1602 – Harvesting The Power of Your Clients with People Powered Solutions’ Lori-Ann Duguay

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now. Lori-Ann Duguay. Lori, you are the founder of People Powered Solutions. You're found on the web at B, people powered. Lori, thank you so much for joining us.

Lori-Ann (00:01:12) - Thanks for having me.

Josh (00:01:14) - All right. So what is being people powered?

Lori-Ann (00:01:17) - What is being people powered? It's starting it's for leaders to start in organizations to recognize and harness the power that their most valuable client, their internal client, their employees bring to the business, and to help them leverage that power and to create highly engaging workplace experiences to ensure they're able to not only attract that future talent, but to keep that high performing talent in place.

Josh (00:01:45) - Yeah, are these principles that have always been tried and true, or are there new market forces that are causing leaders to need to be a little bit more sensitive to some of these things?

Lori-Ann (00:01:55) - I think it has to do more with They've always been there. There's ten basic employee needs that essentially make or break it when it comes to retaining and keeping a highly engaged workforce. There's ten needs that that workplace needs to provide for. Otherwise they'll start to shift into that shopping mode, if you will. And they say that 1 in 4 of your current employees are already in shopping mode. So I think what if you talk about these external forces, the pandemic has really increased the importance of work life balance for a lot of these folks. So this this normalization of a hustle culture is no longer relevant. And so companies need to get creative in terms of what kind of an employee experience they offer to their prospective talent and their existing team members. So so I would say those ten needs are nothing new. But the beauty of the pandemic is that they've brought them to the forefront and helped people understand that you either provide for those needs or they'll check out.

Lori-Ann (00:02:57) - And so if you don't want to be in this eternal state of recruitment, this eternal state of backfilling, you really need to get more intentional about how what kind of experience you offer and what kind of workplace culture you offer them.

Josh (00:03:09) - Yeah. Are these issues generational? In other words, you know, when Gen Xers were in their 20s, you know, maybe, you know, the Boomers and Silent Generation needed to be sensitive to us. And this is just always the way that it is. Or do you think there really is something special about our Gen Zers and our millennials, like all generations? Right. Are we just I'm curious about this is, you know, is there always a natural evolution for everybody or are there just a because millennials were always, you know, always in a connected society. You know, they're just wired a little bit different today. I don't know.

Lori-Ann (00:03:47) - Like we need like two hours to talk about this.

Josh (00:03:49) - But I know that's.

Lori-Ann (00:03:50) - What I'm thinking. So I'll say that the needs show up.

Lori-Ann (00:03:54) - What the importance that an individual places on certain needs will vary from one generation to the next. So I'll say that here's an example one of my ten needs, and when I reference these ten needs, I've actually written a book on these ten needs, the happiness factor. And it's really we highlight those ten kind of concepts. So number one is clarity. People need to understand what the expectations of the organization are, what they can expect from the organization. They need to be clear on their role, the responsibilities. They essentially just need to really understand what it is they're supposed to be doing on the daily that that does not change across all generations. That clarity piece is is the same for all generations. Communication. People want to be in the know. They want to work for organizations that are fully transparent that fuel and enable the flow of information in a 360 loop. So it's not all on the leader's shoulders to provide all the information, nor is it all on the employees to seek it out themselves.

Lori-Ann (00:04:55) - There's peer to peer communication happening. There's that that whole top down, bottom up, right? Again, that doesn't change by generation. However, I will add the caveat that when it comes to feedback and providing feedback, that's likely to change. So where your your boomers, as well as your, I would say your gen, your your Gen X's, they are okay with minimal feedback. They feel they've accumulated enough experience and knowledge and expertise at this point in their career to operate more or less autonomously. However, the younger generations who were raised on this, this culture of instant feedback and they were conditioned to post a picture and wait for feedback, wait for a like a heart something. Regardless, they've been accustomed to this ongoing feedback. So in that respect, I think that the different generations will need feedback to be offered differently. Definitely. Wow. Yeah. So there's little launches like that throughout.

Josh (00:05:57) - So I'm thinking about how this looks internally. So let's say that somebody on the team does something, you know, if they just update it and then nobody says anything or responds and we just assume like, okay, cool, it got in and everyone just kind of goes about their business, that would be doing them a disservice because they're like, Hey, wait a minute, why didn't you tell me anything about it? Don't just accept my work and not give me any feedback.

Lori-Ann (00:06:22) - Exactly. Exactly. There's no such thing. We need to get rid of this notion of no news is good news. And it's funny because the older generations have been accustomed to that. And I don't like older. I'm going to I'm going to scrap that because I'm pretty sure I'm now part of that generation. So and I'm definitely part of that generation. Bye bye. I'm pretty sure. I mean, I'm definitely and so I think we need to the more seasoned generation of workers they're okay with no news is good news. If there was a problem then then fine. But now you want to add another kink in that wheel. Different personality styles will also require different feedback, right? So certain styles, they don't need any feedback for them. Again, no news is good news, right? But the younger generations, as well as certain personality styles require and they thrive on feedback and failure to provide it to them will be 100% detrimental, will lead to them completely becoming disengaged and unmotivated. Right. Perfect example.

Lori-Ann (00:07:23) - My my husband of 27 years. He's of the personality style where both of that same generation but he's of the personality style where if I make dinner and I say so dinner good. And him and my son will say, Yeah, it's good. We didn't say it wasn't so why would you think it wasn't? Oh, my. Oh, my God. Well, if it's good, can you maybe say it? Because I'm of the personality style where I'm like, You tell me. I just want to know what do I need to do more of and what do I need to do less of? Right? So it's just to understand those nuances. But all of that comes back, Josh, to making sure you take the time to understand and map out the different personalities on your team, the different generations on your team and curate. Ask them what they prefer and how you can show up for them as a leader. What do they need from you? Take the time to ask the questions rather than assume, because we all know what happens when you assume right? You know, instead of assuming, take the time to have that conversation, ask them what they need from you, how they want you to show up, how do they prefer to be recognized for an example, because recognition is another basic need, right? So maybe this person is okay with the public.

Lori-Ann (00:08:32) - Call out at the team huddle while the next person would be completely demotivated by that type of an approach. So take the time to understand their preferences and their needs and then adapt your approach from there.

Josh (00:08:44) - Yeah, and I was just thinking about when they offer that feedback and then sometimes when I offer feedback and I don't, I'm not even sure they saw it. And so therefore I'm like, oh, you know, was I am I just being too chatty here?

Lori-Ann (00:08:59) - Or, Oh, my God.

Josh (00:09:00) - I think, you know, I'm insecure about, you know, about my own feedback. And so I agree. So it sounds like, listen, the best way to handle this may be, you know, in your next review, your next conversation, probably showing up and asking questions about how do you like to be recognized, How do you like to get feedback, either good or negative, You know, like what's the best, you know, what do you enjoy? Like, that would be really valuable.

Josh (00:09:27) - Okay. You know, operations leader, all leaders pay attention because this is really great. But what other questions might you throw into, let's say like. Development or a quarterly review or whatever. Yeah. Oh.

Lori-Ann (00:09:43) - Performance development plans are 100% or sorry, I don't like annual review and I also don't like like evaluations because it.

Josh (00:09:50) - Sounds so right. No, that's scary. Oh, it's so scary.

Lori-Ann (00:09:54) - Nobody wants to do that, right? Yeah, but what you're striving for is to provide a tool to your team member to not only identify stretch goals, but to it's your tool to measure to which degree you're providing for those ten basic needs I was talking about. So if we go through my needs, you know, you want to review the roles and responsibilities with them to make sure, hey, does this still resonate? Is it still, you know, does it this job description, is it still aligned with what we're asking you to do? What might we need to revisit? Okay, perfect.

Lori-Ann (00:10:26) - Then that's the clarity, the communication we just talked about. How do you like to how would you like for us to provide feedback to you? In what form? Fashion. Fine. You want to have a section talking about your organizational mission, vision and value because purpose and impact is another one of those needs. And so people want to work for organizations that make a difference in the world. But where a lot of companies fail, they don't provide that connection. For the employee to take the the work they do on the daily and to help them understand and recognize how it's actually fueling the achievement of that broader purpose and impact of the organization. And that because of the work they do, you're having an impact on the world. So having a section, talking about the values and the strategic objectives priorities, and then having the employee say what kind of which parts of their projects or the stuff that's in their portfolio at the moment is helping achieve that. So although it seems onerous for the employee to do it, it's it's really about helping them connect to say, Oh my God, I hadn't realized, but this, that and the other thing is actually helping me and the company change people's lives, right? So having a section for that growth and development is another piece, those basic needs.

Lori-Ann (00:11:36) - So how would you like to grow within the company? How would you like to grow within your current role? What are things that you're really comfortable doing while what are things that you feel you could definitely stretch on? And then how can we make a plan right now for you to develop and really hone those particular competencies or skills? What kind of roles would you like to grow into within the company? Again, you can start to fill that succession pipeline by people identifying where people might want to grow within the company and having an opportunity through that performance development plan to identify that leadership. Again, how how can I better show up for you as a manager? What are some of the things that you appreciate from my leadership style? What are some of the things that you feel I could show up for you differently? On another example, I can go on and on, but basically I use that tool when I work with clients. I use that performance development process and we build a really robust exercise that enables them to, on an ongoing basis, continuously measure the degree to which they're actually providing for those ten basic needs.

Josh (00:12:41) - Um, I Lori, I'm really enjoying your kind of like what your expertise here. Should I be hiring you? Like what does that look like? I mean, like, so folks that you work with, what does that engagement typically look like?

Lori-Ann (00:12:56) - Typically we start working together. We, we start by educating them on those ten needs. That's our first, first step. You need to understand what are the ten things that people want at work. Then we look, we meet them where they're at. They usually assign internal resources because I don't want to have to be, you know, working for them on a long term. I want to help them build up their capacity to manage and measure this on an ongoing basis and to continuously improve it. So they assign people to me or to or to some of my my team members. And then we map out their current employee experience. We map out that what does that employee experience currently look like? And there are some key touchpoints throughout an employee's journey at your company that will likely you're at risk of losing them if you're not providing for those needs at those key touch points.

Lori-Ann (00:13:43) - So we help them map out those touchpoints. Longer term, we literally develop the action plan to improve on that workplace culture. And we, you know, we measure a baseline at the beginning. How satisfied, how engaged are they now? And then we train their leadership team to be able to adopt some of these initiatives and roll them out and manage them on the long term. And we go I'll work with them on a 1 to 3 year basis to have them really transform their workplace culture. But before that kind of longer term client, I also offer a three day intensive where day one education on the needs. We go through that with your team members, with your senior leadership team or your leadership team in general. Day two, we start to talk about that current experience. We we identify and map out what is an employee's experience today and end of day two into day three, we develop an action plan. Where is. That we can improve on it and what is it we want to do? So by the end of day three, they have a culture transformation action plan that they can, a implement themselves internally, decide what they want to prioritize and try to divide and conquer or be.

Lori-Ann (00:14:56) - They can bring us in to help with the implementation, to build the capacity.

Josh (00:15:00) - Yeah. Lori, your website. I opted in for this already. And that is you've got a pdf The Happiness Factor Top ten Employee Needs guide so you can grab that right now. The website again is B people powered.com right on the front page says free guide download The top ten employee needs guide click on download grab it And Lori, for someone that's been listening to a conversation, what else would you recommend is kind of those next steps for Yes, let's have a conversation, talk about your organization, what your needs are, what your goals are. I suspect you could probably do a lot of good help with certain leaders.

Lori-Ann (00:15:41) - Absolutely. Right above that download button, there's actually a book of free discovery meeting button. So they're welcome to again get go to the website, book that button, use that button to book us a discovery meeting where we can talk about what it is they're experiencing and how we might be able to support them.

Josh (00:15:58) - You know, I had so many other questions. We'll just have to save that for another conversation. You know, it's like, you know, because things that I think that we all experience as leaders, you know, maybe we have someone that's just, you know, seems like they're disengaged, You know, what are some great ways to enter that conversation are great, you know, questions to say, listen, it's you know, because I want to extend empathy in a case like that. Certainly if, you know, we suspect that someone yeah, they're pretty much checked out. They're just, you know, kind of quiet quitting on us right now, you know? You know. Oh, okay. I got two minutes left. I hate, you know, one thing they tell you, like my wife is a family therapist. And like, we she jokes about, you know, five minutes left in the hour, and that's when all of a sudden, you know, they disclose something major.

Josh (00:16:42) - Here I am like two minutes left in the interview using a.

Lori-Ann (00:16:45) - Term like quiet quitting and not letting me kind of elaborate on that one. Tell you how it makes the hair raise on my arm.

Josh (00:16:51) - I know you have you have really, Lori, and you have really great content on your LinkedIn. I want to plug that as well because you definitely chat about this in your LinkedIn following. So, you know, when our friend that's listening to this goes to be people power click and find Lori Ann on LinkedIn because I know you discussed it a little bit more there. In fact you've got some good long form content around quiet quitting.

Lori-Ann (00:17:13) - We do. We do. We've got a blog on our site. Yeah. Yeah. And they're welcome to check it out and to to learn a bit more about that. But no it's if one last thing to think about if in the two minutes that we have left is people think that the investing in these types of things is a nice to have and they don't realize the cost of not investing in building that that that people management structure that is going to facilitate and fuel engagement as a need to have because there is so the cost of not doing so is absolutely horrendous and it doesn't cost a lot to fix.

Lori-Ann (00:17:49) - It might be as simple as implementing a series of emails that go out before someone starts to give them as much information as you can about your organization. So it takes away some of those first day jitters or implementing a mentorship program or a buddy program like it doesn't cost a lot of money. People don't necessarily want more money, and they're not They're likely not leaving you for more money elsewhere. They're leaving you because you have failed to provide for those ten basic needs.

Josh (00:18:16) - Hmm. Lori Daigle, again founder, CEO of People Powered. And again the website is B people powered.com Lori great conversation so friends listening to this we've scratched the surface go to go to Lori's website Lauren's website so you can learn lots more. Got a great blog got a great LinkedIn following Lori it's been a fantastic conversation Thank you so much.

Lori-Ann (00:18:41) - Thanks for having me, Josh.

Josh (00:18:48) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up My Influence slash guest.

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