What Is HR's Business Impact? Help the C-Suite See HR's Strategic Influence

Speaker A: The visual that's coming to my mind is mind and heart. You don't want to be all up here, but you don't want to be all down here around emotions and things like that. So there's a balance. Make sure you address the data, the impact, all of that stuff. But then show that human side of what it means to be a leader and that your decisions are really making a difference on real humans.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to this episode of HR Unplugged. Strategies to help HR define their impact on the business. I'm your host, host Vanessa Brulot. Understanding how to shift from delivering traditional HR readouts to strategically influencing business outcomes is a skill that top leaders master. And the road to learning these strengths can often look a little different. Storytelling, public speaking, and leadership alignment all play a part. Join us in this episode of hr Ah, Unplugged. As we sit down with Sarah Jones, CEO of Inclusion Pro, we'll talk through powerful ways HR leaders can learn to define their impact on the business and create change across the organization. Hey everyone. Welcome to today's episode of HR Unplugged. We have an awesome guest for today's episode, Sarah Jones. Sarah is CEO of Inclusion Pro, a strategy firm helping organizations strengthen leadership and business impact. With 25 years of experience spanning business, technology and legal strategy, Sarah. She has been featured by TED and NPR and is known for her TED talk with over 2 million views. It's an incredible story, so give it a listen if you haven't already. Sarah is a former CEO, patent attorney and co founder of the Women Tech Council. Sarah now focuses on executive coaching, keynote speaking and workshops that inspire leaders across industries. She serves on several national and state boards and has been recognized with awards and including Utah Business CEO of the Year and the University of Utah Distinguished Alumni Award. What a great intro. Sarah, we are just so lucky to have you here today. I can't wait for audience to hear your advice, all the great tips you have for them. Did I miss anything in your intro? Any fun hobbies you're hoping the audience needs to know about you when you're not working?

Speaker A: Um, well, I love to eat and I also do Bikram yoga. I picked that up for the last three years and it's just something that I wanted to have kind of for the rest of my life. Right. And you know, when you're middle aged and I actually generally hate to exercise and so I uh, strangely have really taken to Bikram yoga. So I know a lot of people won't but for some reason I really like it. I just love seeing the incremental improvement. Right. Even if it's just like, oh, this time I can do this, this move just a little bit better. So I find for me, it's a really nice challenge and I love challenges. And so that's been a good thing for me.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Well, let's get into things. Your TED Talk has been viewed more than 2 million times, like we mentioned in the intro. And today you help coach other leaders on how to deliver powerful, impactful presentations, keynotes, workshops. In our prep call, we talked about a few different topics for today, but I was super excited about what you could share with our audience to help them strengthen their Voice and showcase HR's impact across the organization. So to start, I want to talk through the challenges a lot of HR leaders face when they try to communicate to the rest of the leadership team, specifically things about hr. So what are some challenges most people run into here?

Speaker A: Well, I think the common theme across all of these things that I've done is just the ability to use your voice and to have influence. I co founded Women Tech Council, and that was like 18 years ago. And you kind of constantly run up to people, run up against people who don't feel like they have a seat at the table. They don't feel like they're being heard. That's what I've had to work on my whole career, basically. So whether that occurs in a boardroom, whether that occurs in a meeting, whether that occurs on a public stage, it's kind of the same thing, right? How to use the power of your voice.

Speaker B: So what you're saying is it's not an overnight thing, it's a constant progression.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. People see me now and they think, oh my gosh, you're just so talented at this. They didn't see me at the very beginning where I was fumbling. I mean, remember I was like a patent attorney. I just sat in my office all day long. And so this has come with years and years and years of practice and lots of bad experiences too, Right. And I think being able to do those first things right, where you know it's not going to be perfect, you know, you're not going to learn. But the thing I always do, Even, even I'm 25 years into my career, I always ask for feedback no matter what. Right. Because I always want to know what I can do better. And I think it's just that coachability, the willingness to continually progress, maybe that's the commonality with Bikram. It is Incremental, you will see the results, but at first it's going to feel very awkward and clunky.

Speaker B: Mhm. And that's probably the biggest hurdle that people have to get past is when you hit that clunky. The mistakes. This happened to me before. You kind of just want to hide in a corner and, and you're like, I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't ever want to do that again. I like that you call out hey, it's moving out of that and asking, okay, what is the feedback? What can I learn from this? Because that's where, you know, becoming an expert like you are today, like it's those steps of learning from those mistakes.

Speaker A: It's just a bunch of hard work that's there's just no way around. I mean I've seen a few people that are very, very gifted in articulating and really convincing, but there's just not most of us. Yeah, right. So it just takes a lot of work.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. Well, a lot of folks get stuck in the role of, you know, the task doers versus strategic business partners. And we talk a lot at Bamboo HR and HR Unplugged about helping HR folks get a seat at that strategic table. I know you mentioned that a little bit earlier. So where does that shift happen? How can HR leaders and even the other HR professionals on the path to becoming leaders make that change so that they are strategic versus just checking out tasks from a list, like more of that administrative side?

Speaker A: Yeah. I think the trick comes down to being able to voice value and impact. So you know, if you think about value first, it's not always the things that you value. Right. So as an HR leader, there are certain things that you really care about. But once you are communicating with, let's say executives or other folks in the organization now you have to really think about, well, what is it that they value? Because otherwise if you can't sort of cross over there, a lot of what you talk about might not feel super relevant to them. Everybody believes that your work matters. Right. But it's really translating into the language of what does someone else value? How are they going to hear it and being able to talk about it? Um, on the impact side, what I have found over my career is there's a lot of people that don't feel like they get ownership in the impact. So let's say you're working in a function in an organization and you are contributing to something really important. Revenue, cost reduction, whatever it is. And there's something in Your head that says I'm not allowed to say that I worked at a company that went from 50 million to 100 million like that. I don't get to own that. You actually do because you were there and that is what happened while you were there and you contributed to those efforts. Now obviously you're not going to take 100% credit, but I think sometimes we think about seeing these kind of big impact numbers and it can feel very uncomfortable. But if we can really start to measure impact, how many, how big, how large, that's what's going to really communicate that you have influence and that you're able to drive business outcomes. Mhm.

Speaker B: I love those two words. It's value and impact. And like you said, like talking in the executives lingo because that gives you the credibility of being able. Like oh yeah, no, I need your opinion to help me think through and navigate things. I remember seeing that a lot as a recruiter is people would downplay their experience and say, oh yeah, well this thing happened at the company. I'm like, okay, but what did you do? What was your part in the, you know, in the whole system? Like what was the impact you made? What did you do? Do you know how that impacted the overall key results? And that language helps you get to rooms that you probably wouldn't be in before.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it can be a scary thing, but I think if you have a good relationship with the people you report to, with leaders, finding the opportunity to actually find out what they value, like what are the things they're measured on. Right. And if you start to understand what they're measured on, then you can start to connect the dots in my work matters because it helps you be able to do this.

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Speaker B: lot of coaching with folks to help them find their voice, define that impact. And you share a great story with me earlier about a cybersecurity leader who had owned her own business and then joined the new company heading up, uh, governance for 4,000 employees. And she was asked to give a lunch keynote and came to you for advice. Would you mind Sharing a little bit about that story today with our audience.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, the person you reference is very, very experienced in cyber security. So she actually wasn't nervous at all about the keynote. She just wanted, like, some speaking coaching. And I said, okay, tell me about this keynote. Well, they had asked her to speak on, uh, cybersecurity for small businesses, which she had done for 25 years. Right. She can do it in her sleep. But I also was coaching their team on team productivity and communication and presence and all of those sorts of things. So I knew that she actually had this desire to really be seen as an influencer, right. In more of an enterprise capacity as a cybersecurity specialist. I said, okay, well, who's going to be at this conference? And, you know, it's not a lot of small businesses at the conference. It's going to be your larger organizations, you know, that do cyber, who have budget to send you to these type of international conferences. Right? And I said, well, you got a couple of choices. You can talk about small business cybersecurity at this lunch, but then people are going to come get their lunch, and, um, most of them are going to walk out because they're not going to see it as relevant. They're going to see the title and be like, that's not for me. What is your goal? Is your goal to get everybody, uh, as many people as possible and to build your reputation as a cybersecurity, or is your goal simply to give content to help? Sort of check this box. Like, yes, we talked about cybersecurity for small businesses. Right. She said, I actually would love the former. You know, she was building her career, her professional presence, her resume. And she started telling me about some of the projects that they were working on and how they were able to immensely scale, like this really small tiger team in a company, 4,000 people. They have been able to do some amazing governance work in, like, a matter of a year and a half, two years that would take most organizations at least four years to accomplish.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: Uh, incredibly remarkable. Right? So we sat down and I had her tell me more. I said, well, tell me how you did that. Oh, wow. That. That would have been really hard. How did. Was the executive team on board? Absolutely, yes. They were so supportive. I said, oh, interesting. Okay, here's what I'm hearing. You have an opportunity to actually give a keynote on this case study of how this company groove their governance program in such a short amount of time. By really partnering with the leadership team, you make your company shine. You make you shine, right? And you can bring in small business. Because what was interesting about the solutions they were able to create is they actually had a lot of vendors and third party organizations that they partnered with that were small businesses. And they're rolling down all of these cybersecurity governance things. Right? I mean, these are companies of five people, engineers that are water engineers or whatever. And she was telling me about impact. So again, how do you tell this story in a way that it's not about bragging, but they retained like 99.9% of their third party small businesses even though they were rolling out a ton of new things. And they were really strategic about how they, you know, we're able to partner with these small businesses who typically would be like, nope, I can't do that. That's too much work. Da, da, da. And it was an incredible case study. And I said, you know, what's really cool about this is you get to tell a case study about an enterprise wide piece of work that literally is chief information Security officer level. Right? So you get to now brand yourself as really in that executive space. But you also get to tell the story of how all of those 25 years of working with small businesses, how that was your secret superpower. You were the only one in the organization that actually understood the impact on the small businesses and were able to partner with the leadership team and they listened. That's the potential. Uh, when you're able to dig, you're able to unpack a little bit and really understand and then say, okay, here's the opportunity you have. Is this something that you are willing to do? Right. And what was great about it is in the process of her planning this keynote, because it's not about the keynote always, Right. It's about the value that that brings to you. She was able to collect the data, the impact numbers, and now build it into her own resume. The work that she did, right now she's got all this data and now she gets to use it in her resume on, um, LinkedIn, if she's interviewing for other roles or anything like that. So for me, speaking is so much more than just the talk itself. There's just so much strategy. If you can just kind of open your mind and push your thinking.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I like that it doesn't stop there. There was so much more she could do beyond that. That was a gold mine. Example. I usually have my mini microphone and I drop it for you, but it's somewhere in some box. So just imagine the mini microphone dropping. Yeah, let's shift for a few minutes and dive a little deeper into the storytelling aspect of showcasing impact. You're obviously a great storyteller. What tips or strategies do you share with executives and other leaders to help them really become better storytellers? Because for a lot of folks, that's a really hard thing to master.

Speaker A: People, they always connect around stories. From the beginning of humankind, right. We were telling stories, and that's how we pass down information. And we just are wired somehow to love stories. And so just being able to identify what is the story around this situation and how you tell that story is going to matter. So, for example, in my talk, you know, it's international adoption. It's very emotionally fraught with lots of complex emotions. And I got to choose how I told that story. Right. And it's not that I didn't feel some of the negative emotions. I felt a lot of the negative emotions, but what would keep people's minds open to hearing it? And this is just the fine line of being authentic to yourself and what you're trying to communicate, but in a way that someone else can receive it. It's not just about the story, but it's about how you choose to tell it.

Speaker B: Yes. And when we think about, like, the storytelling, too, especially with, like, HR professionals and having that seat at the table, talking with executives, data kind of comes into play here. And sometimes HR leaders have the data, but struggled to make it meaningful. Like what. What advice do you have for turning data or metrics into that story that can drive that action?

Speaker A: Well, hopefully they have a leadership team that cares about people. Yeah.

Speaker B: Fingers crossed.

Speaker A: Hopefully.

Speaker B: That's.

Speaker A: That's always. I think the foundation is. If you've got leaders that care, people then hearing the stories of how a policy, a decision, a, uh, business decision impacts someone that matters. Right. Whether it's inside the company or outside, like a customer story or a, uh, stakeholder or partner story. Our influence. Right. Ripples even beyond our office walls. And so, you know, just kind of knowing how to pick something that you think is really going to, like, open people's eyes, like, oh, that's so cool, or I didn't know that, or. Right. Something that will pique their interest. I think that's kind of a skill of knowing which of the stories that are available to you. I'm sure there's a lot. Right. But which of those stories will get the most focus?

Speaker B: Yes. Well, do you have another success story you could share with us that really highlights how storytelling has helped HR change the conversation with the rest of the leadership team.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think one thing we all struggle with is engagement of, um, you know, stakeholders. Right. So when you think about people, you're really trying to engage them in some way, you're trying to bring them in. I think there's some really powerful ways that storytelling can help. I actually have a model where I take people through storytelling to tell their own story. But then we kind of cycle through conflict management. And it's often the same skills that apply to storytelling if you're just sharing the story around, but that also apply to conflict management. But I think what you have to do is set the tone. What's the tone? What are the expectations? And kind of invite that understanding into the space first. I don't think you could just jump into storytelling. Right. But once you've done that, I've had some really amazing focus groups where it could have been very conflict driven. But because we created that space for each person to share their story and honor that there are these different perspectives, it created so much more connection, like more understanding the assumptions they had of, well, why didn't so and so do something, or why didn't this happen? Or feeling like, you know, you're to blame or anything like that. A lot of that can actually kind of come out in just hearing the different perspectives and stories, but also being respectful about it. Right. Because everybody has their own perspective on situations that happen.

Speaker B: Yes. I kept thinking about assuming the best. A lot of times in the workplace we don't assume the best because we, we make quick judgments based off of the information we have. But if, like you're saying here, it's like with these focus groups, like the more conversations and storytelling that can be had, you realize, oh, I actually should have assumed the best because they come from a different perspective and, and they actually had good, reasonable reasons for doing what they did or not doing what they did. Yeah, I love that. When many HR leaders feel nervous or second guess themselves when speaking to executives, what strategies do you recommend for overcoming those nerves and building that confidence on stage or in the boardroom?

Speaker A: I think it's okay to practice. If you can find someone inside the company that you really trust to give you meaningful feedback, I think that's optimal because they would actually understand the dynamics of the leadership team, the culture, maybe some of the barriers you face, those sorts of things. I think sometimes we just expect it to come to us. And so some of the coaching I've done for some companies is actually to go through presentations with them with that junior team member or even senior Team member. Right. And ask them questions. I actually have a law degree. Right. And so I'm pretty good at like poking holes in things. Right. And to have somebody who I don't have any stake in the game, I have no decision making power over their job or career. And that's why it's really nice if you can get somebody that's more independent, like that coach or something like that, they can be really candid about their feedback. And that's what you want, is you want somebody who's going to just try to kind of bulletproof what you're going to present and make sure that you're prepared for questions that might happen. Things that the leadership might be thinking or things that you might want to demonstrate to the leaders.

Speaker B: Yes. I think that's exceptional advice because if you're doing that, practicing in beforehand, having that person, that third party objective, giving you that advice, you're able to take that one moment in time that you have to be able to make that impression to get into that seat of the table. You make the most out of it because you're the most prepared.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And most larger organizations, you know, it's not going to just. I'm sure you get asked questions in meetings, you know, just ad hoc, but a lot of them are scheduled out.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And so you have like a few days or even sometimes a few weeks to prepare. Or for example, if you say, okay, I need to present a business plan, those typically aren't sprung on you at a moment's notice. You typically have a little bit of time to put that together. So being able to think through that strategically is really valuable and then to be able to talk about it. Because what I find is you can have words on a paper, but when you have to deliver it, it actually is very, very different. And believe it or not, a lot of speakers that I work with, translating from that script into something that doesn't feel rehearsed or forced or, you know what I mean? And getting those nerves out, that is a different skill. And so you've got to kind of practice both.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. One communication style is vary quite a lot across industries and audiences. How do you coach leaders to adapt their messages so it resonates with both the executives and employees at different levels of the organization.

Speaker A: The visual that's coming to my mind is mind and heart. You don't want to be all up here, but you don't want to be all down here around emotions and things like that. So there's a balance. Make sure you address the data the impact, all of that stuff. But then show that human side of what it means to be a leader and that your decisions are really making a difference on real humans. I think sometimes when we go to the executive level, we think, oh, I've got to discard this part of me that cares so much about the people. I don't think that's the case at all.

Speaker B: Yeah. If you had to boil down your top three tricks of the trade for better presentations, what would you say they are?

Speaker A: One, be coachable. Be able to take feedback. Because even I'm very experienced in public speaking. I learned a lot by doing my TED Talk. You can always learn more. So always be open to feedback. Don't feel or act like you've got it nailed. And get a coach if you can. I mean, I, I even get coaches when I do talks. I don't sit there and say, oh my gosh, I can write this by myself. I actually have somebody from the outside reviewing, taking that perspective of the audience. And it just helps, right? Even with transitions or just thinking about what is going to stick with an audience, I get a coach still. And then again, testing in front of people or even video. I think video is an excellent coach for you because, you know, a lot of us, we're going to cringe at first, right. When we see ourselves on camera and there's just no way around it. Right. I mean, I cringe. And so getting over that and being able to see yourself present, you will start to actually self coach yourself. You're going to notice the ums, the ahs, the tics, the nervous, you know, playing with your hair, whatever. Okay. And it's cheap too, to set up your video and just film. Um, but being able to test in front of people, I think is really key. And so the more you can practice in front of people, the better you, uh, know you're just going to be prepared for that type of environment. I will actually often visualize people standing in front of me when I am practicing because we know that brains are really powerful and we will have kind of the same chemical reaction if we visualize it as we would in real life. Just remember, you're not speaking in isolation. You're not speaking to an empty room, and you've got to practice for that. Okay. The third thing is opening and closings are really powerful and that's what people remember. So a lot of people, when they talk, let's just say it's a public talk or whatever, we're going to take this out of the executive boardroom Okay. A lot of people you're here, they'll say, okay, I was asked to give this talk. And oh my gosh, at first I was so nervous, but then I was like, I really want to do this. And you start to, like, give all this information that nobody actually wants or cares about. We feel like we're doing it because we want to be authentic and natural, but that's really wasting people's time if you kind of think about that. Right. It's not really what they're there to hear. And so really kind of mastering your open opening, and then also you're closing your call to action. What is it that you want people to do? Have you kind of made the case so that they feel like they can leave and do whatever it is that you challenge them to do or are, uh, trying to get them to understand? So those are the two things that are really, really important. In fact, when we do tedxali City, we spend a lot of time on that beginning, a lot of time on the ending. We want those nailed completely. You can make mistakes in the middle sometimes. Not really, but okay, um, you know what? We actually even practice to make mistakes. And I think a lot of people don't understand this because in this particular scenario, we're actually filming for a video. So even though they're doing it in front of a live audience, we're doing it so that we can edit a video at the end. So when they make mistakes, we actually train them. Stop. Don't say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Stop. Start the sentence again from the very beginning. First, it makes you come across as much more professional. Mhm. And you're not apologizing all over the place. But second, it helps create the video content. You need to actually capture that sentence. It either has to go into the video or just not be included at all. So a lot of people don't know that. There was actually two points in my talk where one, I made a mistake. And then two, a cell phone went off right in the front row, which is so, okay, friends, turn off your phones. Okay. But nobody knew, right? Because it was all edited out. Those are some tricks of the trade that I think might help other people as they're thinking about their talks. And then maybe number four, here's what I would offer is anytime you have a moment in public, let's say you get an award. Never be unprepared. Always have something to say on stage. I'll see some of the awards and people will Go on and be like, thanks, I really appreciate it. And then they'll walk off. Well, if they've given you a minute or two to say something, have that prepared. People underestimate the value of just even having those one or two minutes in terms of professional branding and saying something that people are going to remember.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And I think that is something I see time and time again that whenever you're given the stage, be prepared. If it's never used, no big deal. Right. If they're like, oh my gosh, you ran out of time, you're not gonna be able to say anything, no big deal. But don't find yourself with a stage and not something to offer.

Speaker B: Yes. Uh, these are, these are amazing. Like I'm like taking these mental notes. Cause there's four be coachable. Your intros and outros should be just stellar, rock solid practice with, you know, video and in person. And then the fourth was. Oh my gosh, what was the fourth one?

Speaker A: You just said it always, uh, have something to say.

Speaker B: Always. Yes. Which is, you know, ironic that I just didn't have something to say.

Speaker A: Hey, you know what? People blank. It's fine, it's fine. Once you get really, really experienced though, the words just start to come more naturally. Maybe somebody like me doesn't. Maybe I'm m thinking about what I'm going to say, you know, a few minutes before I go on stage. But if you are newer, get that prepared. Get it memorized.

Speaker B: Yes. Um, as my final kind of question for you, for HR professionals listening in who want to get started right away, what's one practical step they can take this week to strengthen their voice and better showcase their impact?

Speaker A: I would do something that slightly scares you. And whether it's, hey, I'm going to talk to a stranger and maybe that's scary to you. Right. Or I'm going to talk to someone in the company that I'd never met before and start to kind of work on those skills of putting yourself out there. Because when you are speaking, you are putting yourself out there. It can be very, very vulnerable. I get it. And so the more you can get used to being uncomfortable, that is where you will start to just really. It's not that it doesn't stop being uncomfortable. You just are so practiced with that discomfort that it won't come across as much anymore. So hopefully that gave you some ways. I don't know if there's one thing, but if something that slightly scares you, that puts you outside of your comfort zone, try to do that. This week.

Speaker B: I'm gonna write that down on my goal list this week.

Speaker A: Sounds good.

Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. A, uh, big thank you to our guest, Sarah. It was so fun to have you on this podcast and to learn all the. There are so many good takeaways from here. Like I definitely am m gonna be relistening to this episode multiple times because there's just some solid, um, golden nuggets. So for our listeners, check out our show notes. You'll find links to resources we think are helpful with this topic. We invite you to Visit us@hrmplug.com where you can sign up to be notified of all future podcast episodes and view the latest episodes in podcast format. Stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, the best comment way to support our show is by leaving a quick review. It should just take a minute and it will help us find more great listeners just like you. Today's episode is brought to you by BambooHR, the complete HR software. Simplify HR with award winning solutions for everything from hire to retire. With bamboohr.