Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Jim is joined by Allison Mairena, the Global VP of People at New Globe, to discuss the challenge of getting people ready to lead within organizations. They explore how New Globe's mission-driven approach helps attract, develop, and retain talent, and how they maintain connectivity and line of sight in a globally distributed environment. They also share best practices for manager enablement and the importance of managers understanding the business model. Tune in to gain insights on developing the next generation of leaders.

Key Takeaways:

• The vitality of integrating the organizational mission with employee development to create purpose-driven workforces.
• Emphasizing the shared responsibility of business leaders and HR in nurturing the next generation of leaders.
• Strategic use of asynchronous communication tools and meeting recordings to bridge time zones and maintain global connectivity.
• Education of new managers on company economics and policies to facilitate better decision-making and team guidance.

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome and intro

00:19 Meet Alison Mairena: Insights from a Global VP of People

01:27 Mission-Driven Leadership at New Globe

02:57 Bridging the Mission Gap Across Global Teams

05:02 Maintaining Connectivity in a Globally Distributed Team

06:31 Best Practices for Developing Effective Leaders

08:23 Manager Enablement and the Role of HR in Leadership Development

12:20 Wrapping Up: The Shared Responsibility of Developing Leaders

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Allison Mairena: linkedin.com/in/peoplexenthusiast

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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How they can get successful. So to help us answer this question, we have Alison Myrena joining us. She is the global VP of people at new globe. Alison, welcome to the show.

[00:00:29] Dr. Jim: So super excited to have you on. And I think the first order of business before we dive into the topic is.

Get to know you a little bit more, get to know new globe a little bit more. So share with the class. Some some of the interesting things about you and the work that you're doing at New Globe.

As VP of people at New Globe, I get the distinct privilege to oversee all aspects of HR from, people in culture lens, total [00:01:00] rewards, compliance facilities. All that fun stuff. The only thing that isn't under my scope that you might traditionally see in HR is talent acquisition.

We've got a fabulous talent acquisition team that's led by Duarte Ramos. So New Globe, we actually partner with governments in developing countries to bring technology and curriculum into public schools. So our, biggest government programs are in Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Liberia, and India.

[00:01:44] Allison Mairena: I've seen a lot of interest at the transform conference about Gen Z and how in the next couple of years, they're gonna make up 30 percent of the workforce and a lot of Gen Z and I think millennials too, and I jokingly call myself a geriatric millennial here.

And that's just based on the birth rates that you're seeing across a lot of these African countries. We're educating the future leaders of the workforce. So it's pretty awesome.

I've been in mission driven companies for the majority of my career. And I don't think, and this is very cheesy to say, I will acknowledge that, but I don't think I've ever been at a company more where I can say, wow, this could legitimately change the world the way that New Globes mission could.

And there's a big disconnect. So tell me a little bit more about what infrastructure you've built within the organization to help connect those dots and drive the entire organization forward.

S. We only have about 50 U. S. employees. The majority of our employees do sit in the countries where we operate. So in Nigeria, in Rwanda, in Kenya. And so those employees are able to, very regularly visit the schools that we are, educating and training teachers at. So they get to [00:04:00] see and literally live the mission in the day to day.

What's harder for us is that those that sit in shared services offices, like our office in Boston, which is where I sit, and also we've got another office in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, connecting some of those mission dots. And I think one way to draw those shared services employees back in, if they do sit in a country where we don't necessarily operate with a government program, is by sharing those wins, and our longest standing relationships are in Kenya.

And by sharing that, I can't remember offhand the name of the standardized testing that's used in Kenya, but some of our program alumni that have come out of New Globe and Bridge Academy schools, have tested extremely highly and have gotten into really world renowned universities in the United States.

[00:05:02] Dr. Jim: You're in a globally distributed environment and you have a footprint in both the developed world and the developing world. So when you look at an employee population that's spread across all of those different geographies, what are the things that you've done to maintain connectivity and also line of sight into results and productivity?

[00:05:30] Dr. Jim: Carrier pigeons,

I think that what we do, and we do have an intranet. sites. It's okay. But so we get information out mostly through our intranet, but we really have it set up such that the the budget owner and the business unit leader from each function is the one that is setting [00:06:00] up town halls.

And so on either a monthly or quarterly basis to make sure that we are bringing our teams together. And less so on a global scale, although we do have global town halls as well. But at a less frequent cadence,

So I use that as an analog for teams or slack or whatever. It serves the same function. So I think that helps. But when we're thinking about the problem of getting people ready to lead within an organization, when you look at your organization or similar organizations to the ones that you're you are working at, how do you manage that in a globally distributed environment? Without really a robust communication infrastructure to help do that.

But also too, I will say that, at more of a team level, we do really prioritize so that more of us are on the same page and so I'm a little bit of an outlier being based in the U. S. Like only about 3 percent of our employees are in the U. S. And so most of them are within, East African time, Central African time or West African time zones, which aligns well with central European time where another one's office sets.

And so I do a lot of very early mornings to catch up with them and our India based teams. But hosting meetings regularly on Google meet is really our bread and butter, and we also make good usage of recording those meetings and making sure that we are following up with those that are in a, the farthest away time zone to make sure that content is still being delivered and digested.

[00:08:17] Allison Mairena: I'm actually still fairly new ish to New Globe. I've been there about seven or eight months now. And so actually something that my manager, I report to our co founder and president, she and I are very passionate about being more intentional this year about manager enablement and training and internal L and D.

We've been so focused on training the teachers that we, support through these public school systems that internally it's an opportunity for us to grow.

And so they're hyper focused on, like in New Globe's case, for example, We are developing the curriculum, . And then we're writing those teacher guides and lesson plans. And so a manager and our instructional design team might not understand, like, how does the company make money? What is our go to market strategy?

And so if you're not preparing your managers on that basic tenant and they're not aware of that, I think it can be very difficult for them to then lead teams.

What often happens is that they, whenever a problem comes up, they want to slide back into their old role. Versus empower the people underneath them to go ahead and solve whatever problem is happening. So what are the things that you've put into place to get managers in the right mindset when those situations occur?

So that they're actually building the next generation of leaders versus going back into that player coach role.

For example, they need to put somebody on a performance improvement plan VP of people I'm not going to know the ins and outs of the role of responsibility. For, a marketing coordinator, the way a marketing manager will like the marketing manager will, and, but I am there to support you in saying Hey, take a run at a draft. Here's a template for it. And then yes, I will sit down and maybe do a role play conversation with you. So you're ready to have that difficult conversation, but will I deliver that performance improvement plan for you without you present?

But I think that sometimes we, we forget those other pieces of, here is your role as manager and what you're responsible for. Here's how HR can help you, and be your true partner in this.

I know that we're just scratching the surface of this conversation. If people want to continue the discussion, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

And I should come up.

People, culture, leadership, that's all HR stuff. That's really not the right perspective. And I think the quicker people leaders [00:13:00] of all types, whether you're in HR or whether in your business can actually reshift that mindset into a shared responsibility, it's going to be really critical in developing that next generation of leaders.

And one of the things that you mentioned is that, Hey, I can enable you. To get to the next level and get your people to the next level. But if you're leaving it up to me to understand marketing or sales at the level that you as the business leader No, it's gonna it's a recipe for failure. So i'm paraphrasing a little bit there, but I think that's a critical point business leaders cannot Shift responsibility for developing the next generation of leaders to hr.

Hr is usually the lightest funded group within a business You So the idea that they can actually lead and develop everybody in the organization is not the topic of the show, but it's a big myth that needs to be be taken away. So thanks for hanging out with us. For those of you who have been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out.