Episode 12 - Dr. Jim Kanichirayil - Understanding People

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil is a student of people, with his Doctor of Education in Ethical Organizational Leadership. Jim has built, managed, and led teams, with most of his experience focusing on understanding why people join and leave companies. He also has a podcast called Cascading Leadership, which you should check out! This is a conversation you should check out, Dr. Jim is not only brilliant he is a fun interview and an educated one at that.  

 

Leighann Lovely  00:19

If your are an HR professional business owner or at the operations level trying to understand what people want. You may be struggling, our systems have been shocked practices have been questioned and culture is the leading conversation. Let's learn how culture is created, sustained, and why it should be the leading conversation when discussing hiring, training and retention. This is the foundation of any business and it's time to address it. So tune in to Let's Talk HR humanizing the conversation. We tackle topics that influencers of change need to understand and struggle to overcome every day, such as where to start, and what the new workforce wants and how to attract and keep positive momentum going. I'm your host Leighann Lovely

 

Leighann Lovely  01:06

Jim Kanichirayil is a full out talent strategy nerd. Jim's been in the staffing and or technology space, where the biggest chunk of his career. Typically he's helping clients solve end to end talent strategy problems either through technology, service or coaching. He spent most of his professional life trying to understand why people join and leave organizations and taking those learnings and helping organizations become more effective in attracting and retaining their people. His passion for talent led him to complete his doctoral research in organizational leadership on the topic of leadership style and leadership training, and its influence on employee retention and turnover is not pure theory, though. He's taken the knowledge and applied it to start up accelerating growth in revenue organizations. He's worked on New Project launches in tech and then built an IT staffing organization from zero clients and zero revenue to an $8 million organic growth business. He's currently at circa the leading end to end talent strategy solution in the marketplace. It makes so excited to have this conversation with Dr. Jim.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:27

Dr. Jim, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. So thank you.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  02:34

Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me on Leighann.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:37

So why don't you start out by telling us a little bit about you in your background? And yeah, go ahead.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  02:45

Sure. Well, first off, I do terrible, Dr. Evil and impression. So the details of my life are quite inconsequential. So that's that's all the impressions that you'll get. But in terms of kind of who I am, and then what I'm about and all that good stuff. I'm currently one of the management leads at circa we are an end to end talent strategy solution, we actually happen to be one of the only ones that take a holistic approach to an organizational talent strategy, leveraging technology to help you build diverse, elite teams. And you know, we can we can talk about that at some point. But like, when you're thinking about, or when I'm thinking about, you know, my career in general, you know, I'm a huge talent nerd. And specifically in in all areas of talent strategy is really my wheelhouse. I've basically built my brand and my career around that topic. And if you look at the last, I don't know, 15 years or so most of my career has been spent in or around the talent space, whether it's acquisition, whether it's development, whether it's building technology, efficiencies for organizations in in talent acquisition, building, recruitment organizations. So there's this deep thread of my career, that's, that's talent focused. And, you know, a lot of people will throw around the term nerd about all sorts of things. But, you know, for the people that know me, I am a bit extra. So I actually completed this was several years back, but I'm so passionate about this stuff that my doctoral research was actually on why people join and leave organizations and more specifically, what role leadership style and leadership training has on employee retention and turnover. So that's the long and short of kind of what I'm about and where I've operated. Hope that helps.

 

Leighann Lovely  04:47

Yeah, absolutely. And you and I have, you know, a couple of things in common. I'm a complete HR geek, I use the term nerd I use geek I, I love this stuff. I I love talking about this stuff, why this is why it's a perfect match to have you come on and talk with me. But you and I crossed paths. What many years ago when I had actually what I believe, applied and interviewed at an organization that you were working at at that time, and, you know, it wasn't the right fit for me, for you, whatever, doesn't matter. And now we find ourselves yet again, kind of in the same space, where you now have a podcast, I have a podcast, and we're kind of talking about the same things, you know, culture, building this, you know, employee retention. So tell me a little bit about your podcast, what led you to that?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  05:44

So, I mean, I think, one of the things and and I'll put it in terms of common problems that sales professionals deal with, so you know, everybody was encountering all sorts of stuff during the pandemic era. And at that time, during the, the period of lockdowns, one of the things that I think everybody observed was, it's becoming more and more difficult to get in front of people in any sort of meaningful way. You know, I noticed, you know, there's only so much calling and emailing that you can do to get people to respond. So you need to be approaching that entire effort differently. And one of the things that that that comes up and I actually built an entire practice that's that's focused on it was, you know, if if you want to take a long term view, into your network, and your relationships, well, you have to apply some long term plays. Fundamentally, from a sales perspective, you have to get people to know like, and trust you before you can advance any sort of selling conversation, right? So when email response rates, call response rates all went down, I started thinking about, well, what are some of the other tools in my arsenal that I can leverage to get in front of people, and I've always written, I've always, you know, shared out, you know, content, and that sort of stuff. And this was just another way for me to, you know, potentially advance it. But I think the big trigger point was, when I had actually left staffing and gone into another organization, this was an organization that was focused on, really, a services play into the market. And in order for people to actually understand the role that you play in this space, and it was a coaching organization, you really have to build rapport, trust and credibility in your audience. And I was making a push that, hey, our entire sales effort is highly transactional. And for this sort of service, you can't sell the service, like you sell tacos, you can't just message random people and say, hey, you know, spend a boatload of money with us, because we're asking you to the world doesn't buy that way, the world doesn't work that way. So we got to do something different. And that's lean into content as part of our demand generation strategy. So my marketing counterpart, and I had actually built out, you know, an 18 month roadmap with a week to week cadence that was broken down into the day in terms of what sales and marketing activities look like, but it didn't get any traction. So I just kind of went rogue and said, okay, all right. So if we're not going to apply company resources to get in front of the people that we need to get in front of and and engage them in meaningful conversation. I'll just go rogue, and Google the hell out of what I need to do well and figure it out. And that's the, the genesis of the podcast, right.

 

Leighann Lovely  08:42

And I think that a lot of people felt those pains of during, during the pandemic of I'm dialing the way that I've always done it, and I'm getting, I'm getting nowhere. So the the people who were had an understanding of what was happening during those times pivoted the proper way. It's the people who were struggling to get it and push that content in a different way that are still struggling to this day, even though now people are starting to pick up the phones again, a little bit. There's still people who are in Wait, I don't have to pick up the phone and I can still run my business. And they're still not picking up the phones. It's but a lot of companies started to pivot and figure out that we need to push our content a different way. And the world has decided that in order to make a decision a buying decision, a everything that you said there's there's has to be a foundation of a relationship. I was talking to somebody the other day and I said hey, when somebody calls you and you don't know the number, do you pick up the phone? No, not anymore. I mean, I I have a cell phone that now that actually tells me scam likely that's what it says on your phone. Are you going to answer this? You know, it's So the only other way to reach a proper audience, and then actually build up exactly what you said, which is that, you know, the rapport, the the ability to show them. Yeah, I know what I'm talking about, I have the knowledge there, I am the expert in my field. So awesome. That's great. You, you were one of the smart ones who pivoted with the times and said, Hey, I'm gonna push the content out. So that's excellent. That's, that's absolutely amazing. So tell me a little bit more about, you know, what, what is the content?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  10:34

So, Yeah. So the, the genesis of the show, or the origin of the show was just pure need. But my co host and I, Lawrence Brown, we've known each other for, you know, 20, some odd years. And we've, we're a couple of Gen Xers. So we're old. And we're not supposed to be like, aware of all of this newfangled technology, or whatever. And, you know, for those listening, I'm probably going to tell you to get off my lawn at some point, too. But the, you know, we've had this conversation for years about, hey, you know, there's so much stuff that we were indoctrinated on throughout our career, you know, work hard, be a high achiever outperform, and you'll naturally get recognized and rise to the top. And that's true to an extent. But that has its limits. So we kind of we kind of benefited a lot of our leadership throughout the years. And, you know, our conversation was our ongoing conversation, the Lawrence and I had was, wouldn't have been, wouldn't it have been great if we had sort of a cliff notes version? That's an old person reference right there. That's these little books that would give you like the cheat sheets of like these big ass novels that you didn't want to read when you were in school. That's what a cliff notes is. That's like old people, Google for those listening. So we, you know, when it it'd been great if we had a cliff notes, career hack, that allowed people like us to move their careers further faster. And that was really the why of cascading leadership. We wanted to talk to women, people of color, immigrants, who have risen to senior leadership, and have them share their stories of how they got to where they were, so that we can actually democratize that knowledge and push that out into the world so other professionals can actually move their careers faster. Instead of like grinding like a schlub for 20 some odd years without getting any recognition for it, and then wondering, well, crap, all these people are getting promoted before me and I'm outperforming them, what's the deal? So that's really the the ethos of the show. So when we look at, you know, we're getting close to launching season two, when we look at what are the areas that we play in, we have a heavy theme of our show, that is sales effectiveness, marketing, effectiveness, HR effectiveness, organizational effectiveness, and then we'll do other nerdy stuff like book reviews and whatnot. But, you know, we've had author spotlights where we've had published authors come on the show, Sue Hynek was one of the more recent ones that we've had. So it's, it's really interesting. And for me, I'm nosy. So I like talking to people and finding out getting all up in their business. That's totally off brand. But, you know, I it's, it's an outlet for me to, you know, really understand people at a personal level, and, and build a stronger overall network versus, you know, 5000 people who barely interact with you.

 

Leighann Lovely  13:43

Right, and most podcasters, I mean, I know me, mine is pretty much 95% curiosity. And I guess the other 5% is, Hey, maybe I can entertain some people and get some clients. While maybe it's more on the client side of, you know, hey, maybe somebody can see me as the expert and say, Hey, how can she help me in the area of my business as well? But, I mean, most of my most of the time, I'm, I'm a true geek, I truly have the curiosity. I truly am interested in the people that I talk with. I mean, how could you How could you sit, you know, do this all the time? If you're not if you don't truly have that curiosity? Right.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  14:27

Yeah, I mean, the the intellectual curiosity bit is important, and I don't think you should necessarily shy away from the whole client acquisition aspect of it, because think about it. It depends on how you're leveraging it. And this was one of the big problems that I had with staffing because staffing as an industry talks about how their relationship business but they actually treat people both internally and externally as disposable. Like if you're not hitting some metric, or if you're not converting clients fast enough, you're out out the door. And when you think about it from a personal professional brand perspective, your network is your client base for life. So if you're taking a long view, they might not be a customer now, but they might be a customer or referral source at some point down the road. So what are you doing today? To invest in that relationship? And that's something that very few staffing organizations, you know, really pay attention to. It's all about, you know, Hey, your results, aren't there, email and call harder. All right. That's effective. Right?

 

Leighann Lovely  15:34

You're right. And there are in historically, staffing companies are transactional based businesses. Yeah, there are a few companies out there that are the diamonds in the rough, me being a very relationship based person. And here's another statistic that's that's, there are feet, how many staffing agencies out there have a podcast?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  15:59

I don't think there's any that I'm, that officially have a podcast, I have people like you or me that might be running around rogue, but then we're always probably dealing with the question of well, how is that impacting the business?

 

Leighann Lovely  16:10

Right, and my entire philosophy, and the reason that I have left companies and turned down positions, is because I am not a transactional based seller. I have I build relationships, I create relationships. And I have now come in, you know, to people that I have known 15 years ago and said, Oh, it's great to see you again, because of the fact that I build those relationships. It's extremely important. And I want to talk to you a little bit more about your current role and how that how your philosophy on that relationship building. And if that philosophy and your relationship building ties into where you're currently at?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  16:55

Well, I mean, the the relationship focus in terms of how I approach the marketplace has always been consistent across, you know, all sorts of different roles in my career. It was the case even when I was early in my career and worked at Enterprise across two divisions, it was even though it was a highly transactional b2c business, I focused on the experience and building that customer for life. And that's, that's, that's a different mentality. You can approach the world as if you're engaging with it with the intent of building a customer for life in multiple different capacities, or you can look at it as hey, I'm, I'm approaching the world, and I'm engaging the world from the perspective of this as a customer. And they're not really any different from any other customer, at any other point that I might be in my career. So this isn't new, the relationship focus isn't new for me. I think when you're looking at having that relationship mindset, the current state of how that should be applied, you should have a pretty strong visibility or pulse, or cents into how are customers buying today. And that's critical. The reason why it's critical is we've all been there. People aren't responding to emails, people aren't responding to phone calls. So the solution can't be, let's do those things harder. Like I've said, I've said it before. And now the question is, well, why are those mechanisms Not, not not yielding the results? Well, it could be one of two things it could be both of them are related to whoever sending one, your messaging could be complete crap. And you could be just throwing out a bunch of stuff that nobody cares about, that's either focused on you or your company, that doesn't work. Or you don't have the right orientation and have a sense in how people are buying. So your customers. The experience that a customer has, its income, incredibly noisy. Steve watt is the Director of Marketing at seismic and he talks about it and he actually lays it out really effectively when he's talking about the buyers world. They have 800 people that are reaching out to him on a day to day basis, telling them about how their solution is the best thing since sliced bread. Nobody cares. This is why your your three paragraph emails that you send on regular email or LinkedIn never get responses. Because they don't know you, they don't like you. They don't trust you. There's no relationship there. And then you're acting as if you're like God's gift to whatever agenda that your customer is trying to pursue. So you have that

 

Leighann Lovely  19:38

Delete. It's an immediate, here's the three paragraphs Delete.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  19:42

Yep. So you know when you look at that relationship, focus your relationship focus should be particularly zoned in on. You know, you should have a good understanding of the problems that you solve, but your messaging and your outreach should be really focused on understanding where your customer is at in a given point in time. And you can approach it a couple of different ways. If you're just spraying and praying and you know, Steve calls it pitch slapping everybody. Well, your hope is that you get the 3% of the marketplace that might be in a position to buy right now. And, you know, I know the kids say it this way, that's dumb AF, because you're spending all of your effort to capture 3% of the marketplace and have a transactional thing that serves your purpose, which is driving your commission check. Does it make more sense to to find the 3%? Or does it make more sense for you to outreach in a way where you're interested in capturing 100% of the market that might be a customer for you at some point in the future? What makes more sense? So, you know, that that is the critical question that people have to answer. And sellers have to answer when they're going out in the world. Who do you want to be as a seller? Do you want to be that greasy person that, you know, is just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks? Or do you are you really committed to establishing relationships in an authentic way?

 

Leighann Lovely  21:22

Yeah, and you know, it's interesting that you say that, because the things that are coming to my mind that the moment that I became wildly successful at being able to, and I hate the word sell to my customers to be able to close business down, I mean, and it and that's what I mean, it is and be able to all of a sudden, be successful, make those, you know, commission checks come in, it was when I stopped being selfish, stopped, going in going, I'm gonna get this person to buy for me, it was when I started going in and just saying, Hey, today, I'm not going to sell today, I'm going to learn something about this person. And I'm going to walk out fully understanding everything I can about this person and their company. After I started taking that mentality, it was all of a sudden, instead of trying to sell to them, I just became the expert on them. And if I couldn't get them to buy from me today, they became somebody I knew. And all of a sudden, they were sending me referrals, they liked me, they just simply like to I was they enjoyed the time that they spent with me. And I found that they were telling me everything about themselves and everything about their business. And we I've now made friends, I have people who originally were prospects that have become friends that have become clients that have become referral sources. And this is a book of business, or a book that I have built up over years and years, that people that I've known now for 15 years that come back to me and say, Oh, Leanna, I've got a great referral for you. Now, that was, like I said, this is 15 years in the running where, you know, since I've been in the business, and and when I explained, you explain this so much better. The way that I explained it to people was when I finally lost my, when I finally got rid of my pride, of coming back to the office thing, I got one I sold one. Instead of walking in thinking I'm going to do that I started walking in saying, Hey, I had a really great conversation with a company today. And somewhere down the line, I'm probably going to work with that person.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  23:31

And that's, you know, I think that I think the caveat, or at least the addendum that I would I would throw into that. Having a focus on what relationships did you build today, that's critical. But I think when you when you look at, you know, the mindset that you need to be in, to orient yourself the right way the focus shouldn't be in, in, listen. But let's be real here, I'm not going to I'm not going to like kneecap anybody there and say, Hey, we should be ashamed of selling. Let's let's let's take a look at the world. The entire business world is either in sales, or in service to sales. So at some point business is being done, because if it wasn't, the lights wouldn't be on. So I don't I don't shy away from the selling aspect of it. And I want to say that out loud. But people buy from people who they know like and trust. So the mindset and Stephen Covey talks about this, it's really applicable to sellers is your number one responsibility is to understand before trying to be understood, seek to understand before trying to be understood. And that's how you should be thinking from an orientation perspective in terms of how you go out in the world to really build those authentic relationships. And that's critical because it's going to have downstream impact that mindset is going to Have downstream impact on everything that you do from your talk tracks, to your emails, to how you engage on socials, all of that sort of stuff. And it's with the intent of capturing 100% of the marketplace into your network versus cat, like throwing stuff against the wall and hoping you fall into the 3% that might be interested at this given point in time. So when you're looking at a what is my mindset need to be? It's it's seeking to serve seeking to solve seeking to understand. And I would say this is aspirational. But you should care more about the initiative that your buyer is trying to drive than your own commission check. So the closer that you are to being that person that can give them a recommendation, understand their situation, and then give them the recommendation to somebody else that might actually solve it better than you. That's really the space that you want to occupy because that's what's necessary for you to earn that business for life, versus being like everybody else who's coming in and talking about their solution as the absolute best thing in the marketplace. Because Newsflash, nobody's the absolute best in the solution for everything. So stop trying to be a Swiss army knife, which does like a crappy job of like, 20 different things, and just be excellent at the one thing that you saw that

 

Leighann Lovely  26:19

Yeah, that's a great analogy. That and Swiss Army knives kind of suck. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Great analogy. So I, the statement that rings in my head constantly is that I have worked at companies and my husband will tell you all the time, he goes, God, I hate salespeople. And like, you know, honey, you're married to a salesperson, right? And he's like, Yeah, well, I don't hate you. And I'm like, Well, God, I love to hot, we're married. Sale sales, the sales life had this cycle that, at least for me, it has drastically changed it, it is no longer the and I and I use this term lovingly to all of you car salesmen out there. But it is no longer the car salesman sales. And if you're still doing it that way, you're not going to last long in the sales world. It is truly the relationship in order to be successful long term in any role, set it up numerous times. Now, it is a relationship based selling. But what I would love to learn a little bit more about you is that you you're an advocate for training, retention, you know, all of that you went to school for understanding, you know, that at organizations, and I would love to have you talk a little bit about that. Are you open to, you know, telling me a little bit more about the coaching aspects of in what what you've done with that?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  27:49

I mean, that's,  a long runway. Yeah, I mean, I think I think in general terms, I think in general terms, when you're when you're looking at being effective from a talent, strategy, perspective, and, and really being tight across it, you know, you have all of these different elements in the talent strategy, roadmap or continue, you have talent, traction, you have onboarding, you have development, you have upskilling, rescaling and you have retention, and then you know, on the back end of it, you might have an exiting process. So when you look at that entire roadmap, if if you're looking at what are the biggest things that impact your bottom line, it's, it's not just your ability to attract talent, but it's your ability to retain it. And there's a lot of different factors that influence talent retention. I mean, obviously, one of the biggest factors is, you know, who is the leader of the group that you're hired into? Because when you look at the biggest reasons why people leave organizations, high on that list is, you know, manager alignment. They play the biggest role. But there's other elements that play into a stay or leave decision as well, you know, you have the diversity component of the organization itself. If I'm in an organization, and I don't see people like me, not at not just at the peer level, but at all levels of the organization, that's going to impact my stickiness to the organization. So that's one aspect. But diversity is different from inclusion and equity. So the in belonging, not only do you have to have, you know, a representative population in your organization, but you have to make sure that you're being intentional in making all of those groups feel like they belong. And again, that ties to does my organization look, the way that I look at all levels of the organization. So I'm a brown guy, so you know, if I don't see if I only see brown, brown people at the individual contributor level and then I look Get my career progression and see that, you know, the rest of the organization is pretty monochromatic. Well, I'm going to, at some point come to the realization that there is no path here for me, I might not ask. And it's actually when you're talking about underrepresented groups, they're actually the most likely to not ask and not advocate, that was one of the reasons why we actually launched cascading leadership was to, you know, kind of short circuit that tendency and and have people take more agency in their life. So when you're looking at a talent strategy, in general talent retention, in particular, it's not enough for you to constantly operate on the attraction spectrum, you have to have solutions that, you know, once somebody is in your doors, you have to have coaching and training at the manager level, you have to have upskilling and rescaling as as a component of your talent strategy solution. And you certainly need to make sure that you're being intentional in terms of creating an environment where people feel like they belong, because you can have a diverse workforce, but have an organizational culture that is toxic to diversity, either overtly or covertly. And you're going to stay in that in that talent attraction hamster wheel is what I talked about

 

Leighann Lovely  31:23

What you just said that is, and I have spoken with, you know, I've spoken with other guests this season, as I've been, you know, recording season two, and it is really you made a such a valid point. Because I've spoken with, you know, diversity, inclusion and actual trainers who own she owns her own business. And that's which, that's all she does. She does. She does coaching and training. And she's a speaker about, you know, diversity, inclusion and equity. I have spoken with a couple of people this season and something that I guess I they may have said it and it kind of went over my head sometimes during a conversation, there's so much that is said but something that I did not pick up on was that yes, you can have diversity at a company. But if you're not, at all levels, representing that diversity, that the different, you know, individuals within that organization, then yeah, you're you're, you're gonna really damage against your, your organization, because you're right, if somebody is, you know, somebody who's black, but all of them are on the production floor, what, how do they see their path into management? How do they see their path into leadership? I've never considered that. And that is such a valid point. So if you were talking with an organization at that is in that situation? What is the solution? I mean, in my head, I can think of a valid solution. But how is that a coachable moment for you?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  33:04

Well, I mean, I don't think there's a single solution. But I think I think part of this starts at a at a very fundamental level, like when, you know, and I'll draw an example out. So I recently, I post constantly on LinkedIn, and one of my colleagues had an email exchange with a potential customer where, you know, he's trying to bring them into our sales ecosystem. And he sent an email on diversity and hiring. And the customer responded, and said, you know, whatever happened to hiring based on character skill, and you know, a couple of other things, likability or whatever, instead of hiring based on race, and that hints that that points at a fundamental lack of understanding that might exist in the broader world about what diversity actually means. So that person, you know, distilled or defined diversity down to a single category, and that's race. And a lot of people will define diversity down to a couple of categories might be race and gender. But that's not actually what having a diverse workforce means that diversity means exactly that you have representation across any number of groups. So it's not just race. It's not just gender. It's you know, sexual orientation comes into it. Neuro diversity comes into it. Age comes into it, veteran status comes into it. There are so many different factors that create a diverse workforce. And the ultimate intent in terms of how this impacts your ability to retain your talent is that the more representative your organization is of the broader population, and the more people feel like hey, there's somebody of me and people can occupy multiple categories. So this is a check the box sort of exercise the more your organization and represents what the actual world looks like, the better you're going to be when it comes to being able to keep your people once you've gotten it. So it's not just a simple function of coaching. And I'm not a DIY expert. So there's that too. I think one of the things that, that Maya Winston who is an actual di, coach, and she's the head of the onine solutions, which is a pre IPO stage startup, and she's embedded di, in a tech company from the startup stage. What she says is that, you know, the biggest piece of advice that I can give organizations is that don't be performative about your di efforts, it's not enough to throw up a rainbow flag or throw up, you know, whatever the DI initiative is of the month and put a PR statement about, you know, this is what we're doing for for Dei, you have to work at embedding that across the organization, not only in terms of what your organization looks like, but also how your organization behaves. So that means how are you engaging your entire workforce? How are you creating the the culture necessary to have meaningful conversations about you know, one thing or another, there's a recent story that came out where I think I can't off the top of my head come up with the exact company, but I think is a is a it's a well known tech company. And one of their employees asked the question of, you know, do we get Juneteenth off? And the leader, or one of the their internal employees said, Well, you get Martin Luther King day off. So no, you don't get Juneteenth off, you get MLK day off. So and when I talk about, hey, you can you can be performative about your DNI efforts. That is an example of an organization that outwardly says we care about this stuff, but internally has a culture that is toxic to a diverse workforce. So it's not like a single piece of coaching, we're talking about a structural change in terms of how we're defining some of these things, because a lot of us have backwards definitions of things based on our understanding at a point in time. And I think the key thing that I will point out is, you know, the worst thing that you can do if you're on the other end of that conversation, I mean, you know, my colleague that that got that email about what happened to you hiring based on skill, you could have easily flipped out and said, you know, you're so ignorant and uninformed about stuff. And that's fine. But I think that's an opportunity to educate like my philosophy, from a diversity perspective, especially when it comes to talent strategy, we should be bringing as many people together to have these conversations versus automatically defaulting into the position of your right, I'm wrong, because what does that do? It's actually in conflict with one of the fundamental things that I talked about, when when we're engaging as salespeople our responsibility is to seek to understand, so if somebody says something, or somebody has an opinion on something, you're responsible, unless it's like completely and obviously, like off the wall, crazy, you should be engaging to understand, hey, tell me a little bit more about where you're coming from from that, because you guys, I'm curious. And that should be the basis of of your interaction.

 

Leighann Lovely  38:33

But who is the judge on crazy? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  38:40

To answer your question, if if the comment comes after hold my beer and watch this, it's probably a crazy idea. So I think if you can use that, that that as a litmus test, that's, you're probably on safe ground.

 

Leighann Lovely  38:53

Yeah, yes, yes, absolutely. Probably 30 years from now, the kids that are coming up, are going to be way more sensitive to all of the things that you and I are having conversations about now. Which is it's an absolute beautiful thing. But you and I have lived for so long in a generation of individuals who, who do struggle and time when my grandmother was sued for referring to people of color in and actually using that term when referring to a black person. And she was sued for for that. But that is how she grew up. That was the terminology that they used. So in and again, 30 years from now, they're going to be using different pronouns in reference to individuals, they're choosing their own pronouns. Now they're choosing. So as time goes by, you know, things are evolving, and we're changing. But yes, as far as the sensitivity on an understanding of all of this stuff these conversations need to have so that We can continue to educate the people that are currently in the workforce that are currently growing up and coming into the workforce. And we can only hope that things will continue to evolve, and that people will open their minds to, to what is happening and the and, and the push to have more inclusion and diversity and understand what that means. Because no would have asked me 10 years ago, what that means I would have said, well, that means that you hire people of different races, I didn't know what, for instance, I didn't know what neurodiverse individuals were, I didn't know that that was even a thing. I mean, now we're coming out with odd people who are autistic, they are now considered to be neurodiverse. And that there's a huge spectrum. And, you know, so this is all an education piece, and an absolutely, but definitely conversations that need to happen. And I continue to educate myself, it's just a matter of these individuals being open and willing to learn. And unfortunately, there are people who are like, I don't want to learn.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  41:07

I mean, I you know, I'll the one thing that I'll say to all that is I don't think it's it's a 30 year runway, I think this is going to actually be impacted pretty significantly in the short run. And in the short run. The reason why is because you have millennials and Generation Z, who are building and advocating for these changes out in the open. And that ties into some of the buyer Centricity stuff that I talked about from a sales perspective, is that those sellers, who are not only leveraging content, collaboration, to build stronger relationships, but are actually talking about their journey. And this could be as anybody, as a professional, I encourage anybody, whether you're an accountant, or whatever, if you're on some platform, social platform, you if you want to build a career that has lasting impact, you should be building that out in the open, and being transparent and vulnerable to an extent because that's actually what's going to drive your brand out faster. So you see a lot of people doing that across multiple functions. So this is where I, I challenge the idea that in 30 years from now, the world is going to look like this, actually, I think it's probably going to be like 234 years from now the world is going to look a different way.

 

Leighann Lovely  42:28

And I agree that the world is definitely going to look different in two to three years. And the reason that I said in 20 to 30 years is because in 20 to 30 years, you and I are going to be retired, much of the this our generation is going to be retired. And we're going to have the generation that is coming up and learning all of this and out and speaking and telling their story. They are going to be running these companies. And it's going to be second nature, it's not going to be let's talk about this let's let's do training. It's going to be second nature on that. I you know the same thing with emotional intelligence, we have emotional intelligence training. Well, by the time my child, my four year old is in the workforce, there's not going to be training on emotional intelligence, it's going to be something that was in ingrained in her from the time that she was little, because I'm learning about that. My you know, and I'm teaching her different things about that. So anyways, we are coming to time. I have the question of the season, and I would love to hear your response to that. If you could go back to your younger self and give yourself advice, when would you go back? And what advice would you give yourself?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  43:42

Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Okay, so this is gonna be contextual. So when I was graduating high school, I was accepted to both Brown and Stanford. And, you know, I'm a generation zero immigrants. So like, not born here. And from another country, so we didn't really have a big network in terms of how you're supposed to, like navigate this stuff. So I got a partial scholarship to both of those. But even at that time, you're talking about a tuition bill on a yearly basis that's like beyond anything that I could wrap my head around at the time. And I asked my high school counselor like, hey, how do you navigate this? And his first question was, how you're going to pay for it? Which is absolutely the wrong friggin question to ask somebody that doesn't know anything, because it's already my question. So your job as a counselor is to like open up a view into what's possible versus the limitation that that's that you're currently dealing with. So my advice would have been go to Stanford. And the reason why is that it's that same era at Stanford, where you had people like Sergey Brin, and all of the big tech companies that exist now they're in startup mode at that At times, so I would have been in that same ecosystem. And who knows what that would have created in terms of just the network alone would have been fantastic. But it was the network at the point in time where you had all of these companies that were starting their acceleration mode. So that would be one thing. The other thing that I probably would we might do is, you know, early on, I would have probably advised myself to focus on building your brand and building multiple revenue streams in terms of your professional life, and see what you can do to monetize that early, so that you're never relying on like a single job, you to drive your main balance sheet. So those are two different areas that that that I might consider, I don't know exactly which one I would I would stack higher. But that's, that's what came to mind.

 

Leighann Lovely  45:59

Awesome. So you went to you went to Brown.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  46:02

No I didn't go to either I went to East, I went to Eastern Illinois and full followed my girlfriend at the time. Because my reasoning at the point was, I can easily afford directional Illinois School. And the plan was to go to law school after that. So I knew I was going to spend a ton of money in law school. And that ended up going a different direction, because life happened, and my parents bought a business and I ran that. And then by the time they sold it, I was like, Well, I gotta catch up to all my peers. So let me you know, do like a real job versus this, this side business that they they bought, and I ended up running. So you know, you you look at in the point in time, you look at the biggest opportunity possible. And you go after that, versus the practical option. Like I've, I spent my 20s and late teens taking the practical option with the intent of pursuing the next thing. So the lesson is, the next thing might not ever happen, and you don't know what's going to happen in the next year in your life. So go for the biggest shot. And here's the practical application for people that might be listening and are navigating, like career searches and all that sort of stuff. You'll always have employers that come back and say, Hey, I know you want this director role or VP role. But right now, we want you to slot in at this lower level role, and work your way up to it. My advice in that practical scenario, is tell that employer to go eff off. Because if you believe that you have built a track record to get that top spot, you could literally drop dead tomorrow. And the company will replace you. So go for the moonshot versus the practical, earn your way up. And you'll be better served, don't slow your career down because somebody else is telling you this is where you slot in. There's plenty of companies that are looking for great talent. And there's plenty of companies that will hire you at the appropriate position. The whole earn your way there is a sucker's bet, so don't do that. Yeah.

 

Leighann Lovely  48:17

Well, Jim, this has been an amazing conversation. If somebody wanted to reach out to you to connect, how would they go about doing that? And then where can they find your podcast?

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  48:28

So you can find me on LinkedIn, that's my most active channel. You so I'm all over the place. I post daily on that. You can also follow me on Tiktok. Under the cascading leadership handle, were casted cascading leadership, which is the podcast we have a LinkedIn page there too. So you can find us that way. podcast is available on all major podcast channels. We also have a YouTube channel under the cascading leadership tagline. If you're big into communities, I'm in a bunch of different communities. So sales cast is a community I belong to. So is the sales enablement collective. Those are slack driven so you can find me there so I'm not difficult to find.

 

Leighann Lovely  49:15

Excellent. Well, again, thank you so much for your time today and you have an awesome rest of your day.

 

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil  49:20

Thanks, Leighann It was great being on the show. Looking forward to chatting some more.

 

Leighann Lovely  49:25

Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support. Without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode, to follow us, like us or share us. Have a wonderful day.

 

E-mail – jim@cascadingleadership.com

 

Linkedin- linkedin.com/in/drjimk

 

Podcast - cascadingleadership.buzzsprout.com

 

Company Website - circaworks.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, building, organization, talking, talent, diversity, business, biggest, relationship, terms, career, conversation, point, customer, company, world, leadership, question, solution, cascading

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