The Resilience Equation: Adaptable People & Culture for Favorable Outcomes

Welcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Lindsay Raduca to the Build by People podcast. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining. And as a first question, I always love to ask if you could tell us a little bit more about your career journey.

Well, hi, Dave. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be on your podcast. I've listened to a few, and I certainly am privileged to be in quite an esteemed community of HR executives in the space. So a bit about my journey, which is often what I refer to it as, because I've been through a bunch of twists and turns and transitions and challenging environments over the past 20 years. As I've been working in the HR field as both a practitioner and in executive leadership roles. And so when I really reflect on my journey, the first half or the first decade or so has really been working in organizations that are in the manufacturing industry. Most notably, I worked for a company called TTI Floor Care, which is a consumer durables company. That develops and markets a portfolio of vacuum cleaner brands that you've probably have heard of and used, like Hoover, Dirt Devil, and Oreck. And in this first half of my career, I really just got my chops in HR. So I learned all the aspects of the function, and I truly fell in love with being an HR business partner and the talent management or design and, and development disciplines within the function. I've had the privilege of being able to touch every part of HR. But when I think about, you know, what brings me joy and passion, it's truly in those areas of the function. And so then the second half of my career, I've made a pivot, and it was both a personal and a professional pivot where I got the opportunity to relocate and I worked and have been working in service-based businesses. And so, and most recently I've been at Ideal Image, which is a national med spa brand in the aesthetic space. And, you know, in the second half of my career, I've truly had to adapt my approach and my thinking as an HR leader, going from companies that sell a product, a product that's often made by a machine. And yes, all the people do the things to design and develop and press the buttons and distribute the product to businesses that sell a service. And it's a service that is provided by a human. Yes, they're often enabled by some sort of technology or a platform or a tool and even a machine. But it's really allowed me to, to rethink the way that, that I approach the, the role that I've taken and how I serve the organizations. It's also helped me create this strength of resilience. And I'm certainly not an expert in it, although I had a mentor chat me today and said, this is a perfect topic for you to be talking about. But I'm really passionate about it. You know, just given the current environment and what we've been experiencing as humans in the workforce, the ability to have the resilience and the strength in that is really key to success.

Lindsay, I'd love to ask you to define organizational and personal resilience and why it's critical for navigating periods of stress or uncertainty.

That's a great question. And you can Google organizational resilience and there's a whole bunch of frameworks and principles and things like that around it. But the way that I define it is The ability for an organization's people, culture, and systems to effectively adapt to change and get the hard things done in order to support a favorable outcome. Because oftentimes the only way through is through, and companies really have to adapt that by rolling up their sleeves, tackling the issues, coming to the table with solutions, rather than, as we often called it in, in a recent organization, admiring the problem. Because when you admire the problem, you get stuck and then your competitors are there right at your doors and taking your market share from you. So, you know, the only way through is through. I really tackling the hard things.

What specific strategies or practices have you implemented to foster resilience within teams and across the organization?

Thank you for giving me the chance to reflect on that, because it's really been around 4 actions that an organization and the, the HR leadership can take. And the first one is around setting the vision, really defining what you are working towards and why you're doing that. People need to understand the purpose and, and what they're showing up for every single day. So setting that vision, getting people inspired and rallied around it. The second action is to approach the, the work that you do with a growth mindset. There is a whole bunch of research on growth mindset, and I've been a huge fan of, of the work over the years. And it boils down to focusing on the journey and the learning that you're going to have along the way and not being stuck to what the destination is, right? There's a vision. You may get to a destination. How you get there may not be exactly the way you envision, but really the true resilience comes in being open to learning along the way. The third action that organizations can take is practicing intentional or conscious leadership, because wisdom really brings perspective. And companies that put in place mentoring programs or providing access to leaders that have the experience developing leaders, really helping them be more effective performance coaches, is very critical for, for the day-to-day kind of when you're like in it, right, is being able to have that resource that says, yep, keep going, we're almost there. This is what it's going to feel like. And, and you're going to, you know, be delighted when you get to the other side. And the fourth action that you can take is around communicating with clarity and transparency. And really, that runs through, you know, all four of these items. And what I found critical that leaders have done well is that they acknowledge the now. They acknowledge the now. Yes, this is a difficult period, whatever it may be, right? It could be growth, it could be you know, a product issue. It could be market conditions. But like, hey, this is the now. This is what we're going to be going through. This is what it's going to feel like. And here's the steps that we're going to take to move forward. And then giving the leadership team the, the tool to equip them with cascading that message throughout the teams and, and across roles. Right. Because people need to understand, like, how do I fit into this? How could I be a part of of driving the change during this period of time and have some sort of control over my controllables.

There's certainly times when an organization faces heightened pressure, uncertainty, intensity. How are you supporting leaders and managers from a tactical perspective in building resilience during those heightened pressure environments?

Dave, it's good old-fashioned conversations. It truly is. And I've had a colleague refer to it as creating the space and the grace for people to safely share and be vulnerable. And so as much time as it takes, I often prioritize and allocate towards being able to reach out and check in informally with, with my leaders and asking them, how are you doing, right? What's on your mind? What's on your team's mind? Where are you guys getting stuck? And I think most importantly is, how can I help? And when you listen to them, they're often getting stuck on things they can't control. And so I use a really simple method to kind of shift the mindset. And I ask the leader or the person I'm talking to that is stuck to draw a circle, right? They can't put it in their head. They have to like put it on paper, put it on a whiteboard, but draw a circle. And then I ask them to think about whether what their concerns may be are falling within their circle of control. And 9 times out of 10, it's not controllable, but they're thinking about things and they're getting spun up. And it really brings again that perspective that Yes, this is going to be happening around you, but what you can do is focus on you and what you can control. And I encourage them to have the same exact conversations with, with their team members.

Can you share any other examples of a challenging period that you've gone through as an HR professional and the steps you took to come out stronger?

Yeah. So I've stepped into organizations that, that unfortunately have been faced with some sort of challenge with financial performance, market conditions, whatever it may be, that have required a series of restructuring events, right? And these events impact the livelihoods of people, can impact the work that they do. And sometimes those periods of time have really been in a constant state of transition. And so back to those actions, What I've seen done really well during those times is overcommunicating through various touchpoints, right? Talking about what are we going through, why is this happening, what's our vision, right? And humanizing the impact on the people in a way that gets folks to understand that you care and you're compassionate. It's also really helpful to remind people and organizations about their strengths, past wins, future opportunities, right? Really looking to some of those positive aspects of what can be coming through. So I've helped design a number of communication campaigns that have been very intentional in rolling out that type of information. It's really easy to get focused on the hard thing, And again, you know, getting people's mindset around kind of what is that future opportunity, how do you play a role in that, how can you drive it, it is really helpful. And during some of these times, there's been little voluntary attrition of key roles. So, you know, to me, that's a success factor of, hey, you know, we're doing things right. We're keeping people focused on the future and helping them be as comfortable as they can during this period of transition.

Certainly, you know, communication is important in all of this, and it kind of aligns with this need to be transparent.

Yeah.

Curious if you could shed some light on the importance of transparency and building resiliency across a workforce.

So I've had a mentor say to me once, Would you rather have the misery of uncertainty or certainty in misery? Somewhat of an extreme example, right? I mean, there's times of change that are, you know, really positive, lots of growth. But, you know, that to me really drives home the message of being as transparent as you can. I've had some leaders, we've been sitting around the table and they're really afraid to give people as much information because they don't want them to leave. It's like, well, but if you don't give them the information, they're going to create a narrative that could actually be worse than what's going on. So let's give them the choice to make the decision as to whether or not they want to stay and help us through this challenging time to get to the other side, or we're making up and leave and go on our own. And to me, it— I always will push towards being as transparent as possible with organizations about what's happening and most importantly, how can they help.

Lindsay, any parting advice you'd like to share with our audience?

Oh gosh, I've had such incredible mentors over my career and I look forward to the new ones that I haven't even met yet. So I think to me, I'm at this place where I just want to give back to the community. And I have a ton of advice, but given what I've been through in my career, it really is be open, be open to whatever sort of situation, initiative you're faced with and take it and run with it. Learn along the way. Get people around you to provide the support and the coaching and advice that you need. But it's just frankly, just be open to what you're faced with and learn from it.

Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure having you on.

Thank you so much, Dave. It was a pleasure joining you too.