The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

Humanizing HR: Leadership for Everyone with Mandee Bowsmith

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 54

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Leadership doesn't require a fancy title, an MBA, or a corner office. What it does demand is authenticity, communication, and genuine care for the people you work with. This transformative perspective forms the heart of my conversation with Mandee Bowsmith, an HR veteran with over 24 years of experience who's now dedicated to democratizing leadership training.

Mandee's journey from temporary file clerk to HR director offers a refreshing counterpoint to traditional leadership narratives. Throughout our discussion, she challenges the notion that HR departments must function as organizational disciplinarians, advocating instead for "putting humanity back in human resources." Her approach centers on creating environments where employees feel valued, understood, and genuinely supported—not just managed.

Whether you're an HR professional looking to transform your department's reputation, a leader seeking to connect more authentically with your team, or someone who's never seen yourself as leadership material, this conversation offers practical wisdom for bringing more humanity to the workplace. Listen now and discover how clear communication, reasonable compassion, and authentic connection can transform not just your leadership approach, but your entire organization.

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/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of talent development. I am joined today by special guest Mandee Bowsmith. Welcome to the show, Mandee.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here to talk today about talent and HR stuff and leadership stuff.

Jay Johnson:

Love it, so glad that you were able to join us. Can you start by maybe telling our audience a little bit about yourself and how you got into this talent development space?

Mandee Bowsmith:

Sure, I am a I don't know if you want to call it a veteran, but I have been in human resources for over 24 years in government, so I started my career in municipal government at the city of Las Vegas in Nevada.

Jay Johnson:

That had to be fun.

Mandee Bowsmith:

It was interesting. Well, I was born and raised in Vegas, so you know. But city of Las Vegas is certainly an interesting municipality. There's a lot going on within the city jurisdiction and I started my career as a temporary file clerk in the workers' compensation section in HR and worked my way up. I have been an HR director in a city setting and I've also been the head of human resources in a state setting, and recently I made a transition and opened my own coaching and consulting firm where I'm focused on government leaders, but leadership in general, trying to bring leadership to the masses, if you will.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. No, that's incredible, bringing leadership to the masses. So I want to dig in on something that you said there, because one of the things you know when people when general people think of HR, they think of the hey, I need you to come down to my office right, like they think of who's processing my payroll. And one of the things that I've learned over the course of my career is that sometimes the actual aspects of HR and the aspects of talent development are very, very separated, and sometimes talent is under HR, sometimes it's completely separate. You are navigating a space where you've been in the HR or the director of HR positions and also are doing talent development. Can you maybe speak to that just a little bit? What's that transition look like? Or was it always sort of a natural thing for you to kind of have a foot in both of those worlds? What does that look like for Mandee?

Mandee Bowsmith:

Actually, you know, the funny thing is is early in my career. So at city of Las Vegas, the, the training and development group is under human resources.

Mandee Bowsmith:

So, to me, it's natural for for the to be the place that it lives, and it's weird when it's external, from from human resources, but it seems to me that human resources, as a discipline and as a department, is an organization's only one true internal services department. Right, this is the department that is set up and is supposed to be the one that employees can lean on for help to get questions answered to. You know, hey, I don't know about my health insurance, what about this? Or, hey, can I take this class? Or whatever, and HR is supposed to be the people who help employees, you know, get rid of those little worries so they can go off and do the job that they were hired to do. A lot of times, though and over the course of my career, it's been, it's been true HR has a bad rap, because the perception is that we are the bad guys.

Jay Johnson:

Because a lot of times right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

We're the bad cop right, and part of that I will offer, part of that is a leadership problem, because a lot of what we see are people who are in positions of leadership who are not comfortable with conflict, they're not comfortable with conflict resolution and they don't have those skills and so they would rather push it off onto an HR person to, you know, do the dirty work per se.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Rather than trying to handle the situation themselves and you know there's a lot of nuance, of course to human resources, nothing we do is black and white. It is 7 million shades of gray. You can have the same set of facts and have a completely different situation in front of you, and the variable there is the human right, absolutely.

Mandee Bowsmith:

One of the things in Blue Note Resources, which is the firm that I opened, one of my goals, along with leadership and helping leaders become more human leaders, is putting the humanity back in human resources, showing people that human resources is not the place where somebody goes when they're in trouble. It's not the principal's office, right. It's a place where you can go and get questions answered. It's also a place where you can be listened to. I've learned that nine times out of 10, you have a problem employee and they're just not performing. Something is going on. Usually, they just want to be listened to. Something is happening right, either something with a coworker, something with, say, software. They're using something with a project they're working on. They just want to be listened to and if you give them 20 minutes of your time, they typically, it course, corrects itself right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

So putting the humanity back in HR and back in leadership is how I believe we can help. Number one, help our employees to do the best that they can do every day for whatever organization we're talking about. But also, number two, to really bring a sense of belonging and understanding to employees in an organization. Because you spend most of your time at work, why not make it a place where people understand how they fit, where people understand what they're contributing to the bottom line and where they're happy to spend most of their day. Where they're happy to spend most of their day.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and I love what you're bringing up there, right, because connection is one of the things that we all need to find at work and we don't always think about it that way. But if we don't feel connected, valued, seen, we disengage, we pull back, eventually we become disgruntled and eventually we say, hey, I'm not part of this tribe anymore and we leave. And it's a huge issue right now, you know, with quiet, quitting, disengagement and turnover. I mean, these are things that big companies, every single company that I'm working with this is what keeps their leadership up at night. And I want to go back to what you said about this being a challenge with leadership, because I think that's a really important piece to kind of go on here. How have you and let's take this one more step down the road? You're right and I know this and you know this and anybody, any of our listeners in the HR world know this it is a difficult transition to get employees to say, no, I'm actually here to help you.

Jay Johnson:

I truly believe that people that are coming into HR, they want to help people.

Jay Johnson:

They don't want to be the stick per se, they don't want to be the enforcer, the gatekeeper or anything else, but that's often, you're right, they get pigeonholed into that position.

Jay Johnson:

But most of the people that I've ever interacted with in HR are truly committed, caring people that want to see both the team, the people individually and the organization thrive and survive and to be a place that everybody wants to work at.

Jay Johnson:

I don't think anybody's ever, you know, joined HR, twisting their mustache, sitting in the back, going, how can I really screw over my employees today? So, despite all of that because there is this sort of balance of having to sometimes play that role of the bad cop and in other cases going, hey, come to this training or come to this development opportunity and people going, okay, you just, you just were the person that had to threaten me four minutes ago and now you want me to come to the party now, right, how did you balance that? How did you sort of create the conditions of trust and connection amongst the people to say, okay, yeah, it's almost like you know the parent, that they can discipline you, but they're also going to show you that love and kindness and care. How did you navigate that? Because I think that's going to be something really interesting to any of our HR folks listening.

Mandee Bowsmith:

You know for myself and people have told me that I am not normal Me too, my entire life I have a very simple philosophy in terms of human resources and in terms of how I work, and it's difficult in government, right, but my philosophy is do what's right, not what's easy, Because if it's easy, I can guarantee you in government it ain't right, right. The way that government is set up, everything is a slog, everything is hard, and so if you have found something to do, that's easy, it's wrong.

Jay Johnson:

Mandee in a past life. It really feels like a past life at this point in time. I was an elected official in my local municipality of 50,000 people and I 1,000% agree with you. If it's easy, you miss something.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Something is wrong.

Jay Johnson:

You miss something. So. I love that Keep going.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Yeah, no people, people laugh at me, but it's true, right, it do what's right, not what's easy. But not only that. I believe wholly in authenticity and it did. And I'll tell you, jay, it took me a while to come to who my authentic self was as an HR professional, but I'm a straight shooter.

Mandee Bowsmith:

When people work with me, they know that what they're going to get from me is the truth. They're going to get the truth, they're going to get exactly what's going on, and, but they're going to get it in a way that's respectful. And but they're going to get it in a way that's respectful and that is and it wasn't always kind either right, like cause. Sometimes you do have to be sort of hard-nosed about what's happening, but I, I was the. I was the kind of leader within the organization where people knew exactly what they were going to get from me. So if they came to me to ask me a question or if they wanted to know, you know, hey, why am I getting this poor performance report? They knew I was going to give them the straight dope every time, and what that bought me was I'm going to.

Jay Johnson:

I'm going to, I'm going to get something that you said there real quick, because you mentioned that it might not be kind, but I think that is kind and I'm going to lean straight into Brene Brown's words on this Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. And while it may be direct or while it may be hard to hear the fact that you're not sugar, I think that is a kindness and I think that speaks a lot to your character, Mandee, because when we are in that situation where it is easier for us to say, gosh, I could sugarcoat this, I could make this a little lighter. Or I'm going to have to tell you hey, you know, jay, you've got a booger on your nose. You're probably going to want to fix that. That may not feel kind to tell me, but trust me in my heart of hearts, I need to know this.

Mandee Bowsmith:

You know, and so please continue on that.

Jay Johnson:

But I just I really think that that's important, and I think it's important for our audience. Being clear is an act of kindness, and you can do that in an authentic way, in a kind way. Right, we don't have to come in there with a bat of truth, right and.

Mandee Bowsmith:

I think that's one of the things in terms of leadership that I there. There are all these myths, right Right there. There's all this myth of surrounding what a leader is, who a leader is, what kind of person can be a leader, and you know, with all due respect to the establishment, I think it's bull, Because I think that anybody can be a leader. I think that anybody can learn the concepts of being a leader. In my own leadership role, I tried my best to number one, connect with everybody who was a subordinate to me, understand who they were, how they fit in the puzzle of the organization and what they did, because then I understood what was going on and if there were problems, let's say, in payroll, I was over payroll. If there were problems in payroll, I could have a better understanding of what those problems were and then be able to relay them to, let's say, a customer that was having a hard time. I mean, one of the things that I did and this sounds so sort of silly and I had peers of mine tell me that it was a poor choice to do this but I spent a week as the front desk person in payroll answering the phone, doing the mail, trying to distribute the stuff, and the reason was twofold. Number one because they were short-staffed and they just needed to get payroll out and I was trying to help lighten the load in any way I could right. The second part was then I understood. I understood the volume of phone calls they get. I understood the volume of snail mail they get. I understood the volume of snail mail they get. I understood the volume of email, and then I could fight for them with my bosses about we need more people, we need more resources, we need this, we need that right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

If you're a leader who refuses to get in the trenches with your people and understand what your teams are really doing, you're not a leader, you're just somebody collecting a paycheck in a position of faux power.

Mandee Bowsmith:

And I think that that's one of the things that is really important for me to show in the work that I'm doing now in some classes that I'm creating is leadership is not where you went to college. Leadership is not the clothes you wear. Leadership is not power, it's not authority, it is communication, it is clarity and it is reasonable compassion for the people who work for you. And if you show your team clarity, if you are clear in your vision, if you are clear in where the organization is going and you're clear in how they fit and you can articulate that and you're communicating with them as much as possible and giving them as much information as they're going to need to do their jobs and do it well and to feel like they're part of what's going on. And if you are reasonably compassionate about when things come up because we all have kids, we all have parents, we all have things that come up in life people will follow you anywhere you lead.

Jay Johnson:

There's so much to unpack there, Mandee, and incredibly stated. First, I want to acknowledge the fact that you went to the front lines, because this is something. Have you ever heard of the concept of a Gemba walk, G-E-M-B-A? It's a Japanese philosophy. This is one of the things that I actually ask a lot of leaders to do, especially in the manufacturing side of things, and what it is is. It's literally getting out onto the floor and walking the floor and being with each of the employees, spending time at their station, not overseeing them, not looking over their shoulder, but trying to understand what is your job, look like, what are the challenges that you're facing, and getting out there and actually seeing what is happening in those different positions. The fact that you did that and sat in that position for a week what kind of empathy that must have generated to say, hey, I just walked a mile in your shoes, I get it, Let me have some conversation. Or I just walked a mile in your shoes and maybe there's some things that we could improve on this side that would help you be more effective. But now you've got that kind of position of credibility by leading by example. So we're going to go down this leadership pathway. But I really appreciate that.

Jay Johnson:

You said that when I was working, I used to be a member I guess I'm an alumni member, I've aged out but the Junior Chamber International, which services young leaders between the ages of 18 and 40, I was the local chapter president and we were launching a community garden and I remember the supervisor had come out at that time and was like Jay, like I thought you were leading this project and I'm sitting there and I'm fingers in the dirt and I'm digging everything up and everything else. And I was like I am. And they were like, well, why aren't you kind of like overseeing this? I was like, well, people know what to do, They've been decentralized, they have their decision-making capacity. So I'm needed here and I'm going to get my hands dirty. And it was funny because the supervisor kind of like sat down and got down on their knees and started doing the same thing that I was doing. But I always believed that as the leader, I was going to be the last one to set down the rake and I was going to be the first one to pick up the back. You know, if I could do that then I could lead with a place of empathy and authenticity, that I wasn't going to ask somebody to do something that I wasn't willing to do myself. So I love that you got in there.

Jay Johnson:

Let's talk about leadership. Let's get into this, because you are launching a program for every person. You know anybody out there. You had mentioned earlier sort of leadership for the masses. I really love that. You should make that your slogan. Let's talk about's talk about that. What, why, what inspired you to think about creating programs for and I love the concept because I agree everybody is a leader of their own lives, is a leader of their own station, is a leader of their own family, and that doesn't matter whether you, what gender, what title, what role you can be a leader if you take ownership. So what inspired you to go down this pathway, to really kind of focus on it? Because you see a lot of leadership programs. They're focused on executive teams and they're focused on this. But what inspired this?

Mandee Bowsmith:

It really comes down to the experiences that I had, and part of it, you know, comes down to the experiences that I had, and part of it being a government kid, being an HR kid in government. Government waxes and wanes, especially municipal government, and in Nevada in particular, it has a lot to do with property. You know property revenues and you know when you're in city of Las Vegas there are a lot of casinos and there's taxes that go along with the casinos. And if the casinos are doing well, then the city does well in terms of revenue and taxes and things like that. But but in downtimes, right, you don't do so well. What's the first thing that every organization cuts when things start to go a little south? Training.

Jay Johnson:

Training. And then after that marketing. And, by the way, my company does training and marketing Right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Exactly. And then if you get that money back because it's not always a guarantee that you're going to get that money back in the next budget cycle, but if you get that money back then it seems to be cherry picked about who is allowed to access those funds. Who are we going to choose? Because it's kind of like that weird popularity contest, right? Who are we going to choose to go take the leadership training, going to choose to go take the leadership training? And you know what's funny is I have my oldest son is a freshman in high school this year and I was thinking about my high school experience and, like you know, how I could try to help him have a great time in high school, and I was also thinking about this leadership thing because I wanted to also do something that's aimed more at his age group. And I thought to myself wait a minute. I can remember the student council kids in high school. They got leadership training but nobody else did, right? So if you wanted to be a part of this specific group, you got the training, but it wasn't a normal curricular lesson that was taught. You know, you didn't get it in English class, you didn't get it in history class, you didn't get it in government, surprisingly. And I thought, well, why is that? And then I thought further well, that's been the way it's been throughout my whole professional career as well. Right, people are identified for one reason or another and they're put forward as leaders and so we groom them and everybody else sort of is back here.

Mandee Bowsmith:

But what I've also noticed is that, through my own sort of journey and trying to figure out who I was and what kind of a professional I was and what I wanted to do, I'm the kind of person who I will pay for my own training because I love learning, I love academia, I love learning.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Knowledge is like my thing. But there are a lot of people, especially government workers, believe it or not, that can't afford $250 for a webinar, they can't afford $300 for some course and they're never going to have a Harvard MBA. But that does not mean that they are not good leadership material and perhaps that leadership, perhaps that's shown in their daily work with their peers, right. Perhaps that's shown on projects. Perhaps that's shown even like in, like your fun committee or your birthday committee or your, you know, whatever your organization has. People are leaders in different ways and it manifests itself in different ways. So if we give people the tools, if they're accessible, then pardon me then they can lead. My idea is to create courses online courses for people that are both accessible, because they're online, and affordable, because that affordability factor is really important, you know a lot of families don't have $350 to throw around for a leadership course.

Mandee Bowsmith:

So I apologize, my goodness, that's okay. So that's what I'm trying to do is build accessible, affordable leadership for everybody, for the masses. Anybody can take the course. There are no prerequisites, and what I'm looking for are people who want to learn and people who maybe they have a desire to lead, or maybe they take my course and they're like I'm not doing that. That's perfectly good too.

Jay Johnson:

Right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

But at least you know.

Jay Johnson:

I, I, I love that and here's here's part of the reason why is one of my absolute favorite things in the world and and this is having. So I served as an international vice president for JCI, actually, and I was assigned to Europe and I remember being in. I spent 140 days traveling across the Nordic countries and the Baltic countries giving talks and doing leadership training, et cetera. And the number of times that I heard somebody come to me and say I'm not a leader, and I'm just like, really, let's have a conversation, let's unpack that. What makes a leader then? What does it look like and how does that function? And what designates you not being a leader and not comfortable with leadership. And literally, by the time that we finished some of these conversations and I pointed out, hey, you did this, you made these decisions, you did X, y and Z, you're doing this. Isn't that leadership? Isn't that the kind of leadership that you would like? And you could see this little light go off, one of the questions that I'm gonna come back to. I'm gonna mention one other thing, but I'm gonna come back to how will you maybe support people that have that mentality of, well, I'm not a leader, these courses aren't going to be for me. So that's the question I'm going to stick with. But I do want to go back to something else that you said and I think it's so important.

Jay Johnson:

Right now I am running the elite training Academy, which is a coaching program for trainers and coaches, and one of the big things that I'm trying to get through and successfully getting through is the mindset of training is a luxury in the mind of leadership and when you're a trainer, that's hard to swallow. I am a trainer, I've been training for 20 years. That's hard to swallow. I love learning too. Mandee, I absolutely will sign up to anything that I can. I'm certified in a hundred things. I do certifications, I do coachings with other trainers. I love learning and I just love the experience of it.

Jay Johnson:

No-transcript development. We need to think like that because we need to be showing the return on investment of putting money into our people, paying for those $250 webinars, bringing in that speaker, bringing in that knowledge base, etc. So I love that you brought that up because I mean it is so consistent with the things that I'm trying to convey. It's really refreshing to hear somebody go, yep, hey, you know, that's the first thing to go, and I am literally seeing that happening. Actually, this is kind of a scary trend. I'm seeing that happening now in a lot of organizations, of them saying our budget's been cut for the end of the year. We've put a pause on all of our training programs until-.

Mandee Bowsmith:

People are getting scared again yeah.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Yep, exactly One of the things so in government and I apologize, I don't really know how it works in government and and you know I apologize, I don't really know how it works in private sector, but I'm sure it's very similar in government. When you, let, let's say, I asked for a new position as the HR director, um, I would have to justify the reason that I want that position. Right, so they're going to do ABC and D, blah, blah, blah. And then then there are that position right, so they're going to do A, b, c and D, blah, blah, blah. And then there are costs associated, right? So there's the base salary that the individual would earn. And then there are fringe costs, right, like group health insurance and workers' compensation insurance and FICA and all that stuff that's factored in.

Mandee Bowsmith:

My argument is okay, stop budgeting for training as a separate line item. Put it in your person cost. That is what it costs for that human Salary. Professional development fringe it's already there, it can't be cut. And so each individual has X amount of money per fiscal year to engage in professional development. Now there are going to be people who are like, nope, I come to work, I do my job, I go home, I got nothing. Fine, that's fine If you do it that way. If that's the way you budget, so it's rolled into the person cost, then it's not something that can be cut and that's something that I've been advocating for a number of years now in terms of how, in my past professional positions, look roll it into the person number right, because what we're asking for is a drop in its budget dust. Right In comparison to a state budget or a city budget or even you know what about-.

Jay Johnson:

We're talking. Millions of dollars, millions of dollars.

Mandee Bowsmith:

We're talking about specks of dust for professional development. Talking about specks of dust for professional development and and there there still is this we perpetuate it. I think we perpetuate the myth of what leadership looks like, because that's what it looks like on the national scale. That's what we see in the news, right? We see usually older men, they're usually Caucasian, they're usually in suits, right? Telling us what we should think, how we should feel. You know those kinds of things, and they're assuming what we equate with a leadership role, and I'm and part of my message is part of the reason that we dress up those folks is because they're not leaders. They look good, but they're not leaders, right. And so a leader doesn't have to look like that. They don't have to have an MBA, they don't even have to have a bachelor's degree, in fact, right, have a bachelor's degree in fact, right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Do you care? Do you care about what you're doing? Do you care about your team? Do you care about the end result and that that end result can be replicated so that you can do the business that you have to do In government? Our business is helping our constituency, right? Whatever that looks like, the best person for a leadership role is usually not the person they put into that role, because in government we have civil service, we have certain merit-based things. The guy who's been a plumber for 30 years. He's been an amazing plumber, it's great. But just because he's the last guy standing doesn't mean he should be in charge of your public works department now right and yeah, you're so spot on, and I think it's so important.

Jay Johnson:

You know when somebody when. The way that we perceive leadership, I think, is really interesting. Now, I grew up on the lower middle class rung. On the lower middle class rung, it wasn't quite poverty, but definitely a family of five siblings. My dad was a tool and dye maker. Sometimes the industry was great, sometimes not so great. My mom worked in a lunchroom to add value.

Jay Johnson:

I'm first generation college and I had no intention of going to college, and it's really interesting, though, that even through my development, I found myself being the president of the debate team, the captain of my hockey team, and so on and so forth, and there was points in times where everybody on my hockey team was driving something like a Lexus or a BMW. And there's my 1989 Chevrolet Nova with the doors falling off and it's just like, but they still looked at me as their leader, and I think that it's what you're speaking to is behavior. It's because of showing up in a particular way, putting the needs of the team ahead of my own, making sure that you see those different pieces. So there are people out there that exhibit those qualities, and then they look at themselves and go, but I'm not a leader, I'm not a leader.

Jay Johnson:

And they do literally everything that a leader should be doing. I know we're nearing the end of our time here for our episode, but I'd love for you to dig in on that a little bit. How do you get them to see themselves as a leader? And then how would they benefit from, you know, maybe taking some of these types of courses, or or developing that skills or those behaviors?

Mandee Bowsmith:

So the first thing I would say is, if you have somebody who is who you're seeing, has leadership qualities and and they seem to shy away from them, give them a little more leadership responsibility. See what they do with it, right, because some people do want to lead, they just don't know how to get into it.

Jay Johnson:

Or don't have the confidence, or they don't have the confidence, they don't even step in.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Yeah, sure, right. So I had somebody that I'm thinking of right now that I just I gave her a little more responsibility, pushed her just, gently, nudged her in that direction and she just blew it out of the park because it was instinctual, right. And I think that that's something to acknowledge too. You're, you're being the president of the club or the, you know, the captain of the hockey team and things like that. The president of the club or the captain of the hockey team and things like that. Some people have natural charisma and people are drawn to them and they're able to lead because there's a natural ability.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Not everybody has that natural ability and so if you have somebody that you see is taking on leadership roles like, maybe they're the one in meetings that when you're having a group meeting and you're trying to get a team update, they're the one in meetings that you know when you're having a group meeting and you're trying to get a team update, they're the one that always talks right, you know like or, or the one that's always prompting, the one that always talks. You know, you can see, start throwing things at them, start talking to them about. Where do they see themselves in the organization in five years? What do they see themselves doing? Have they ever thought about a leadership role? And if not, why? Is it because there's a fear? Is it because you feel like you may be rejected? Because that's always a big fear for us as humans. The other thing is then I would start to work with them and filter some of the leadership things.

Mandee Bowsmith:

You know, when you're in a leadership role, you tend to get a lot of newsletters and a lot of articles sent to you by companies who want your business and stuff. I would I filter those to that person. Hey, take a look at this let's talk about, let's have a cup of coffee and talk about what this Love, that, what you think about this. The other thing that I want to say, this sort of goes back to the idea of rolling professional development costs into the person cost In HR. In America, in the United States, we have certain mandatory courses that we, you know by federal law. A new employee has to take drug alcohol awareness right. They have to take sexual harassment prevention right and awareness courses. They usually have to take some kind of onboarding policy procedure. Whatever, make a leadership course part of the mandatory onboarding requirements, because then what you're doing is you're setting that employee up for success because they're understanding the leadership philosophy of the organization number one. They understand the words you use to articulate that philosophy and they can make decisions Wow.

Jay Johnson:

Huge.

Mandee Bowsmith:

I might be able to be a leader. I would like to pursue this and give them the tools to be able to approach their supervisors and managers to say, hey, I think I want to take more leadership courses because I think this is something I can do and I can translate this into my everyday work with my team and this can be a better place my everyday work with my team and this can be a better place. So, to address the question before, just sort of to wrap that up, engage in dialogue, right? One of the things that I used to do was I had 15 minute every week with my immediate circle. 15 minutes a week. We don't have to talk about work. We can talk about your kid's soccer game, I don't care, but we're connecting one-on-one yes.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Yes, and we're relating to each other and and I, you know, a lot of HR professionals will tell you not to give too much personal. In fact, I just read an article from business insider that that an HR professional said don't share too much personal information with your coworkers or with your teams. You know, yes, yes, I get that. But you know what People want to know, like they want to know that I have three sons. They want to know that my kids play soccer and lacrosse. And they want to ask me hey, how was the lacrosse game this weekend? Right? And they want me to ask them hey, how was, how was your your son'sse game this weekend? Right? And they want me to ask them hey, how is? How is your your son's baseball game this weekend? How is your daughter's baseball game this weekend?

Mandee Bowsmith:

They want people want connection. They want connection especially in a post-COVID environment.

Jay Johnson:

And here's what I have seen. If I take a group of 100 employees, of course you're going to have a couple that are like I don't need to know anything about anybody at work and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I, when I see that, I literally will look at that person and just think to myself what is it that they are uncomfortable with being vulnerable about? Because that's the person inside of that organization that is going to struggle, that is going to be sometimes the center of conflict, when you have vulnerability or shared vulnerabilities with each other and I'm not saying go out and tell all of the dirty details of your life, but I mean being authentic and being a human and connecting at that human level they need to know.

Jay Johnson:

Exactly.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Reasonable compassion, exactly Reasonable compassion, and really it's that authenticity and that, oh, Mandee knows who I am. Mandee cares about me.

Jay Johnson:

Mandee not looking at me like a number, that is somebody that can be cut the first time that budget comes along. Yes, absolutely.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Exactly, and it's uncomfortable For a lot of people. It's uncomfortable because there's a certain mindset that typically lends to leadership, at least historically. And yeah, I mean, it's certainly in some cutthroat businesses, absolutely. But the truth is we are humans, we are not robots, and even with AI, we're still gonna to be humans doing the stuff.

Jay Johnson:

Right, that's right.

Mandee Bowsmith:

You have got to bring humanity and you have got to let people know that they matter within an organization, that they matter to you, because that is the number one thing. If somebody knows they matter, if somebody knows you care as a leader, they're I said it before they're gonna follow you anywhere. They're gonna do 110% for you every single day.

Jay Johnson:

Powerful insight. Mandee, how would our audience, if they want to get in touch with you, if they want to learn about these programs, how should they reach out to you?

Mandee Bowsmith:

I would love to talk to anybody who wants to talk about this. I would certainly love to be able to. I also do in-person training. I'm working on this asynchronous course. I do coaching. I do consulting. You can find me at bluenoteresourcescom. I'm on Twitter under Blue Note Resources and I'm also on Facebook under Blue Note Resources.

Jay Johnson:

Amazing Mandee, Thank you so much for joining us here today. It has been an absolute pleasure. I know this is a little bit longer episode, but I thought it was so powerful that we just needed to dig in on some of those issues. So thank you for your time and energy for joining me today.

Mandee Bowsmith:

Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it very much.

Jay Johnson:

My absolute pleasure. So, and thank you, audience, for listening to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of talent development.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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