisions? Because sometimes that's the thing.

angela_r_howard (33:12.846)

Thanks for watching!

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (33:25.622)

they're not our decisions, you know, they're rooted in us and we're not consciously making them. And we need to just learn that we can learn techniques to make more conscious decisions. That's the bit that's really to your point about behavior. That's the connection where it's not good enough to explain the what. And it's not even good enough to explain the why. You gotta explain the how. That's the thing that unfortunately people leave behind too often, it's so critical.

angela_r_howard (33:50.394)

Oh yeah, and if you look at it, I agree with you. I think acknowledging bias is important. I think that we have spent a ton of money from a DE&I perspective focused on training and bringing concepts to people's awareness. Just for that conversation you just mentioned, to be shut down, right? To kind of, for everybody to shut down. I agree with you that we should be focused on behavior change.

So how do you then translate that into awareness, but also how that shows up from a day-to-day perspective and how it shows up with interactions within ourselves because our thoughts turn into actions, but also with our colleagues, with our leader, with our teams. So yes, I think.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (34:39.842)

I'll add a very specific example, because it'd be remiss if we did not give that to one of your earlier questions, right? You mentioned earlier, you asked about hiring, and I didn't answer you specifically, and my apologies for that. But how it plays out, for example, in hiring is that you can tell people that there's a bias, natural biases in hiring processes and ways people hire. And that's all very well. But unless you connect it back to, again, standardized processes, so for example,

standardized structured questioning around specific skills that you're looking to hire for, perhaps values that your organization holds high, giving people the structured questions to ask a framework in which to follow up those questions and to rate answers consistently against a rubric. You need to scale that stuff out in an organization and that reduces or removes most of the bias. And it's not to tell people that you have a bias that does it, it's the structured process.

that you have to roll out and implement and then enforce and measure against and test people regularly. That's what helps. Yes, a certain amount of awareness will go a long way, but also things like don't say these stupid things. Like when we roll out interview training with large organizations, it usually starts with, here's the dumb shit you say that you shouldn't say. Right, you gotta clear that out. And I do an exercise with folks where I kinda go, here are 10 questions. Tell me what's like a dumb thing to say, tell me what's perfectly fine things to say, and what's questionable.

angela_r_howard (35:54.306)

Hehehe

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (36:05.754)

And the dumb stuff is easy, everyone gets that. But the questionable stuff, most people get wrong, you know, where they just don't understand and it opens their minds. So for example, I'll ask folks, is this an appropriate interview question? What's your favorite book? And most of you think, yeah, sure, that's fine. And then you follow up and go, well, what if the person responds with the Quran, the Bible? Like, there are so many answers that could just open up a can of worms you do not wanna open up in an interview process.

angela_r_howard (36:27.819)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (36:34.614)

That's not relevant to the process. And what the heck relevance is someone's favorite book to any interview unless you're a librarian and even then still not relevant. I just, you know, it's trying to open people's eyes but then follow up with the how. Here's the right way to ask questions. Here's the right way to do it. Here are the things that you could do wrong introducing a candidate, setting up a Zoom interview, and things you shouldn't, shouldn't ask. Please avoid, you know, personal conversations like Where are you today? That's what, who's that in the background? Is that your son? Oh, he's lovely.

Again, you're being nice, but here's why you can't do that. Instead, here's a different way to set up your interview when you first come on, et cetera, et cetera. So it's giving them the real tactical stuff, pulling in processes. That's what helps people.

angela_r_howard (37:19.002)

Yeah, you try to take the guesswork out of it and the little nooks and crannies where bias can sneak in, and the objectivity at the end of the day is important. And also that balance with being, there's always this balance with being human-centered and also to operationalize and to create a process to scale. And that's another if I can think of another Venn diagram, right? We talked about business interests and employee interests.

This is another one where it's like, how do we make sure we create equitable structures, that are fair, and then also, you know, consistency, predictability, but also be human-centered. It's a tough job we have.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (38:02.294)

And sorry, this is a really good point. None of it's easy. And it's also been forgiving others who perhaps stumble or fail and realizing that none of us are perfect. And that's the thing about leadership. Leaders get a hard time for things that go wrong or don't go as right as others would like them to do. But being a leader is tough, right? It's really hard to balance all this stuff. And individuals in a meeting, you'll say something stupid, you'll laugh at something inappropriate. And it's...

angela_r_howard (38:23.246)

Mm-hmm.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (38:30.442)

Don't be hard on yourself, or don't be so hard on yourself, as long as you're willing to acknowledge the challenge, the mistake, and you move on and prove it, make a commitment to not making the same mistake again. None of us are perfect, right? But we can't be hard on ourselves, and you can't be so hard on others as well. Again, be forgiving. And sometimes when you are in this space and you're trying to fly the flag of more inclusivity and more equity in the organization, sometimes it goes wrong and you start

beating on folks who aren't, in your opinion, doing a good enough job, who've erred, who've fallen in their journey. And it's just, I always try and, just try and take that perspective of, you gotta be empathetic to what's going on in their world. I'll close on this. I was driving yesterday and someone caught in front of us and accelerated off and I was in the car with my wife and I was like, look at that asshole. And she's like, yeah, she was like, but maybe they have a sick kid and they gotta get home for it.

maybe they are paranoid and someone's been chasing them and they just need to get away from them. It's like, you don't know. And I was like, yep, fair enough. You know, I'm the asshole. I just made some massive assumption based on a behavior I don't understand, I have no context to. And it's just, I think if all of us could just be a little bit more forgiving to kind of step back when we don't have all the answers and most of the time we don't have all the answers and just maybe be a little bit more optimistic about someone's intent.

and not so quick to criticize and judge and be more open-minded. If everyone had that attitude, I think we'd make a lot of progress.

angela_r_howard (40:08.678)

So I have one last question to follow up on that because you've got all the ideas flowing in my head here. When do we move from grace to accountability?

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (40:23.315)

I will always allow somebody one mistake. You know, people make a mistake. I won't allow the same mistake twice. In my kids, in my friends, in others, it's like, you know, you can err on something, you can mess up, but you gotta learn from it. And if you don't, then it's all on you. The accountability is all on you. You know, it's not acceptable.

to repeat that over and over again. So I'm gonna comment, you go, you know what, that was inappropriate because it made me feel like this. And it goes, oh, geez, I'm sorry, I get that. I go, okay, that's okay, they didn't understand, I explained this stuff. And then you go into a meeting next week, they do the same thing again, that's it, right? Maybe that's harsh, but to me, that's just a no-go. I'll give you a chance, I need to give everyone a chance. But like, I don't give multiple chances to folks on the same issue, because I think you have to.

to be accountable for this stuff. It's too easy to go, oh, no, it's fine, I won't do it again, it's grand, no problem at all. And then someone does it again, and they do it again. There has to be accountability, right? I think, you know, again, I think I'd like to start with that, you know, attitude of grace and attitude of forgiveness and empathy, and to go, hang on a second, I need to get to the bottom of this. When you get to the bottom of it, and you have a conversation, and then if things don't change or improve, well, it's on that person. You've done it.

And again, people will mess up, they'll say silly things all the time. And I'm always willing to give some of the benefit of the doubt. To talk it out, you get to the real reasons. We agree on what the issue is. And as long as it's done right and there's clarity and transparency, I expect it to never happen again then. Not on that issue because I think it's unacceptable that it happens again. You've got to be accountable after that.

angela_r_howard (42:08.134)

Well, like I said, this work is messy. We talked about these intersections between business interests, employee interests, equity and fairness, and being human. We talked about accountability and grace. I mean, I just, I'm seeing all the little overlaps. So just thank you for the conversation. Thanks for talking through some of the hard stuff and talking through some important issues around culture, around hiring, around the state of...

the workplace and just to appreciate your time and insights, Johnny.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (42:40.67)

A pleasure and thank you for your podcast, and for the voices you have on. I've listened to your previous shows and they've challenged me. And I love speakers and guests who challenge because we don't have all the answers, right? The beauty is we're learning, right? And I hope to be able to sit back and listen to this in the year's time and go, do you know what, I've changed my mind on that. Because that should be everyone's attitude is to not have that rigid mind, to be open for someone else to persuade you that you were wrong. I think that's where the grace comes in particular.

angela_r_howard (43:09.582)

Great, and just one more thing to close us out. Tell us, Johnny, if people wanted to learn more about social talent, or you, or your co-founder, or your team, where could they find more information?

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (43:20.042)

Type social talent into Google, chat GPT, anywhere you want to put it, Instagram, LinkedIn, you'll find us. I'll reach out to me personally, wherever you find me online as well, I'm always happy.

angela_r_howard (43:32.674)

Thank you so much, Donnie.

johnny_campbell__he__him__his_ (43:34.058)

Thank you, Asha.