In this episode of the NextGen Work Culture podcast, host Kortney Ross sits down with Matt Gjertsen, founder of Better Everyday Studios, to delve into the intricacies of leadership in the modern workplace. Matt shares insights from his rich background as a former US Air Force instructor pilot and leader of the training development team at SpaceX. They discuss the essential shift new managers must make from individual contributors to effective team leaders, the importance of understanding employees on a personal level, and the evolving needs of a family-friendly work culture. Tune in to learn how you can build trust, foster psychological safety, and support working parents in a post-COVID world. Whether you're a new manager, an experienced leader, or anyone looking to improve workplace dynamics, this episode offers valuable perspectives and practical advice.

Connect with today's guest:

Matt Gjertsen is the founder of Better Every Day Studios and is on a mission to help companies develop managers to lead high performing teams. He began his career as an Air Force Instructor Pilot and then became the Manager of Training and Development for SpaceX. After SpaceX, Matt joined a global technology start-up and then founded Better Every Day Studios to help close the new leader skill gap at aerospace and technology companies.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewgjertsen/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6sHpKEkdnD0-VKOIBAxcMA

https://www.bettereverydaystudios.com/

Connect with us at:

KortneyRoss.com

LinkedIn: @kortneyross

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Welcome to the NextGen Work Culture podcast, where leaders learn

to support working parents, because being a family friendly

business isn't just a nice to have anymore. It's

essential for businesses that want to stay competitive, and it is

critical for the next generation and those who are raising them. I'm

your host, Courtney Ross, and I am so glad that you're here.

Welcome back to the NextGen Work Culture podcast. Today I'm

talking with Matt Jersey. Matt, welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, I'm excited

to talk with you. So first, could you tell us a little bit about who

you are, what you do? Yeah, totally. I am the

founder of a company called Better Everyday Studios, where we

help, like, to say, we help great engineers become great

managers. Really? That kind of applies to every employee. We've really focused in on that.

That new manager transition piece and helping people make, make that

transition. My background in a past life, I was a instructor pilot

in the US Air Force for about a decade, and then I led the training

development team at SpaceX for about four, four

and a half years. So, spent a lot of time around engineers, working

with engineers, and so that's kind of where. Where we ended up today.

Yeah. Cool. And I'm guessing that's why we've got a spaceship blasting off behind

you in the background. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, I'm a huge space nut, so I got the space thing over here.

I got a little plane model over in the corner, so.

Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. That's great. So you

help new managers out and becoming. Cause I know a lot of times

somebody is promoted because they're a really good individual contributor, and then they have

no idea what they're doing as a leader. Right. So we're kind of helping them

get their footing and become a good leader as well. So when somebody

first takes over a new team, what are the kinds of things they should really

be, like, thinking about? Yeah, I mean, I think especially for. For

your audience and your. And your topics. You know, the biggest thing that I say

is, when you become a new manager, the shift is it goes from being

all about you to being nothing about you. Right. It's not about you anymore.

When you're an individual contributor, the focus is how do you produce the most?

How do you get the most work done? And as soon as you're a manager,

it's how do you get a group of people to get the most done? How

do you get your team to get the most done? And I think

it's historically or just. I don't know, over time, I feel

like we've spent a lot of time talking about, like, the productivity

aspect of that. Is everybody working efficiently? Is everybody doing the right

thing? But especially since COVID there's been a

big shift in really focusing on the individuals and the

well being. And it's. I'm sure it's. That's always been there from. From a

leadership perspective, but I think it's a big focus today of

really. And there's any. But, you know, you can read Amy Edmondson's work on

psychological safety, and there's just so much work out there that if you want to

create a high performing team, it's about

creating, having trust and interconnectedness amongst

that team. And that, you know, any trusting relationship means

you got to get to know people. You got to understand people, where they're at,

where they're coming from. And I think that's one of the challenges that

a lot of high performers, you know, quote unquote high performers

have when they get promoted is at least. At least in my background. You know,

I'm coming from a very, you know, tech kind of startup world

background where a lot of those high performers getting promoted really

quickly are single or without

kids or, you know, like, they're. They're moving forward quickly

because they've made their whole life work,

and there's a lot of understanding

that needs to happen of that's not

everybody on your team. You know, people have families, people

have lives. That's a good thing. And if you don't

understand that, if you don't take the time to try to understand that and shift

some of your ways of thinking, you're just gonna, like, try to

steamroll people, and it's not gonna. Not gonna turn out very well. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that maybe the steamrolling worked a little better in

the past or just kind of micromanaging the heck out

of people or, like, coming down with an iron fist, maybe that was the management

style of decades ago, but it doesn't necessarily work anymore.

I don't know that it ever really worked. Yeah. You know, people are expecting

different now. Yeah. I mean, you go back to. I

mean, there's so much. You know, you go back to the fifties and sixties, and

it was just. The expectation was, is that whoever was working normally,

the guy just didn't have anything else to worry about,

and the wife just stayed back and did all the

kids stuff, and that was just. Just the. That's just what it was.

And so if you did need to, you know, so if you needed to go,

if work late on your shift or go get drinks after work

or whatever it was, the culture said, like, that's just fine.

And then as that no longer was the case as we got into the

seventies and eighties and nineties, and it was weird in that

that was less and less true. But for some reason, so

many organizations still saw

it as, like, not their responsibility

to deal with any of that stuff. And you as the individual

person, you as the parent, whatever, your family

situation, just had to figure it out. And that kind

of kept ratcheting up. And, yeah, I think,

you know, as with so many things, Covid just broke

that open as it just. It got ratcheted up to a point

where it was just completely unsustainable. You

know, I was. What was that? In March of 2020,

my daughter was five,

and, you know, or she was actually, she was four at the start, so she

was in preschool. And so trying to figure

out, you know, Zoom preschool was,

like, a joke. And trying to do that preschool

on Zoom? Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that sounds

crazy. It's crazy. And trying

to. We. I mean, we ended up quitting after a couple weeks is like, it's

more of a challenge to try to, like, monitor this than to just,

like, monitor our child. And. But then even going into

kindergarten, kindergarten, they still did that doing, you know, I was in. We're in

California, and so just, like, everything was shut down forever. Like,

it was like, you know, it took them, like, two and a half years to

reopen the schools. And so it was

just so impossible to try

to be a, like, full time, at home parent

and yet also be at a place where it's like, no, you should be working

16 hours a day because the whole world's burning down and, oh, my gosh, what

are we going to do? That everybody just kind of said, I quit,

you know, and so now to bring it, you know, back to today. So I

think that's where it just kind of opened it up to, like, oh, we need

to think about these things and talk about these things. Yeah, yeah, I

think, you know, we had childcare and school all shutting down, and

then, like, it never really recovered. So childcare is

still, like, a crisis. We're still in a situation there for a

lot of people. And, you know, the struggle was just kind

of brought to the surface where people had to pay attention. Even

if you didn't have kids, you were seeing everyone else's kids jumping on their

Zoom call or whatever because they're trying to work in parent at the same time.

And I think everyone kind of saw it all of a sudden. Yeah,

it had been a problem for decades. Like you said, women started

entering the workforce. It became more common. Seventies, eighties, nineties, we don't

have that just single income household anymore. But the workplace didn't

catch up, and it was just the parents problem to

go home, figure it out. I say in

a lot of my presentations or talks to hr people about

changing the culture and not allowing that older generation to be like,

well, back in my day, I missed every one of her soccer games because I

was at work till 09:00. It's like, well, good for you. Great.

What's your relationship like with that child now? You know,

because you missed out on half their, you know,

childhood, and we have parents that don't want to do that now. We want to

do better, and we want to be more present parents and good

employees, and we should be able to do both.

Yes, that's the hope. And I think, too, the other thing that, you know, the

more recent times have brought to light, I think at least with the, you know,

with the millennial generation and going on, is it's

like the promise used to be that, like, maybe

it was worth making those sacrifices because at the end of the day,

everything would be provided for. And now it feels like we're in a world where

even if you make those sacrifices, it doesn't necessarily mean everything's going to be provided

for. So it's just not worth making those sacrifices. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. I think real people are starting to realize that they're more

replaceable at work than we like to, like to think that we

are, you know, with layoffs and

whatever, we realize that, you know, life is not all about work

and that we need to be committed to things outside of

just our workplace and, you know, be more present in other

areas, too. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So for the managers

who are maybe new to their role or

perhaps don't have kids of their own, or their kids are old

and grown and they haven't thought about it in a while, I mean, how can

they, you know, kind of be a better, more supportive

leader for those young parents or the people who are kind

of in the trenches of childcare and newborns and sleep deprivation

and all of that? Yeah. Yeah. I

mean, I think the biggest thing, kind of how we

started is getting to know folks as people and not as

coworkers. And that can be. I understand that can be

somewhat controversial sometimes because, you know, not everybody wants to

bring their whole selves to work. They like to have that, that little bit of

separation. And so it's not like you need to

force every employee to tell you their deepest, darkest secrets,

but engaging with them on a level that

they're prepared for, of just kind of asking them basic questions

of, you know, what are you doing? What are you doing

this weekend? Like, what? How are things going? You know,

what books are you into? What? Understanding the things that they

care about in their lives. Because chances are there are many things in

their lives that they care about a lot more than work. I remember

I had an employee on one team who she was really into

Larping, like live action role play. And she would

go out to on the weekends and do the whole big.

They take over a field and do a whole big role playing thing.

When she'd talk about it, she would just open up and

be like so excited and energized. And

when you can develop a relationship with somebody that taps

in to those things they care about, like this happened to me just the other

day at a networking dinner where people got me talking about. About

Sci-fi and Sci-fi books. And I'm just like,

I just open up and I'm just like so impassioned and excited

about it. If you can tap into that with your workers, it's

really. It's really great. So I think that's the first thing is connecting with people

kind of on that level, of what are the things that they care about? And

then I'll borrow another element that I'm going to mess it

up. But it's an idea from Kim Scott's book Radical

Candor. I'm pretty sure that's where it comes from.

Where she kind of separates employees

into a couple different types of employees where even high performing

employees, like, like there's the diff and I forget the names, but it's basically

like people who are like on the superstar

trajectory of like, this is my number one focus

versus people who are doing good work, but their career is

not their focus at that point in time. And I think

understanding that that's normal and okay, that seasons to

life are normal and okay, and that you can have excellent

and amazing workers who are

just trying to do their 8 hours because this is a time in their life

where they are trying to be a parent and you know,

realizing that understanding what are the needs of the role

and how is it. How can that person best fit into those needs of their

role and that it doesn't only need to be. I am 100% totally

focused here. I think not classifying, but

just, like, thinking about workers in kind of those different. What's. What phase of

their life are they. Are they in? Is. Can also be helpful. Yeah.

Yeah. And realizing that that phase may not necessarily last forever

and they're going to go through phases, I'm assuming, kind

of very committed to work, and then maybe something else comes up and

then very committed to work, and then something else comes up and, you know, it

may change over the course of their career. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.

And having. And that's where I think that's the most important thing

about why it's important to connect with people on, like, what's most important

to them is because it serves as that foundation for a deep relationship

of trust where you can have these honest conversations, because I'm

sure you. Maybe I may be, like, many

listeners probably go through times where they're kind of trying

to hide the fact that there's something going on. You know, they

have somebody in their family that's sick, and they need to really

focus on that. It's maybe only going to be for a couple weeks or a

couple months, but they really need to focus on that, and they're bending over backwards

trying to hide that fact. And, like. And then. And

then they're not fully committed or seeming fully committed at work.

So you, as the boss, are, like, frustrated with them and all these things, and.

And it just creates all this tension when it. When it doesn't need to be

there. They were a great worker. They're still a great worker. They will be a

great worker. The only challenge is you can't have these open

conversations about what's going on. So, yes. Does it. Does it

always need to come back to, what are the requirements for the role? And can

a person fulfill those requirements for the role? I mean, unfortunately, yes,

that is what happens. And there are situations that can

come up in people's lives where, like, this isn't gonna work out

anymore. And, you know, I mean, that. I mean, I used to work at SpaceX.

Like, SpaceX just is a place where, like, the

expectation is crazy high and, like, if you're

trying to not focus, if you really have lots of other

stuff going on and you don't want to push a lot into work, I don't

know if that's the right place for you to work and that. And that's okay.

But there's a lot of gray area there. There's a lot

of wiggle room where people can be very committed get a lot of great stuff

done and not have to feel this guilt or shame because there's something

going on in their life. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of. I mean, you could

have this, like, season, like a push season at work, you know,

but then you might also sometimes have this push season at home where you really

need to. To focus on somebody or something that's going on,

and that might make you seem like a lesser

employee, quote unquote lesser for the time being. And,

you know, if the manager doesn't know what's going on, I can see where they

would feel like it's a productivity issue or something is

happening that's frustrating and they don't understand why all of a sudden you're not performing

the same as you were or dragging your feet, coming in the door or

whatever. But if you're willing to have that kind of back and forth and

relationship and I and understand what's going on in people's lives, that would certainly help

you try to get them through it. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Maybe see kind of what you could

take off their plate for a few weeks or shift

some responsibilities around or if there's some sort of

leave available to them or whatever, rather than them feeling ashamed

of having a life. Yeah. And that's the

number one thing. Why I think it's tricky for

especially younger managers is because you just haven't

seen a lot of life yet. Potentially. Maybe. Maybe you have. Plenty of

young people have seen a lot of life. But I remember who was. Was it

Sheryl? I think it was Sheryl Sandberg that wrote lean in and did the whole

thing. And I think it was a Sheryl Sandberg story where she was

always against, like, having special parking

for pregnant women and just, like,

didn't want to, thought that was kind of a weird thing to try to do.

And then she got pregnant and was like, oh, my gosh, like, this is really

hard. I wish I had a closer parking spot. You know,

there's some things that until you go through them, it's hard to have empathy. And

so it's good to, you know, just so you can build those

connections to help. Help get the empathy without necessarily going through it

yourself. Yeah, yeah. That's definitely one of those things that,

I mean, I was, when I was pregnant, I was teaching, and I was the

only one on the bottom floor. My classroom was the only one on the bottom

floor. So I had to go up and down the stairs, like, 1015 times a

day. And, you know, before I got pregnant, I'm like, skip it up the stairs,

and it was no problem at all. My first pregnancy actually wasn't bad either.

But then my second pregnancy, I was like, okay, guys, I'm gonna need a key

to that elevator. This isn't happening anymore. Somebody,

this isn't working. Because there was an elevator, but, you know, they had to keep

it locked, so the students were just playing with it. You had to have an

access key, and then it took weeks and, like, asking multiple

times to get that. Guys, I've got major, like, joint

issues going on here. My hips feel like they're falling off of me. I need

the elevator key. And I don't know, like, why it took so long to

get that, you know? And maybe it was somebody just didn't really understand the need.

I don't know very well. I mean, that, that very

well probably has a big part to do with it of just like, some

bit there's someone, or many people in the chain were just like,

eh, it's not the biggest. She doesn't really need it. She's just pregnant. Like,

and I would have thought the same thing even in my first pregnancy. Wow, that's

no big deal. But, yeah, you gotta kinda get to know people and their needs,

and I guess in some cases, kind of take it at face value

that what they're saying really is a need or an issue or a problem

for them because you may not quite understand it. Cause you've never been through it.

Yeah, yeah, I think, and that's, it's a really

tough challenge, especially in this day and age. I think

of, you know, we have the whole complaints about, you know,

special snowflakes or, you know, culture of people being

soft or, oh, those millennials or those Gen Zerse, whoever.

And so it is a difficult balance because I don't think you can't

accommodate everything. But, you know, I used to work at a

company that looking at this from the, like,

the customer point of view, where they had it was something

like, you know, customer obsession. As long as we

can make a profit or, you know, something like that where. And it

wasn't, it wasn't that, because that sounds really awful, but it was like, we are

customer obsessed. We do want to do everything we

can to make sure they're having a great

experience, make sure they're, they're getting what they want.

However, we still need to operate a company, and we, and so, you

know, any policy that anything that you're doing for a customer, ask yourself,

like, if we did this for all customers, would we make any money? Would it

be practical. Would we be able to do this at scale? And so that

was kind of the way, like, yes, we want to do everything we can for

our customers, but with that constraint of, we still need to

operate a business. And that's where I think being very clear about the

requirements of a role can really help in that. You want to have total empathy.

You want to do what you can for employees, for every employee on our team,

for every member of your team. But there's still certain requirements for the

role, and, like that. That's. And I think that's how you can find

that balance of. Is this feasible? If we

did it for everybody, is it feasible to give

every employee keys to the elevator? Probably not. But

is it feasible to give, like, every pregnant employee keys to the elevator and make

that really easy? Probably, yeah.

Yeah. As long as it's not, like, going to break the bank. I feel like

sometimes people almost turn down accommodations or

requests or things like that out of

bullheadedness or something. I don't know. Like, no, you don't need that.

If it's something really easy and simple like that, is it really

gonna be a big deal to offer it? No,

usually not. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. And

then I think also, you know, we were talking about the clear role

expectations at the company you used to work at was super fast

paced, and maybe it wasn't a great spot for somebody who's not

100%, like, focused on career. I think as the

employee, the parent or caregiver or whoever, it's also kind of

important to realize that, like, maybe it's okay to move on

sometimes. Yes. You know, you don't necessarily have

to stay at the same company for your entire career, and if it's not

a good fit anymore, maybe it's okay to start looking elsewhere.

You know, that was. I mean, when I had both my kids, which my

son was born two weeks before COVID rocked the nation. So that was just

bad timing too. But, I mean, I was shameless.

You should have scheduled that better. Yeah, it was really bad timing.

Like, 100% focused on my career. I loved teaching. It was

great fun. I was, frankly, pretty good at it for almost

a decade, and then I had kids, and then it was like, ugh, this

doesn't really work anymore. I need to find something better for myself.

So, you know, it's okay to pivot, too.

That's really important for employees to think about, for

people to think about that and do some of that introspection, because it can lead

you in a bad place. To a bad place if you don't. I mean, when

I. When I first started. So my daughter was born

four months before I started working at SpaceX. And SpaceX, on

paper, is this place that, you know, as you can see, like, is the

perfect place for me to work. Right. Like, it's like everything that I want to

do, I am could. I couldn't be more passionate about the mission,

but it didn't fully, especially

long term, match my lifestyle that

I wanted. And early on, that made me

mad. I was just like, but this is so great. Like,

I was really frustrated with this fact that, like, it's, you know, you say it

seems like the only way to get ahead is if you work, if you have,

you know, family and you have work 75 hours a week. By the way, none

of that is true. You know, if you really pull back the onion, and there's

plenty of people with families who find their semblance of balance,

who move forward, but at the end of the day, not everybody needs to be

able to work everywhere, and there are going to be places

that want a certain lifestyle and that don't match

whatever your lifestyle is, and that's fine. And so doing a little bit of

that introspection is really important. Yeah. And then as the

manager, of course, not trying to push people out or run them off, but

not also getting, like, hurt if someone leaves because it's not a

good fit, you know, like, yeah, that's okay.

Exactly. And that's where that early conversations happen, you know, I mean,

I think Gary Vaynerchuk, who's a big social media influencer, he

talks a lot about how I think it's Gary Vee, and then I think. I

think Mister Beast talks about this, too, of, you know,

when they realize, make, you know, so they're having these open conversations,

and when they're trying to talk to somebody, trying to change their performance or do

whatever it is, if they realize it's not a fit of. It's not like, kicking

to the curb. It's. It's much more one.

In an ideal place, you have a decent severance, but then also, like,

what can I do to help you land in a better place? Like,

how. Who can I network with? Who can I call? What

companies are you interested in? How can I help you find a place that's more

of a match for your situation, not treating it like,

because you're not like me. You're wrong. It's just

like, no, you're not like me. Like, and that's fine. That's

okay. Yeah. That's what makes our world interesting, right? It would be pretty boring

if we were all exactly the same. Yes. Yes. That's one of the

things that I love about Netflix, because, you know, granted, they have, you know,

also a pretty crazy culture, but I don't know if they still do this. But

at least sounded like early on, they had a four month severance

was standard for everyone. And so then it. That's what

allowed. That's what gave managers the freedom to easily let

people go because they didn't feel like they were dropping people on the curb with

two weeks pay. You know, they, you know, give them four months

to go figure out a better situation. Yeah, that's cool. I had.

I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, Matt, this has been a great conversation.

Thank you so much for sharing with us today and coming on.

If people want to learn more about you, your company, and get into your world,

where can they find you? Yeah, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so

definitely look me up on LinkedIn. Matthew Jerson, there's. There's not a whole lot of

us out there. And then better everydaystudios.com

is the company website. If you go to

bettereverydaystudios.com forward slash

accelerator. Every two weeks, we do these little

30 minutes, single leadership skill accelerator sessions where we just

kind of do one little breakout. So it's just a quick and easy way for

people to come in, learn something in 30 minutes, get out. It's very low,

low lift. So recommend anybody that wants to come check it out.

Absolutely. That's awesome. And I'll make sure we have all those links down in the

show notes, too. Awesome. Thank you so much. This has been fun. I

rarely get to talk about this, and I think a lot about it, so this

is great. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing.

Absolutely.

If you enjoyed this episode, I know you'll love the future ready work

culture framework. Head over to courtneyross.com

framework to download your copy and start building a family

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