My guest on this episode of Punk Rock HR is Jeannine K. Brown. She is the Founder and CEO of Everyday Lead and the author of the book “Unstuck and Unstoppable.” Jeannine and I discuss the state of the job market, what job seekers should be doing and what to look for in a psychologically safe workplace. We also discuss how her book is helping professionals accelerate their careers. 

Jeannine is an accountant by trade and started her career working for the Alabama Department of Revenue before moving into public accounting and, eventually, starting her professional development consultancy, Everyday Lead. There, she helps companies retain talent over the long term through “training and development, executive coaching and DEI strategies.”

One of Jeannine’s biggest influences is her mother, who loved her co-workers and employer. And that’s driven Jeannine in her work. 

“What I’ve been on a pursuit to do the majority of my career is just trying to find love and joy everywhere that I’ve been connected to — any institution, organization or corporation, including our clients,” Jeannine says.

Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by Betterworks. The world’s most dynamic organizations rely on Betterworks to accelerate growth by supporting transparent goal setting, enabling continuous performance and learning from employee insights. Betterworks is on a mission to help HR leaders make work better. Discover how they can help you by visiting www.betterworks.com

The State of the Job Market 

The headlines tend to focus on layoffs, but there are still plenty of openings and opportunities in today’s job market. But how do job seekers know where to look? Jeannine says to start by examining your job role and how you can stay current on the skills, processes and technologies you need. “So if you are let go or if you decide to leave, you can find a place to go very quickly,” she says.

Meanwhile, Jeannine believes that most employers do want to improve retention by figuring out what workers want. In particular, they’re to understand the youngest professionals — those ages 22 to 30

“They’re a purpose generation. They want to be connected to the work. They want to be connected to you as their manager and their boss,” Jeannine says. “They want to have this kind of family-type relationship with the people in the workplace, but they want to do it all from home.”

Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment for Ideation

For teams to create and innovate, they need to feel psychologically safe — a term coined by Dr. Amy Edmondson, who’s also been a guest on Punk Rock HR. Jeannine’s work heavily focuses on encouraging and guiding organizations toward creating psychologically safe environments. 

“Psychological safety is the ability to show up on a team and have open, honest discourse to disagree, to question, to admit mistakes without personal threat or jeopardy to yourself or losing your job,” she says. “It’s an effective means to really get people to really be their full selves at work.“

Psychological safety is about individual relationships, but ideally it’s part of the culture, modeled by executive leadership and filtering down to all levels.

“We start with the executives in exploring the conversations of psychological safety,” Jeannine says, “because there’s an assumption with them, often, that they forget what it’s like to be a staff, to be younger in their career or even be middle manager, when they believe that anyone can speak up because they give them permission. But we know that that is not true.”

Developing the Skills to Accelerate Careers

Jeannine’s book “Unstuck and Unstoppable” is a guide to help professionals leverage their value and accelerate their careers. It’s a passion project for Jeannine, who noticed how many people were focusing on technical skills and not enough on the “wraparound” skills that could propel their careers forward. 

By “wraparound” skills, Jeannine is referring to a person’s ability to effectively communicate their value in the workplace. “Unstuck and Unstoppable” is grounded in people’s real experiences, struggles and aspirations.

“What we wanted to do was make it practical. It’s not a book based on scientific research and hundreds and hundreds of surveys,” she says. “It’s actual strategies that I use to navigate my career in public accounting and that we use when we’re coaching women and men to get promotions. We focus on retaining people at their companies that they currently work for.”

Jeannine has seen firsthand how the concepts in her book help people.

“Every person that we’ve seen that applies these processes and ideas, they get promoted within their organizations,” Jeannine says. “They get increased compensation, more responsibility, and they feel more confident and more valued at work.”

People in This Episode

Jeannine K Brown: LinkedIn, Instagram, Everyday Lead, Unstuck and Unstoppable

Transcript

Laurie Ruettimann:

Punk Rock HR is sponsored by Betterworks. The world’s most dynamic organizations rely on Betterworks to accelerate growth by supporting transparent goal setting, enabling continuous performance, and learning from employee insights. Betterworks is on a mission to help HR leaders make work better. Discover how they can help you by visiting betterworks.com today.

Hey everybody, I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome back to Punk Rock HR. My guest today is Jeannine K. Brown. She is the CEO of Everyday Lead and the author of the book “Unstuck and Unstoppable.” Jeannine is on the podcast today just to share her overview of what it’s like to be a job seeker in today’s market. What do job seekers need to pay attention to? What are the trends? And more importantly, how can you not be a job seeker and maybe find new and interesting opportunities within your organization?

We also talk what it’s like to be a hiring manager, and how to retain people internally, and what you should look for when you’re out there looking for people and candidates and a breath of fresh air in the marketplace. So if you’re interested in a really great conversation about the world of work and the world of looking for a job, well, sit back and enjoy this chat with Jeannine K. Brown on this week’s Punk Rock HR.

Hey Jeannine, welcome to the podcast.

Jeannine K. Brown:

Hi, Laurie. Thanks for having me.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, sure. I’m so glad you’re here. You’ve had this really amazing career journey, and you’re so helpful to tens of thousands of people, and I thought we can get started by talking about your origin story. Who are you? What are you all about?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I’m Gloria’s daughter. That’s what I always say. So I’m that first, and that’s how I spent the first 18 years of my life identifying with her. And it brings me so much joy to mention her because my mother loved her job. She loved the people she worked with, and she loved the organization, the company she worked for. And so that’s what I’ve been on a pursuit to do the majority of my career, just trying to find love and joy everywhere that I’ve been connected to — any institution, organization, or corporation, including our clients. And so my origin story started in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I’m an accountant by trade. Went to college for accounting, started my career in state government and then onto public accounting, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Wait, wait. Do you still have a passion for public accounting?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I have a passion for the profession. So, I don’t practice anymore. But I am deeply rooted in the accounting and finance profession, working with public accounting firms, and sitting on boards related to the industry. So, deeply rooted. I just can’t see myself leaving. My people are there.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I like a person who knows people and knows numbers and knows math. I think you bring that to the table. Why don’t you talk about the work you’re doing today? What’s your career journey like today?

Jeannine K. Brown:

So today I am the CEO and founder of a consulting firm called Everyday Lead. We are a professional development consultancy, and we help companies retain talent from college to retirement who love what they do in the companies they work for. And we do that through training and development, executive coaching and DEI strategies.

Laurie Ruettimann:

So you clearly like that job. You’re clearly talented at that job, and it gives you an overview of the economy from early careerists all the way through people who are mature in their career journey. So tell me, what’s the economy like out there right now? How are job seekers doing?

Jeannine K. Brown:

It’s interesting because CEOs, we are in group texts, I was in a group text this morning, and we were talking about layoffs. A large public accounting firm was just announcing that they’re doing about 3,000 layoffs. And the conversation went from, “Yeah, that’s an issue, but there are still a lot of job requisitions open out there.” So I think it’s a matter of your company might be laying off, but there are opportunities.

One, to identify something within your company. Then, how do you stay at the forefront of employment in the company that you’re with, that you really enjoy working for? But then how can you stay abreast of where your profession is going — around skills and identifying the skills that are necessary. So if you are let go or if you decide to leave, you can find a place to go very quickly.

When I look at the economy, that’s how I’m looking at it, from the vantage point of talent and how talent can move very quickly. And then the vantage point of hiring, the corporations hiring and how they can find great talent and bring them into their organizations or keep them and retain them.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Job seekers and workers are naturally cynical these days. They’ve been through a lot, a lot of ups and downs. And two things come to mind. Number one, there is this belief out there that many requisitions are open, but they’re open for show. They’re not open for truly filling.

And then the second thing is that a lot of job seekers and employees believe that a company would rather pull talent externally into the company rather than promote from within. So what do you think about those two cynical, maybe realistic, sort of points of view?

Jeannine K. Brown:

They’re good points of views and I’ll say yes, no and depends.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Fair. And also the straight easy answer. Yeah.

Jeannine K. Brown:

Yeah. So I don’t think there is an easy answer to that. I hate to believe that companies would put out requisitions for roles that actually do not exist or are not open. I don’t think they really have the time for that. Am I going to hire somebody to do something like that? But I do think there’s an opportunity for companies to still continue to collect, create a pipeline of potential and future workers, and maybe they do that.

Laurie Ruettimann:

And that, I think, is what the concern is, that the requisition is open and that they don’t want to lose the headcount, but they’re not really serious about hiring. So I get it. Companies don’t have time to play games, and I like that perspective. 

What about this idea that organizations would rather get talent externally than promote from within?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I don’t think they would rather do that, but I think sometimes they’re forced to. I think there’s an opportunity for companies to bring in new ideals. If someone has spent 10 years in financial services at a large bank, and now there’s another organization that’s coming, and they want to bring in those insights? And I think that’s what a lot of maybe, talent, they’re not looking at it from that perspective. So I think there’s a perspective of, “Hey, we want to bring in new ideas. It’s going to challenge, bring in new innovations, new ways to be creative and approach our market, our customers and clients.” And so that’s why they do that.

I think this is also an opportunity for talent to constantly and consistently be in the marketplace, learning new things, being exposed to new conversations and ideas outside of their industry. So if I’m in the health care industry, I should go to a finance conference. If I am in the biomedical industry, let’s go to health care, go to another type of conference. And then I can be in the workplace talking about these new ideas, concepts, new technologies so that I can continue to be a value add within my existing organization.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I’m definitely down with the trend of continuous learning. I think that’s one of the most important things we’ve actually discovered out of the pandemic that you do right by you and your family and your future by investing in your learning. And a lot of people took the time when they were at home to take online courses, go to LinkedIn Learning. I saw that happening, and I love that trend.

I wonder, do you see any other trends in the marketplace right now, either from companies or job seekers or careerists, that are interesting to you? What’s cool out there? What do you see happening in the economy?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I think the biggest trend right now is ChatGPT.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jeannine K. Brown:

Artificial intelligence is impacting how people get knowledge and how they respond to their customers. And I want to put a disclaimer out there, Laurie. I am not an expert. I’m like everybody else. I’ve been watching it on “60 Minutes.” I use it.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Oh, good old “60 Minutes.”

Jeannine K. Brown:

I use it and I’m learning it. We’re trying to figure out how to use it to serve our clients and even to make us smarter and faster at what we do. And so I think that’s one of the biggest trends right now. I think employees should be able to and can use that in ideation and looking at possibilities of what they can do and how they can work better, faster, smarter, together individually as individual contributors, as hiring managers and as teams.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I have a girlfriend who was just laid off from her job in human resources. In that industry, the profession of HR has been incredibly affected by layoffs. It’s ironic, because just a year ago, we were the saviors of an organization, right? Now they’re laying us off right and left. But what was fascinating to me is, we started talking and I said something about ChatGPT, and she said, “What’s that?”

So we think it’s a trend, and I think you’re right, it is a trend. But I wonder what the discovery rate is on it because I think it’s kind of low. I think it’s not permeating into the average worker’s life just yet.

Jeannine K. Brown:

I think there are a lot of people who are just not deeply rooted in technology on a day-to-day basis of their careers or their lives. They’ve shunned it. They don’t think it’s important, and it’s not a generational thing. It’s not like the boomers or the Xers that are still in the marketplace are not doing‌ it. It’s throughout.

I did a post about it on my Facebook page, and I asked how many people were using it. And like you said, there were a lot of people like, “I’ve never heard of that. What is that? What are you talking about?” And I didn’t give an explanation. I was like, “How many of you are using ChatGPT?”

So people aren’t, but this is the differentiating factor, I think, with people who continue to add value in their organizations. They stay involved in these conversations around new technologies. They’re either the whistleblower: “Hey, it’s coming.” Or they’re the gatekeeper and trying not to use it, but I don’t think we can get away from it.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I wonder if you’ve had the opportunity to just teach anybody ChatGPT, like my girlfriend who was like, “What’s that?” I said, “Well, why don’t you go on there and create an account. It’s free, and ask it for the perfect margarita recipe.” She came back. She’s like, “Oh my God.” So I wonder if you had any of those moments.

Jeannine K. Brown:

I’ve had those moments. I was at a conference in February, and I was at a table. The women at the table had never heard of it. It was men and women at the conference, I just happened to be at the table with all women. And none of them had heard of it. I pulled out my computer and showed them, and I just put in there, “Hey, give me 10 topics that I could do social media posts on.” And they were blown away.

Laurie Ruettimann:

It’s crazy. It’s so fun to see people have that moment. It reminds me of when I had my first moment of discovering Twitter or getting on LinkedIn, and I was so excited for it. And all these years later, almost 20 years later, I’m like, “Oh, dang. These social media platforms stink.”

I wonder if there’s going to be this moment 20 years from now where we’re like, “Oh, I’m so sick of generative AI.” I don’t know. What do you think?

Jeannine K. Brown:

We might. It’s interesting as humans, how quickly we become exhausted by things that can actually make our lives better and communicate, but I think anything that’s misused — so I think the thing with social media is that now we realize that people really do think like that. And so I think if we can keep it as a tool that makes us smarter, makes us better and faster, more productive in what we do, both in our individual lives. How can I bring people into my home and give them a great experience with a great margarita recipe, but at the same time, how can I make my teams more efficient? How can we manage our meetings a little bit better using technology? And I think it’s important for us to stay on top of these new, evolving ideas in the workplace.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, just as job seekers have to focus on continuous reinvention, like learning, growing, thriving. I think companies are trying to some extent to do that. They want to keep and retain workers. I do see still an exodus of people leaving companies. Like to your earlier point, people still quit their jobs. They still leave. They still bet on themselves.

I’m just wondering, are companies thinking about employee retention? And if so, what are some of the challenges and what are some of the things they’re doing?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I think companies are thinking about employee retention. They might be focusing more heavily on the incoming pipeline. How do we get younger workers, and we appeal to them? I think the biggest challenges that they’re dealing with in that generation that’s post-college, maybe 22 years old to 30, is really retention and trying to understand that worker. What’s important to them, and not having envy, jealous or malice toward how they want to show up in the workplace and what’s important to them.

They’re a purpose generation. They want to be connected to the work. They want to be connected to you as their manager and their boss. They want to have this kind of family-type relationship with the people in the workplace, but they want to do it all from home.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah, they do.

Jeannine K. Brown:

So that’s one of the bigger challenges that I hear a lot. What I encourage our companies to do is to invest in their employees. And I love the fact that you used that earlier. People were investing in themselves by taking courses. When an employee feels as if the company is making an actual tangible investment in them, their development, their wellbeing, they are more likely to stay with the organization. Because we know individuals do not leave their company, they leave their manager.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, that’s 100% true. And I think about this younger generation of workers, and they, you know, born for the most part at the very end of the 20th century, the beginning of the 21st century. And they have seen a weird version of capitalism, maybe a better version of capitalism, who knows? But they’ve seen promises that we care about you, bring your whole self to work, be authentic. But they’ve also seen layoffs. They’ve been told you can work from home, and now they’re being told, “No, no, no, no, no. There’s no collaboration at home. You got to get back in the office.” 

And frankly, it’s got to be super-confusing for them. And also super-confusing for hiring managers who really don’t enact culture. They enact microcultures, but they don’t own the broader company culture. I think it’s confusing for younger workers, hard for hiring managers. I just wonder what the solve is for that. Because we’ll say, “Oh, it’s about transparency, and it’s about communication.” But how many hiring managers are going to be like, “I don’t effin’ know. Just show up. We’ll work on it together.” I think it’s just a miasma of confusion, but I don’t know. Do you have a reaction to that?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I do. I think we need to be honest and clear, and then be willing to come back and say, “You know what? We thought about remote work. We’re not realizing it in the way that we expected it.” And I think that’s OK because, like I said, this generation — and everybody — wants honesty. I think if we can in a community at work, solve the problem — what happens is our more senior leaders are trying to solve the problem outside of communication with their staff that’s responsible for delivering. That’s where the disconnect is, because the more senior leader is leaning back onto what worked for them 20, 25 years ago.

Laurie Ruettimann:

And feel like it’s their privilege to be able to do that, as well. Like, “I’m a senior leader. I got here for a reason, so I’m just going to do more of what I know.” I think these younger workers are like, “Stop it, please.”

Jeannine K. Brown:

Our team is remote. Because they’re all younger than I am and work faster than I do and come up with great ideas, I ask them, what did they want? They want to continue to do remote work. But every other month or every six to eight weeks, they want us to come together as a team, spend time together talking about ideas and what’s going on for the next business cycle, if it’s the next eight weeks, the next quarter, because that’s where they feel most connected through ideation. They don’t want to execute in a conference room. They want to ideate together. And I appreciate that.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, and in order to ideate, you need a psychologically safe environment. And you talk about this, you write about this. You are a true thought leader in this space. So tell me a little bit about psychological safety and how it applies to the workforce today.

Jeannine K. Brown:

So psychological safety, I wish it was a concept that I had come up with, like the actual words and the study. But we have to credit Amy Edmondson for that. And the work that she did at Harvard and with Google around what’s important to teams to be more innovative and creative and more profitable, and it’s psychological safety. And psychological safety is the ability to show up on a team and have open, honest discourse to disagree, to question, to admit mistakes without personal threat or jeopardy to yourself or losing your job. It’s an effective means to really get people to really be their full selves at work. To contribute at high levels, to call out bias and unfair treatments within a process that is supportive and to create high-performing teams where all people can thrive and feel a sense of belonging in the workplace.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Amy Edmondson was a guest years ago on Punk Rock HR. And offline, I asked her, and I wish I would’ve had this recorded, “Hey, do you think there are psychologically safe workplaces? Or is it just psychologically safe relationships? Because I think a workplace is too broad. It’s the relationship.” She said, “It is the relationship, but it’s also the workplace.” I’m like, “Eh.” Because you can have a manager where you have a psychologically safe relationship or even a director, but maybe you can’t have it in the broader company. I don’t know, where do you fall on that? It’s a weird and quirky take, but I will die on this hill.

Jeannine K. Brown:

I think it’s both. And the reason is, and how we execute it. We start with the executive leaders when we talk about psychological safety. And we get an opportunity to educate them on how to do it and the why behind it, and focusing on high-performing teams. Because we know that high-performing teams are diverse, inclusive, free from bias and free — I will put in air quotes — and psychologically safe.

So we start with the executives in exploring the conversations of psychological safety because there’s an assumption with them often that they forget what it’s like to be a staff, to be younger in their career or even be middle manager, when they believe that anyone can speak up because they give them permission. But we know that that is not true. And then we move into the middle managers, because that’s where all the real information about your culture lies.

Laurie Ruettimann:

You know Jeannine, I’m a job seeker. I’m like, “Where’s that psychologically safe workplace? Because it’s not where I am.” I wish we had a list of companies that were ranked and rated, because I think people generally don’t know what companies have a psychologically safe culture. Can you name a company? Do you know six?

Jeannine K. Brown:

I cannot name one company, even after we’ve done the training that we’ve done. Because companies don’t slow down often long enough to really practice this and make sure that the entire ecosystem of their organization is doing the same thing. That direct, open and honest means the same thing for everyone throughout the entire 12,000-plus employees. And so I think it’s a concept that we want to continue to talk about. It’s something we want to continue to educate organizations and hiring managers on and focus on the benefits of that.

Because if you do have a psychologically safe space, then you don’t have to worry about these HR issues. They constantly slow down work, and they cost us money in lawsuits when people leave. And then also cost us our brand on platforms like Glassdoor and Twitter when your employees are talking bad about your company and your leadership.

Laurie Ruettimann:

100%. You know I’m a job seeker, and I’m like, “All right, there’s no list of psychologically safe work environments.” What do I ask when I go on an interview? How do I test this and make sure that I’m not jumping from one toxic company to another?

Jeannine K. Brown:

You got to be really direct with the hiring managers, and don’t feel, again, that you’re going to lose something. I would ask them, “What does ideation look like?” So do something soft because people want to talk about, “Oh yeah, we get together and we do all of these things.” And then I would ask, “What does discourse look like in your organization? How do you feel when people are disagreeing? Who manages and mediates a disagreement in a team meeting?” And then I would ask, “Hey, do you allow people to disagree with you? How do you feel about that?”

Laurie Ruettimann:

Oh, I love those questions. Those are good dating questions, too.

Jeannine K. Brown:

What? I almost said, “Amen.”

Laurie Ruettimann:

I love that so much. Well, we want to hear more about your amazing book, “Unstuck and Unstoppable.” So I want to know what inspired you to write it and what readers can expect when they pick it up at Barnes & Noble or Amazon or wherever they get their books at — hopefully a small business. That’s my dream. But what can they expect from your book?

Jeannine K. Brown:

Thank you for bringing up the book. It is my passion project. And what inspired me to write the book was I recognized that a lot of men and women, but particularly women, focus so much on mastering the technical aspects of their profession. So being a great accountant, being a great nurse, bringing all of these different things, but they were missing the wraparound skills that really help you accelerate your career. And I was traveling around speaking at women’s leadership summits and brunches, and I was watching how people were taking notes. I thought they were going to be eating the French toast, and they were just taking vigorous notes of the topics and coming up and saying, “I’ve never heard anyone talk to me. Never say this about me. Never tell me how, and give me an actual process of how to communicate my value in the workplace where I feel comfortable and I don’t feel like I’m bragging.”

And so I wrote the book for that reason. The response has been amazing and overwhelming. And what we wanted to do is make it practical. It’s not a book based on scientific research and hundreds and hundreds of surveys. It’s actual strategies that I use to navigate my career in public accounting and that we use when we’re coaching women and men to get promotions. And again, we focus on retaining people at their companies that they currently work for.

And every person that we’ve seen that applies these processes and ideas, they get promoted within their organizations. They get increased compensation, more responsibility, and they feel more confident and more valued at work. And so it’s a passion project, and it goes back to how I introduce myself. It makes me focus on how much my mother loved her company, her career and the people she served in that work. That’s what I think people get when they finish the book and they apply the techniques.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Gloria sounds like an amazing woman, a wonderful mother, and I’m so glad you’re here today to talk about all this good stuff. Very helpful, very practical. If people want to figure out who you are and how to work with you, can you recommend your best website? And do you accept invites on LinkedIn?

Jeannine K. Brown:

We do accept invites on LinkedIn. We also accept them on Instagram, as well. But you can reach me and my team on our business website at everyday-lead.com.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, amazing. We’ll include all your good stuff in the show notes. And once again, I want to say thanks again for being a guest on Punk Rock HR.

Jeannine K. Brown:

Thank you, Laurie. It’s been a blast.

Laurie Ruettimann:

If you’re interested in learning more about today’s show, you can visit punkrockhr.com. There you’ll find show notes, links, resources and all the good stuff.

Now, that’s all for today. Thanks for joining us, sharing this episode and leaving thoughtful comments on Instagram and LinkedIn. We appreciate your support, this and every week, on Punk Rock HR.