The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Unlocking Leadership: Insights from Hank Wethington on Transformation and Growth

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Ready to unlock the secrets of effective leadership? Join us on Talent Forge as we sit down with Hank Wethington, the IT professional turned executive coach, who reveals how a fortuitous opportunity in learning and development ignited his passion for teaching and leadership. Hank shares his personal journey from aspiring high school biology teacher to helping individuals transition into successful leaders. We explore the hurdles of changing mindsets, giving up control, and discovering one's leadership voice, with Hank offering sports analogies and wisdom drawn from Marshall Goldsmith's "What Got You Here Won't Get You There."

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
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Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development. Today, I am joined by special guest Hank Wethington. Welcome to the show, hank. Hey, thanks for having me. Jay Appreciate it. So, hank, you and I have had a couple of conversations, but I'd love for our audience to get to know you and how you got into this talent development space and maybe what you're doing now. So why don't you start us off?

Hank Wethington:

Yeah, thanks. I probably represent like about a good third or half of the people in the talent development space, which is we kind of fell into it by accident. We didn't have an OD background, we didn't go to school for it. I found myself after 16 years in an IT career, wanting to do something different, and as I was getting ready to leave the company, I was at one of my good friends, Hallie Marsh.

Hank Wethington:

At the company was like she's in recruiting. She says, hey, we're starting L&D here at Rosetta. And I was like well, what's L&D? And she explained what L&D was. I'm like, oh, you mean like teaching, except for we get paid corporate rates. And she's like, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, oh, that is exactly what I want to be doing. I went to high school to be a high school biology teacher. I went to college to be a high school biology teacher, and so it was always there of what I wanted to do. I wanted to have that impact one-on-one. And so, after 12 years, found myself heading up L&D at a small, medium-sized agency under Publicis Group, which is a massive multinational agency holding company, and then left about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now.

Jay Johnson:

That's okay. So started in IT, had the passion to teach, transitioned into this. I love all of that. So what are you up to nowadays, Hank?

Hank Wethington:

Yeah, so I am an executive and leadership coach, especially for that group of people that has. They're really good at their job. They're awesome as an individual contributor. They get moved to being a leader of people. I don't mean just like one or two, but they're leading up a team, a division, a whole account, whatever. I work with them to help them establish their own leadership voice, their unique leadership voice, and really work within the team to strengthen them as the leader in that group.

Jay Johnson:

That's incredible. So, you know, it's always an interesting thing making that transition and you know, I think one of the biggest challenges is just mindset. Like things that I was so comfortable with doing every single day Now I'm not doing those. That was my security blanket. Now it's out the window and I've got to get other people to do those things as good as I feel myself. That's huge. How do you help them navigate that sort of shift, that mindset that kind of might hold them back? Well, there's a couple of things in there that mindset that kind of might hold them back.

Hank Wethington:

Well, there's a couple of things in there I want to say. You just hit upon that thing of we're good at it. We've been spending our time doing this thing, whatever it is. If you're an engineer, if you're a developer, you're doing that and you actually probably like doing it and you have a certain style or, you know, perfection level that you like, and so when you're now working with a team and you have to hand that off, that becomes difficult.

Hank Wethington:

That is a difficult transition to pull yourself out of and then not sit there and micromanage the aspects of how other people are doing it, not to mention you want to do it as well. So now you're responsible for five, 10, 15, 20 people, their growth, their one-on-ones, their, their all the things that they're doing and delivering. But you also think that I want to sit there and still do a bunch of the work. And you have to have this trade-off. You have to say, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to spend time with my people, I'm going to spend time developing them, but I may leave myself some moments to still do the things I love.

Hank Wethington:

It is a difficult transition and it takes some time, for sure. But people think like, hey, I'm really good at this. It's going to be easy to teach people. And we watch that in professional sports, where somebody like a Kobe or a magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, they're so great at their sport and then they become, you know, the coach of the team. And I can't explain. They just work hard, they just do it the way that I did.

Jay Johnson:

it Didn't you see, me that whole time.

Hank Wethington:

Yeah, exactly, and that's a hard transition. So yeah, exactly.

Jay Johnson:

It reminds me of a Marshall Goldsmith's book what got you here Won't get you there. And you know, really kind of digging into that just a little bit. When we think about you know, being good at something, uh, we often forget how long it took us to be good at it. So now, imparting that knowledge and I, you know, I heard you say without micromanaging, because we all love to be micromanaged how do you get them to shift out of that? That is a behavior that I tell you. If we can get managers to not micromanage, every trainer on this will be a millionaire by the time that they're done with their career. So what is it? How do you navigate some of these difficult challenges? You know, do you have an approach that you like to take with them to maybe help them become aware of what some of those challenges are, or transition into that new sort of mindset? How does that work for you, Hank?

Hank Wethington:

Well, the first thing is to realize that nobody sets out. Well, maybe not nobody, but most people do not set out to be a micromanager. That's not the goal. They want you to grow, they want you to do the things. They want to be focused on the areas they're strong at. It's something that happens as we put our fingers in the things and want to control it and want to make sure that we're looking good. This is our team, but what they put out reflects upon us and so we don't set out. No one sets out to be the micromanager. We just find ourselves there. So, if you start at that point, as you're working with somebody as a coach, when I'm working with, I know what their goals are and we establish them. We talk about what they're trying to do and not a single person has ever told me Hank, I want to micromanage people.

Jay Johnson:

You mean they're not sitting there twisting their mustache thinking how can I really just get under Hank's skin today?

Hank Wethington:

That is not their goal. They don't want their team members to go home unhappy. They want to see good work. They want to see good work from themselves. They want these things. So now, where are we seeing the disconnect? Where are we seeing these aspects pop up that are causing a disruption in the what we want compared to what we're getting? And that is really the key. There is actually spending time with them, talking to them through these issues, talking to them about what's happening on the ground. Getting good 360 feedback is also helpful. So we have a baseline of where to start with, but for the most part, it's just starting off at the point where that's not who they want to be. They think they're doing something different, but the outcome is what we need to focus on.

Jay Johnson:

You know, it seems so intuitive when we just start talking about it, but if you really break it down and you think about it, like, all right, you've got a particular set of skills, you've been successful in this, probably what got you promoted in the first place. And you get promoted and then all of a sudden it's a completely different set of skills that you're now having to rely on. You're having to rely on others, you're having to rely on, probably, skills that maybe you didn't have to do as much as an individual contributor, and I heard one thing that you may not want to do.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, sure, that's actually really true is kind of getting to that sort of baseline of do you want to lead, do you want to manage? That's huge. You know one thing that you mentioned and I think it's so important when we have those skills and we sort of like we start to build our identity around those skills and like I am really good at X, y and Z and so on and so forth, and now that gets kind of stripped away and now we're having to exhibit these new skills that maybe we haven't practiced, maybe we didn't ask for, maybe we didn't want or anything else, for maybe we didn't want or anything else. How do you help them sort of navigate their motivation to really take on that new set of responsibilities or to carve out time for that new set of responsibilities?

Hank Wethington:

There's a couple of areas in there because we do have to address whether this is something that somebody wants to actually do. Many people think that the need is to get promoted. I want to keep showing my abilities, I want to get raises, I want to get do. Many people think that the need is to get promoted. I want to keep showing my abilities, I want to get raises, I want to get recognized, I want that next level, and what comes along with that is typically leading people, and so people are accidentally there. Now we have to look at how the companies are supporting them, whether they are supporting them.

Hank Wethington:

I did some research last year in Q3 and Q4 with about 60 different leaders, from the director level all the way up to CEOs, and now that's only 60 leaders. But out of that group, only 20% noted that a company supported them through training or other activities to develop as a leader. That means 80% were doing this on their own. They credited mentorship, mostly informal, not something that was dictated. They went out on their own, they got a coach, they got some other training, but 80% had to go find it on their own.

Hank Wethington:

So with company supporting leaders, that becomes part of the issue. Can we learn how to do, say the basics, how to have a good, successful one-on-one, how to give feedback, how to talk about the difficulties of work. All of those things are in there and if they're not delivering that, then we have a different place to start from as a coach. But it's really aligning those pieces and figuring out what is it that you want, how do you want to show up, who do you want to be in this relationship? Not just what are the tasks involved, because we can make a task list. Oh, had my one-on-one with Jay today. Done, check, done. Was it effective? Did it do anything? Did Jay walk away with any growth goals? I mean, who knows? So we have to move away from that a bit and talk about who it is that you want to show up as, as the leader. So that's where it kind of starts from.

Jay Johnson:

I who it is that you want to show up as, as the leader, so that that's where it kind of starts from.

Hank Wethington:

I think that that 80% number is terrifying and and.

Jay Johnson:

I mean some, you know. But it helps to explain something like Gallup's research, where it's like 50% of people promoted or seen as underperforming within two years and you know, all right. So we're trainers, we're coaches, we're brought in and we're dealing with first-level managers. That's our target. That's who's sitting across from us. What are some of Hank's best tips to kind of get us started in that space? How should we even begin to start some of these conversations?

Hank Wethington:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I try to do in my practice is work directly with the HR or L&D lead in helping them understand the training that they're providing and then partnering with them to support the training with coaching. It's hard to get out there and coach somebody into. I was using NBA earlier. So if they want to play basketball but they happen to be 5'10", they don't have the background to really do it at the professional level and say, well, we can just coach them to that point. No, they're not ready, they haven't had the training, they haven't gone through the work to do it. And so it's the same thing. If we can provide training within the organization to support the leaders, to support managers at the first part, then we use the coaching on top of the training, as we were talking about before, and we can just throw this out there.

Hank Wethington:

About 70% of training is lost within a week. So people sit down and they learn something and within a week, 70% of it gone. Within two weeks, dreaded forgetting curve, it's gone. Yeah, absolutely. So how do you support people when you've gone? You've put them through training on a one-on-one or performance conversations or whatever else, and then they don't have a one-on-one for a month, then what? How likely are they to utilize that information in those conversations? So that's where the coaching comes in to support that and give them an opportunity to practice, to fail in a safe way, to be able to have, like the feedback with the coach say this is what I did, this is what didn't work, this is what did work, okay, well, how do you want to show up? So those, that combination of the training plus the coaching, especially for the first level managers, I think is incredibly efficient and successful at supporting them into that leadership position.

Jay Johnson:

I love that you brought that up because, I mean, the data in the industry doesn't lie either and it shows, you know, less than one out of 10 trainings actually change any kind of behavior Just throwing money away.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, when you start to add in that coaching element. So, okay, here's the skills, Now let's practice and we're going to coach you along the way. I liken it to and you and I kind of had mentioned this, you know I liken it to somebody like if I tell them to draw a bug and I say the bug's got a diamond shaped body, the bug has six legs, the bug has a triangle head, and give you a bunch of directions and you just draw whatever it is. I've done this in a room with 800 people. Guess how many bugs were identical? Hank, oh, zero, Not a single one. Everybody had their own interpretation and I, you know this is one of those pieces where like, okay, I gave you directions, you followed the directions, but it wasn't quite the bug that I had in my mind. What could I have done to show you or to help guide you that our bugs would have been closer?

Jay Johnson:

And usually people come up with step-by-step or coaching, or you know, give us some feedback as we draw one piece. Maybe you say, hey, that's really good, you're on track, you're on track. Or oh, not like that. We want to try to think about it this way and that really kind of brings to the forefront of it's not good enough just to tell somebody they're not going to do it. It's really about helping them through that process.

Hank Wethington:

So you know, spinning by the way on the use of the diamond, because, as you said that, I was like, oh, does he want like a diamond from a diamond ring? I mean I kind of knew where you were going, but could you imagine how people take that information? And that is that's what happens in all of our training. We say, you know, have these conversations, have feedback conversations? Oh well, I know what feedback is. That means you're doing it wrong. Feedback If, first off, if I don't trust you, you can give me all the feedback in the world and I ain't listening.

Jay Johnson:

That's just hands down. Appreciate your insight.

Hank Wethington:

Awesome and I'm flipping you off as I walk out the door. Maybe not. Maybe there's probably a good chance of that. Yeah, so if we have trust, then you can give me some feedback, and even there from it's a critical feedback. Okay, do I already know that I messed up? If I know that I messed up, why are you telling me? I'm aware, don't, don't beat me over the head with something I'm already aware about, because I probably feel bad. I'm trying to make adjustments. So don't tell me how I messed up If I already know. That means you have to know the situation so you can give me the critical feedback that I missed. And I'm doing this right now. I'm directing a show in theater, so I do live theater and I'm directing a show where I'm working with my actors in a very different way and I'm getting some of that feedback from them of like I've never had a director work with me this way of letting them know the things that they're missing. But I can see it on their face. I don't have to tell them they missed a line, they dropped something, they're in the wrong place. They're aware, done, move on.

Hank Wethington:

And then, on top of that, the next thing would be to just give them a couple of items to work on, typically just one or two. We might see 15 things that they need to improve. Go ahead and give a list. I mean, even if we're best friends, even if we've got a great relationship, I give you 15 things to improve on. That's overwhelming. I don't even know which right. And we talk about going back to sports, like the yips, that ability, you know people stepping up to the free throw line, or even a pitcher who's been doing great. You start correcting too many things and all of a sudden you're in your head it's not muscle memory anymore. So let's just work on one or two things and then improve there and then we'll pick the next one. But if I give you that list of 15, it's too much, yeah.

Jay Johnson:

And it's, it's so funny you say that because I so. I was a hockey player.

Jay Johnson:

I played up through the junior levels and I remember very clearly there was, there was one coach and he did it to everybody on a team and it was just constantly. It was like here are the nine things that you did wrong in that shift and like, by the time that the game was over, it was just like did I do a single thing Right? Like is there something that I should continue to do? Or why did you even select me for this team? Like, you asked me to be on this team. Why am I here if I can't get anything right? And this team why am I here if I can't get anything right? And and that was in stark contrast to probably one of my best coaches, who you'd get back to the bench and you know you screwed up. I, you know you're frustrated and you'd be like what happened out there?

Jay Johnson:

Uh you know this, I did this and I I you know blah, blah, blah, coach, and you say, okay, well, you know what's going to help, and what's going to help remind you not to do that again in the next place.

Hank Wethington:

And I'm just like I just I got to watch the body, or I got to do this, or I got to do that. So, yeah, that first question right there. That is such a key of hey, what'd you notice out there? I don't have like, let's have the discussion first. You already are aware. So if we're, if we started there, that's so powerful. Whether I had a, I played football and it was the same thing, the coaches that stood out in my mind were the ones that like, hey, what happened?

Jay Johnson:

Yep, well. And it also creates the opportunity for somebody to say, well, this is what I think happened, and and maybe you, as the coach, saw something completely different or had an outside perspective, because when you're in the trenches sometimes you're looking, you know, you have that tunnel vision on. So maybe by asking me what happened, you're going to get some insight, whether I saw the same play that you did, whether I made a good choice or a bad choice with the right information. Maybe I didn't even have the right information to start. So I think that it is one of those opportunities to kind of open up some dialogue and make somebody feel safe that they're not the worst human being in the world or the worst hockey player in the world.

Hank Wethington:

And while we're focused on sports and look, sports isn't our work, just like if we were talking about how we work with our kids or training dogs, like that's not people and at the same time, there is some parallels that we can pull from. So, as you're working with that team member, when you're working with the person on your team and you can see something, it's like hey, how did that feedback conversation go? I was like man, I really struggled to give feedback to Mary. She was not happy. Well, tell me about how you let into it. What. What did you see? Where were you coming from?

Hank Wethington:

I just came out of a meeting and I was super stressed. I was nervous going into that. Okay, so what do you want to do? Maybe different next time and we can't fix this with Mary, let's talk further about that. But what would you do in the next time you need to give this conversation? Oh, I don't know actually. Okay, hey, coach, time to step up. Hey, team leader time to step up and give some insights. For sure, and that's where that connection to training, with the support and the coaching comes into me.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, yeah, and you know the the the numbers on that don't lie either. It's more 88% more effective to have training coupled with coaching and ongoing support. So trainers, coaches that are listening you've heard me say it before coach after training and train before coaching.

Hank Wethington:

Yes, yes, and that also means that you've got to do training. I've seen a lot of companies recently pulling you know, pulling back some of their training budgets. Yeah, and maybe it's just the environment, the economy that we're dealing with and in some ways, I think it's just a shift. We're trying to say hey, and I also think that CFOs and CEOs are looking at the budget spend and wondering, like, what is my outcome from this? What am I seeing is different? And it's become a little table stakes to say, well, I can just throw LinkedIn, learning or Udemy at the team and look, ta-da, I've got training. That's not training. I mean, yes, there's training components in there, but that's not training people unless you're putting together a curriculum and then supporting it. So that aspect of people pulling back and then we're trying to do a lot more with a lot less. I'm sitting here inside my sound booth and I do e-learning voiceover and I will say that over the last year and a half, a lot of the e-learning voiceover, the whole industry is moving towards AI voices.

Jay Johnson:

Sure. Well that's terrifying for a lot of trainers. I don't think it has to be, but I think it is and there's an expense issue.

Hank Wethington:

right, I can do. I can do AI voices for 30 bucks a year. I can't even do it for 30 bucks an hour, like I'm definitely charging more than that for e-learning voiceover. So, yeah, it's a matter of looking at the economies of it, the cost, but what we're losing in that aspect is the connection, the human, and I'm not trying to say that's why someone should pick me for a voiceover.

Jay Johnson:

It's like no, You've got a great voice, so I would definitely pick you.

Hank Wethington:

I appreciate that, but it is the connection. It's the human on the other side instead of I'm trying to think of a script real quick on from an AI, but you know it's not connecting. You're off now doing third screen type of stuff. You're not paying attention to what it's doing and that means you're not learning, which means it's going to be hard to support that in coaching afterwards. It's just kind of a cycle, but yeah, that we need to do more when it comes to training and then support that with coaching, but it's all. It's all a cost.

Jay Johnson:

And I want to stick with that for a minute, because I think this is one of the biggest and most critical areas.

Jay Johnson:

You know when, when we do look at the numbers and we say, okay, one out of nine trainings or one out of 10 trainings actually yield some kind of positive result and that's probably being very generous, when we look and we say, hey, you know, the knowledge is going to be lost in two weeks. They're not going to remember 90% of this anyways, and I'm the CEO or I'm the CFO and I've got difficult decisions that I have to make. You know, am I going to lay somebody off or am I going to cut the L&D budget? You know it almost becomes an easy decision. But that's where I'm saying I think us, as L&D people really have to take responsibility and say we're making it an easy decision and if we don't shift what we're doing and start producing a business outcome or a return on investment, our industry is going to really, really be in trouble, more so than what AI will ever do to us. We're our own worst enemy.

Hank Wethington:

Those two things that you just said, by the way outcome and return on investment. So many of the HR and L&D leaders and I'm picking on HR. I'm not picking on them, I'm throwing them in because L&D comes out of HR. If it's an organization under about 600 people, the HR is who is doing the L and D work. So I'm going to put them into the group. But that ROI and the outcome everybody's so busy. I've got 15 trainings I need to do. I've got a facilitation to do this afternoon.

Hank Wethington:

We're actually not thinking about outcome. From the beginning. For the most part, there are people who are absolutely. But that ROI, as I have conversations about training, about coaching, and if people even recognize the ROI that they're getting, the answer is no, Hank, I don't have time for that. I've got 15 other things to do. That's a lot of work to figure out. Whether you're talking to Kirkpatrick scale of three or four, that's that comes way before training and normally we're asked afterwards like, oh, how are we measuring this? The training's already out. We're never going to be able to find that out at this point. So, starting off with that in mind, understanding what we're doing from an L&D perspective of training people and helping them grow, whether it's skills or abilities. Well, we have to know what the outcome is and what is going to be the return on investment. If you're speaking that language, your leadership team, the CFO, the CEO oh, their ears were music right up. Oh yeah, You're like. Oh hey, talk to me some more about this.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, Well, the scary thing is is yeah, it does take time and we may not have time, but if we don't do it, we may find ourselves with more time on our hands than what we actually you know, hank, let's talk about something in there, because I think it's one of the challenges that a lot of us face.

Jay Johnson:

And I tell you, as a young trainer, I was 1000% guilty and a victim of this. Get a company or, you know, if you're in an organization, leadership comes down and says we need sales training. Get in there, put a sales training together, get out there and do it. And when I was a young trainer, I never pushed back because it was just like the client's asking me for a sales training I got to go and deliver a sales training.

Jay Johnson:

That's what they want. That's what they need. Do what the client wants. Same thing if you're in an internal side of things. The boss comes down and says we need sales training. You as an L&D person, maybe with a finger on the pulse, or an HR person with a finger on the pulse, go. I'm not sure they're ready for the sales training. Or maybe there's a different thing that we need to address or handle first. Maybe we need to build trust or connection or whatever it is. You've got a sales force that's been there for 20 years. Am I really going to teach them all the new tricks in sales, or what is it that's helping us not underperform? How? How would you handle that, hank? I can tell you how I've evolved. I do push back now, but it's scary. It is absolutely terrifying, especially if you're you know you're looking at your boss and you're like well, boss, I think you're wrong. How do you handle that, hank?

Hank Wethington:

Well, let's just be clear Early in our careers we are going to just be that McDonald's drive-thru. It's not the best place to be. But when someone comes to you and they've got a higher title and they say I need this go-to-market training and I need it next month, you're like yes, sir, I'm going to do it, I need this sales training. Yes, ma'am, it's going to happen. You just execute. It's only after a while. And this is one of those things of why even L&D people and HR people should work with coaches as well. Anytime that we have an opportunity to grow ourselves and understand that we shouldn't be a drive-through window, we need to push back that. We need to understand what the outcomes are, how we're being measured. So I know for myself in my previous position that I met with the CEO and the CFO differently at some different times throughout the year quarterly with the CEO and monthly with the CFO, to track against my budget and what our outcomes were. Well, I wouldn't have been able to do that five years ago, but because of the relationships I had built, because of the way I had treated the budget, the way that I thought about it and put plans together for the year Now, I was a trusted advisor. You talk about being in that trusted spot, the conversations. Now that lets me push back a little bit more to say hey, what is our outcome for this? You want this go-to-market message training. Where are we at? How will we know that the training was effective? What is the outcome of that training?

Hank Wethington:

Do you just want people to be able to repeat the go-to-market message or do you want them to execute on it somehow? Is it different for somebody in, say, a customer service position, an account position, versus an engineer? Do we need to have different training? What is it that? I think I just want go-to-market messaging training. Okay, I want to deliver it.

Hank Wethington:

Look, I really want to help you with this, but until we figure this part out, I don't know what to do for you. I just want the training. Look, if you tell me you just want training, then you can write it and I'll deliver it. But we're not going to be able to track success and it's just that offer of the conversation and the back and forth. I'm not trying to say that I'm right in everything, but I can tell you what's going to happen with the adult mind and what the staff is going to do, Because if you're going to your engineers, your developers, with go-to-market messaging, 98% of them are going to sit there and say I don't care, Can I just get back to delivering the code that's, I've got broken sites, I've got broken this and I just want to get stuff done, man.

Jay Johnson:

I have to there's.

Hank Wethington:

There's so much to unpack there, I mean we could literally do an entire because we're going all over the place.

Jay Johnson:

no, I love it. I love it. One of the things that you said, though, I think is so important, because what I hear you say is you took ownership of building the relationship of trust that afforded you the ability to push back, and I think that one of the big challenges and I will say this myself, and I'm going to take ownership of some of my past behavior as well At some level, at different points in time, I'm like oh, I'm the L and D person. Why are they not listening to me? And, and immediately, it was just like I have this ex, and that was all on my part, that was all ego. They didn't know what I knew. They knew what they knew.

Hank Wethington:

And they don't care what you know.

Jay Johnson:

Exactly and I did not do the work to really establish that trust. So, audience, this is one of the biggest takeaways that I can ever. Ever get out of our own. We got to get out of our own way. We've got to step back from that ego. Yes, you have put together a long, storied career, you've got knowledge, but that doesn't mean that they understand it. It's just like anything else. It's just like Kobe trying to teach me basketball. He's got a long, storied career, but I'm not going to be able to step in and fill his shoes. Neither is your leadership. And until we take ownership which I love that you did, hank, and when you got to that space where you were able to feel more confident and comfortable in pushing back, what were some of the things that you maybe noticed or didn't notice about leadership and how they were directing you and moving forward? Did they bring you into the conversations earlier? Did they? What did that look like for you?

Hank Wethington:

The answer is yes, anne. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. I mean, it was a large, it was a decent sized organization 1500 people and I was definitely involved in some early conversations with those people that trusted me With others. Maybe they didn't know me as well, conversations with those people that trusted me With others. Maybe they didn't know me as well, we hadn't built that relationship yet or they hadn't seen the effectiveness of some of the other trainings. And I think that's an interesting point of there is going to be time in your career where you do have to execute and execute well, so that you can build the trust with some people. Hopefully you get to that point of pushing back and making sure that the training you're delivering, the outcomes, the ROI of what you're delivering, whether that's training, coaching, whatever else in there. If you're succeeding at that, it makes it easier for somebody to be like oh, hank's a good guy. Hank is going to help me do this because I see the outcomes of what he's doing. So it does take some of that early successes and you've got to build on that. Having you know if you're a team of one, that's really difficult, and so you're going to spend a lot of time networking in the organization. Lean on, if you're an L&D person and you have an HR person above, you work together to try to build those relationships, know where to go. I mean, we don't want to play politics. I would often say, and most people would say, I'm not good at office politics, we don't want you to be good at office politics. But these are relationships and that means trust is a big part of those relationships. So you have to build them. So to come back, you know that aspect of how to get there where I was in the room, it did take time.

Hank Wethington:

I was at Publis' group for 16 years and so before I even joined within L&D to help that, I had had almost six years at the group level at that point of successes in other areas. So people knew me. As I moved into L&D I had already been working with the C-suite because I was a project manager in marketing for a short amount of time and so working with them on a daily basis. They knew my name. When I went to them they knew that I cared about the outcomes of the company. I knew the business that we were in and I could explain the business. So when we were talking about training. They knew I was coming from a spot where they knew I understood them. That wasn't trying to explain the L&D stuff. I could couch the business with L&D but I needed to speak the business language.

Jay Johnson:

And that, oh my gosh, that is gold. And the reason is is because, if we think of L&D as off on the island, right, it's not a business's job to solely educate their employees or anything else. The business's job is to yes, of course, people and people are the biggest, you know, the best resource that we have but they also have to make money. And if they're investing into the people but not seeing a return on investment, it's just like anything else. It becomes a luxury, not a necessity, which we all, as L&D people, we want it and we know that it should be a necessity, but if it's not producing results, we're not going to have it with the kind of credibility that it needs in order to be the necessity that it should be, absolutely we are not apart from the business.

Hank Wethington:

That's the big thing. We're not apart from it. We're in the business and we should understand the business.

Jay Johnson:

I love that and the way that you articulated hey, you've got the business experience, you've got the experience walking in there. Gosh, if we could all do that as those L&D professionals to really get a better understanding. Obviously, you had a good opportunity with having different positions or different roles before you had transitioned into L&D. How might, if we're to you know I have to make this my last question I'm loving this conversation.

Jay Johnson:

But you know, if I was to ask, how would you encourage any of our trainers or coaches or HR people out there, how would you encourage them to get educated in the business? What would be some things that they could do to maybe learn outside of just their role of HR, or L and D, to get a bigger, broader picture, you know to take that step back and say what is my CEO seeing and what is my, you know, what is the operations unit seeing?

Jay Johnson:

What would be a good way or a recommendation that maybe they could do to give them that broader perspective?

Hank Wethington:

Man, that's such a great question. You know, there's this assumption that I make about L&D people and sometimes I'm wrong and that is that we love learning. You know, and if that's the assumption, that I can sometimes be surprised when someone doesn't want to learn these things. They're just trying to do their job and they may do their job really well. But if you want to take it to another level, we have to continually learn, whether that's through books, you know, if you even audio books, maybe you don't have time to sit down and read a book. I call it. You know you're consuming books instead of reading them sometimes. So we have to be willing to do that. We have to be willing to go have conversations that are uncomfortable, reach out and say, hey, do you have 15 minutes to talk to me about what it is that the accounting department does and what are the needs that you have? I just want 15 minutes and then stick to that timeframe, please. Everybody can spare you 15 minutes. So it's being curious digging in and not having the answers.

Hank Wethington:

Learning as much as you can If you have support from your organization to go take training. You know ATD we've all spoken about ATD before. That is a great organization to get new information. That's where I learned. My instructional design was through them. I was happy when I did that. I knew the concepts, I just didn't have the vocabulary. So take training on your own. Even you know if you can have the company support it.

Hank Wethington:

Talk to people, read books, listen to podcasts like the talent forge. There are other podcasts out there that are L and D focus. I don't want to throw those out, but, like I'm just starting a group called the learning leaders collective and I'm working with my friend Ashley on that, where it's just for L&D leaders, a place for L&D community to connect and learn from each other. So these aspects is this way to connect and learn and dig into the stuff, that, if you don't have the answers, just listen, be curious, and I think that's the number one way forward. But again, that comes from the assumption that we also like learning and we can also be busy.

Jay Johnson:

So yeah, there's that If we're not learning, we're not growing, and if we're not growing, we're probably dying. So I love that. Come at it from a curiosity standpoint. Get out there and have the conversations, Hank. That's absolute gold. How might our audience get in touch with you if they want to learn more about this L&D leaders, or just to even connect with you, Hank? How would they get ahold of you?

Hank Wethington:

The best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I post twice a week. I connect with just about everybody who reaches out. I love the L&D conversations. I do post and talk about the different things that we're struggling with, not just from a coach perspective, but really from a talent perspective. So please feel free to reach out to me and let me know that you heard me here on Talent Forge, so that way I'm not like who is this person. But for the most part I still accept most, unless your title says I help small businesses. You know, add 10 times their income level.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, I don't want to talk to you. You choose 60 new clients by next week.

Hank Wethington:

Those people I tend to turn away. But for the rest of you, if you have L&D in your title, I'm going to just say yes.

Jay Johnson:

So yeah, Amazing Hank. This has been such an insightful conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to be on here with us.

Hank Wethington:

Absolutely and keep making a difference in the L&D world, my friend.

Jay Johnson:

Thank you and thank you audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge. No-transcript.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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