Continuously Improve Yourself with Carole Layzell [Salesforce]

+ Notes

Carole Layzell, Senior Director of Customer Transformation at Salesforce, shares three inspiring stories of how she’s empowered teams to win in 30 years of leading in the Financial Sector. She has proved the power of “treating everyone the way you want to be treated.” of “impressing down;” empowering teams, building trust, rewarding and recognising even the smallest wins.

She shares how she’s used technology and data to transform a struggling team into the top performing team in the UK - by being vulnerable, authentic and open to honest feedback to power her own continuous improvement.

+ Transcript

KATZ : Welcome to Humans Leading Humans towards a Future of Work that works for people; a smorgasbord of of snackable stories to help you be a more effective leader.

In today's episode, I am delighted to join the fabulous Carole Layzelle : a Senior Director of Customer Experience at Salesforce, but more importantly, in some ways an extraordinary woman so I really can't wait to hear which stories she chooses to share. But first let me explain why you should dedicate 20 minutes of your precious time to listen to this podcast every week.

Do you happen to work inside a large complex organisation , whether that be private or public. Do you sometimes feel that you are skiing uphill through honey. That it's impossible to change the behemoth you're working within it's just too hard. If that feels familiar then this podcast is my gift to you.

Humans Leading Humans will if I get it right. become your snackable audio fuel kit, packed with the stories, the tools and the inspiration we all need to shine as imaginal leaders.

What do I mean? Well, for the last 20 years of helping leaders take large complex organisations along the rocky road to transformation. I figured out something really strange. It turns out that leaders at all levels in every different sort of organisation , face the very same challenges … and they can overcome the hurdles in the same ways. The reason that brilliant leaders and their companies thrive in the information age is really very simple. They create work environments in which humans thrive. It really is just common sense but we all know that most companies and the leaders inside them hold on to the traditional ways. The command and control the hierarchy. Even though everybody knows really, when we step back and look at those ways of working, but they don't work, or at very best they are way, way, way past their sell by date.

I'm guessing that you like every leader that we work with have invested a shedload of time and money into traditional training, the strategy consultancies, the technology, we all know where we should be heading, and what we should be doing. But, converting knowledge and ambition into action and behaviour change is really, really hard. I explain more about why it's hard in episode one, but it is doable. Trust me. People have done it. And I've met some of those incredible leaders on my journey. I've been blessed to work with them, to be inspired by their braveness. I've learned from them. I know what works and what does not. So it would be really,really, really mean if I just kept all those incredible people and stories to myself that would be really really selfish. So I've decided to do the right thing, and share. Like all good humans should.

I've consolidated my learnings from years of knowledge and experience and yes sometimes pain into one simple memorable framework for success, I call it the CREATE framework. And every week. I'm inviting one of my guiding lights to share three, just three, warts and all, short stories of how leading like a human actually works - through the lens of that framework.

Why because we do not learn from stats we learn from stories. We are built to react to the hero's journey. We can share stories in a way that we just don't share stats. So these podcasts will be a growing compendium of the real lived experience of your peers about how they managed to make change stick.

From next week, this section of the podcast will include three of the stories that most resonate with me from my clubhouse room. Humans leading humans, so please do come join us. If you think your story could help other leaders to become more Imaginal. Oh and if you want to know what imaginal leadership means, do head to www.wear beep.com

It’s a really really lovely story, and I'm absolutely convinced that you will want to share it. But enough of that. I am so excited to be able to introduce Carol Lazelle, who is one of my guiding lights.

I met Carol, and this happens with lots of the people that I'm gonna end up interviewing in this series of podcasts, some people I meet them, and I feel like I've known them forever, though they're part of my tribe. It took me about two seconds to realise that Carol was definitely part of my tribe, and he's felt the same ever since. So Carol tell us you know where is your particular brand of leadership awesome come from what's been your experience so far.

CAROLE: Yeah thanks Katz so I've been in retail banking for the last 30 years. And throughout that time I've done large scale leadership so I've worked in the branches, and I've done many areas, predominantly Southeast and in London, and then transitioned into go on and run things like the complaints teams in some of those banks, and I've also done digital skills as well so a big passion of mine is around how you take technology and how you empower colleagues to then empower your customers.

For me, a big part my leadership style I guess and what I've learned over the years is treating people, how you wish to be treated. And that might sound a bit cliche but I've always been a big believer, I don't do hierarchy, and I don't care if you're the most senior person in the company or you're the most junior person in the company, I will treat you exactly the same, and then one would argue the most junior person is the most important, because they're more likely to be the people that are talking to your customers. So for me it's always been about making sure that I impressed down. I am there to serve my team. I’m not there to serve the senior people within the organisation because I've always felt if I serve my team I'm there to impress them. And to make it a great place to work. Naturally they do a good job which does reflect on me. That’s been the the secret to my success over my years of being a leader,

KATZ: Completely it's common sense, as we were saying a few minutes ago when we were chatting, it's just like for goodness sakes. If you look after your team and you make sure that your team are absolutely empowered, and you focus on that, then you get to impress your leader anyway, And you've got some really exciting changes coming up for you. Do you want to have a quick.

CAROLE: Yeah so, I just finished a couple of years working at Nationwide Building Society which was incredible, but I'm just off now to join Salesforce as a customer transformation Senior Director for banking. So Salesforce have created a team of experts. I think between the team that were over 300 years of experience in our chosen fields and we will be there to help Salesforce and to help our customers with their transformation. Because you know tech is an enabler, but having the human element and thinking about actually how is it going to land with your colleagues and customers that you know - that is a really challenging thing to do because culture is everything. So Salesforce have created this team, I’m delighted to say I'll be joining them. Go and talk to some of our amazing customers and help them with their digital transformation.

KATZ: Very, very smart move of Salesforce if you don't mind me saying so you're the most human person. So, at the beginning of this podcast I always send all of the interviewees, the CREATE framework, and ask them to think about three, warts and all stories that actually will help the people are listening to really understand how you put these into practice. And we all know that these are not easy. Driving change, doing things differently is tough. And so I think by people really understanding human stories of rather than “I did this, and that happened, and I always knew it would, and therefore I'm really successful.” The truth is,” I thought about doing this, and it was really hard and I had to do X and Y and Z. And then I got to success”. And it's those learnings, not failures, not challenges those learnings I think people really need to hear to give them the courage to be better leaders. So when you first get to the Create framework. What bubbled to your mind.

CAROLE: Oh, so much because every single word in there just sort of resonate and you can always think of some great examples. Yeah that absolutely makes sense to me. So, if I think back to my time when I was in an area director, absolutely one of my favourite times in a leadership role, I was responsible for about 14-15 Branches, a team of about 300- 400 people. At the time I was working in an area in London which is one of the most socially deprived areas in London, incredibly diverse. The team when I took them over, weren’t performing to their best abilities. We had a balance scorecard and they were down the bottom on a lot of those measures. So I think what I felt when I looked at each framework and think about what I did when I went into that team. It was about: number one, really spend a lot of time on, I guess the quality because it was so the demographic of the customer base. I didn't feel necessary that the leadership team was a true representation of the community that we served. So if you really want to be successful when you're in that type of role, you really have to understand your community. You have to understand your customers, and you have to build trust within that community. So I went about spending a lot of time making sure I had the right leadership team in place to make sure that he mapped exactly what was part of our community at the time there. And then I think it was about giving them belief and I know belief is not there within the CREATE framework but I you know I think you can pick out them. When your team is not doing so well, that is the time that you have to give them more trust, you have to give them empowerment and you have to say; “You’ve got this” because sometimes the rewards don't come overnight sometimes it's about step, one step forward. One reason why they can do it as opposed to 10 reasons why they call. And actually what we started to see from there was the team starting to blossom. And for me it was about making sure that everybody understood we were a team. We would only cross the finish line when the last person crossed over that finish line. It wasn't about who was going to be first, it was going to be making sure that we all helped each other. So whether we were short staffed one guy about how everybody would rally around to make sure that all the branches had the right number, making sure that we know we were delivering amazing service and how we would start so then and this is a few years ago before the days of mobile banking apps and things like that. But how do you start to use technology in a way that can serve your community as well. We were so incredibly successful and we went at a time from one of the bottom performing areas in the country at the time, to one of the top performing. And there was this little thing called the Olympics that was thrown in the middle because we also had the Olympics at the same time, where our footfall within the area grew by 80,000, a day that was sort of coming past our branches. We had to make sure the cash was there, and it was one of, you know, I will still look back on that time with great fondness because I've never seen a team, collaborate and communicate with each other to make sure that we were successful and to make sure that the Olympics was a success for all of our customers as well to help them sort of get about their daily lives.

So, an incredible time, And I think the CREATE Framework you know when I look at that just embodies everything that makes me feel excited about what we went through at that time.

KATZ : Apart from belief. That was brilliant. So you talk about moving from a situation to building a whole new team, which is a different demographic, you know that the most important thing is to build trust. Can you think of a time where actually that became really hard. Building trust is tough. Let's, let's be hones

CAROLE: I think sometimes this is about showing your own vulnerabilities, and I think when I, when I think about the positive feedback that I've received from my team as people go, please take this in the right way but you're so normal, you're so down to earth. And I think that naturally helped you to build trust and one of the things I've always done as a leader, whenever I do a one to one, or whenever I'm with the team, at the end of the session I will always say to people, is there anything that you want me to do differently. Is there anything that you want from me that you're not getting? Have you got any feedback from me to help me become a better leader? And sometimes that can be some of the feedback that you create the right environment, you can get some really powerful feedback that helps you to bolster your strengths. So I'm a big believer in focusing on your strengths as much as it may be some of the development areas. But some of the messages sometimes can be quite tough to receive as well but they've made me the leader that I am today because my team have been incredibly open and honest and generous with that feedback,. Therefore sometimes you do have to go away and reflect and you have to look yourself in the mirror to say, that wasn't my intention to come across like that. But clearly, that was one of the learns that I had early on in my career I'm quite an extrovert. I'm very energetic. One of them my manager said oh actually I find you quite patronizing sometimes and I was horrified by that feedback. Because it certainly wasn't my intention. But she was much more of an introvert and my excitement and energy that didn't resonate with her so I've had to learn very early on, how can I adapt and modify my style, to make sure that I'm matching that of my audience? It's still something that I you know I have to do on a regular basis to hold myself in check. I'm not saying tick: I've done that one. But continue to think about how you can adapt your style based on the audience that you're dealing with. You know it can be tough but I think people really value when you're open and say: “this is something I'm still working on. If you can help me to become a better leader by pointing out when I'm doing it. Sometimes I don't realise I'm doing it. People love that, and it does help to build the trust.

KATZ: And that to me is brave. Because we all know that actually hearing something that can be seen as criticism can be tough because the way our brains are built is that our own ideas are the best ideas, and therefore somebody turning around and saying, you know, like you say, I'm a Tigger. When I'm with somebody I get really super excited, and it took me neurolinguistic programming for me, and understanding mirror neurons, I still struggle with it because I'm who I am. But actually if you listen to people's tone, and listen to their speed and watch their body language and make sure that you're really empathetic. Yes, start where they are not where you want them to be and that's tough.

CAROLE: But it's always you know for me when when you've got your team in there it's about asking for that regular feedback. If you're in a room with either a peer group or a more senior group and you want to have that impact. Who's your critical friend in the room,? who’s the person that you can go to afterwards and say, give me some feedback? Did I, with that point I made, did it come across. I've always surrounded myself with critical friends, and ask them for regular feedback, and will continue to do so because you should never stop learning. And you should never stop getting that feedback, because it could just be the tiniest little thing that can make the difference. So that's something I've always done throughout my whole career

KATZ: 100%. One of the things I go on about, there's a few sort of straplines that I use over everything can be better, always. And if you just think of the whole world through that lens, by which I mean Nothing's ever perfect so if somebody says that could have been better. That's not a complaint. It's not criticism. It's an opportunity to improve, and I think that might segue into your next.

CAROLE: Yeah so I ran the complaints team. Absolutely again loved every minute of that. Had to spend a lot of time rebuilding the team at the time, again, giving believe because compliance can be quite a draining department to work in because no surprises a lot of people are unhappy so you have to have a special type of person I think that worked in there for a long time, but again, creating the environments and making a great place to work, where people want to come and work because they will learn in their careers will blossom, was a big challenge. But then it was also about saying, well actually, how can we turn this on its head. Not only just to fix the complaints and to handle them and get the right outcomes for the customers, but then how do you then reach out to your colleagues where the complaints are coming from in the first place because you know, they might be registered through the phone or when a customer comes into a branch or from a digital channel. How do you then start again use technology as an enabler, but then to start to use it to to reach out to your customers. How do you get your colleagues to go, how can I get the feedback, how can I always predict and prevent the complaint from happening in the first place, because we are delivering awesome service. So I set up a proactive business. And that was very much looking at how we use data to predict and prevent us like all we're noticing a change in behaviour here. So, are we seeing something different, should we reach out to customer at Point A a rather than point C where they might have complained, and then we start to use data. Then we started as a team to get creative, to go, “what are the scenarios that we could start to use this data in, in the right way, where we can wow customers?” I don't know if you recall a few years ago when very sadly there was a terrorist attack in Barcelona. What we were able to do and even though that had nothing to do with banking as such, we were thinking we have customers that might be affected by this particular incident. So within half an hour, we were able to isolate all of our customers that had used their debit card in Barcelona for the previous 48 hours and just send them a simple text message to say, we believe that you might be in Barcelona. If you’re stick, if you need help, please pick up the phone to us we are ready and waiting. The messages we got back, you know, talking about building trust with your customers. We didn't want anything we wouldn't try to give them a product or a service. We would just there in a moment of stress in a moment of crisis. We were there for them and the messages back were amazing/ “Thankfully, my family is safe but wow, I can't believe I've got a message like this from my bank” People took to social media at the time. We're not talking huge volumes here but even if it was just one text message the one tweet that said that we made a difference to that one customer, that was great. Building that trust and obviously being there in moments has never sort of come to life more than ever in the last sort of year for obvious reasons. Being able to demonstrate that you're there, not just for your customers but for your colleagues there, because you have to look after your colleagues, because they are they're serving your customers so if you don't look after yourself, you don't look after your team, then you're going to be no good to anybody. So making sure that you have, I guess the framework, the foundation level to look after your team in those moments, showing that you care, showing the empathy, true, authentic empathy, you know, has always paid dividends throughout my whole career as well.

KATZ: This is you can't see me but my grin is bigger than the grinny thing I say hearing that story. It just makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up beside that, doesn't matter what brand you are. You want your customer that human at the other end of that moment to go, oh my god. this person cares

CAROLE: Absolutely can't actually even

KATZ : Even when they're not trying to sell me something. They've just done something that made me smile. Lately feel like that this human is cared for,

CAROLE: That you know that creates the warmth that you know people talk about great customer service and great customer experience. I'm a big believer if you put service first naturally income profits growth will follow. People will remember, one moment when you did something for nothing because it were, and then when they do have a moment where they do need a product or service they're gonna go, Ah, I remember Carole and her team. I'm going to go and take my business to them. I truly, truly believe and it comes back to when you're in crisis. Just continue to have the belief, continue to deliver the great service because that's what people remember.

KATZ: And also the people who are in your team, knowing that you're doing that, to give feels good.

CAROLE: Yeah

KATZ: It’s common sense, isn't it, it's like you know the end of the day, I find it really hard when I'm talking to companies about customer centricity. And we need to understand the customer better, and I'm like, You are the customer. We are humans, you know, you happen to be a human in a role right now where you happen to be working in a corporate as a leader, but you're a human. One of the things that I spend a lot of time doing when I'm working with leaders or when we're working with Leaders is get them to understand, it's about human experience. It's about really understanding how that human feels. At that moment. Whether it be in the context of working inside a corporate or context of walking into a bank ,or the context of being somebody who's part of a council. It doesn't matter, it's the same thing. And to give feels good, you get is powerful.

CAROLE: Yeah, I completely agree, and I you know when you look at your framework and reward is on there for example. Reward isn't just about monetary reward or promotions. Sometimes it's about just remembering to say thank you. I always say to my team, give me stories I'd love to pick up the phone to some of your team and just say well done to them. And if you can't, you know, think of a scene you can't find one. Look harder, because they are there, and it doesn't have to be the most amazing story. It can be something really small and it could actually be one of your team who's underperforming, and they've just done something like everyone does for granted, but for them it's a big step. They're the ones, catch someone doing something good, always, always pick up the phone. Getting a phone call from one of the senior leaders, people would go: “Oh my god I can't believe they know about this, and it just honestly it was the best part of the day the job that what I always do is saying thank you to the team because they love it.”

KATZ: I love that, and it feels so good and then of course we want that Oxytocin hug. Again, they are going to try harder as opposed to the other thing I have loved this conversation that comes as no surprise at all to you such a joy. You’re such an inspiration. So the last thing that we do on this podcast is to think what would be the title, what would be the key takeaway that a leader who's going to listen to this phenomenal 20 minutes. What are the what's the key thing that you want people to really go: :That’s what makes an awesome leader.”

CAROLE: Oh, goodness me so many things, I think for me, you have to continue to invest in yourself. And what I mean by that is continue to get that feedback continue to ask your peer group continue to ask the senior leaders continue to ask your direct reports, continue to ask the most junior people in your team, about what would make a difference. What do they expect from you. What is it they're not getting from you. Continue to invest and develop yourself whenever you're busy, I think you've set some time aside to invest in yourself, that’s often the first thing that goes out the window. That should be the first thing that stays and you hold, because every time I have continued to invest in myself, my career has gone from strength to strength, because whatever I've learned, I've been said right, I'm now going to share that I'm going to share that with my team, and guess what they learn and they develop, and I, whenever I can see true investment in myself in development. That is when I have been the most successful.

KATZ: I love that. So investing in yourself leads to success. Yes, so when I just as we're talking as well. I've never had this happen, because I've never worked in the kind of the complaints bit which should be called the improvement department, but can you imagine if you rang up to complain about something, and the person on the other end of the phone so thank you so much for letting us know that because it's going to really help us improve.

CAROLE: Absolutely, Absolutely, if when people complain they are being generous with their time, because they've given us feedback to say, this is not what I expected. now far too many people complain, they will complain with their feet and they will walk away from your company. Look at complaints as an amazing source, an opportunity for your company to grow. Please don't look at it as a team on the side that just deals with all the negative stuff because I'm pleased to say the complaint streams I've worked with have been absolutely awesome. And they are an amazing source of information.

KATZ: Thank you so much Carole it's been an absolute inspiration. That was amazing. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, but I fiercely believe that everything can be better always so I am always open to your suggestions for improvement. What could I do better? What do you want more of? Who do you think deserves to join our list of imaginable guests? So, if you have suggestions or comments, or of course, a story that I can include in the stories from clubhouse chapter of next week's episode,

Next week I will be talking to Steve Roberts, who is the Head of Culture and the the Chief Scientific Advisor for Barclays Bank. He is an absolute inspiration so it will be a real treat, especially for those of you who believe, that you can't treat an old dog new tricks. He's got a lot of stories to tell. He’s a fascinating guy so I'm really interested to find out which one to choose to share.

You have been listening to humans, leading humans towards a future of work that works for people. This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the marketing society, and PS. If you're a senior marketing leader, and you're not already a member you should totally become part of that tribe

A massive thanks to SuperTerranea for the magical sting of stings. Thank you so much for joining me. Be inspired be imaginal be more human, and see you next week.

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