Augmenting Diversity in Customer Success with the [H}olly Framework

> Introduction

Decades of research show that in business diverse teams outperform homologous ones, to quote a few:

• more competitive advantage
• enhanced business growth and development
• improved ability to find and retain best talent
• increased job satisfaction and engagement
• innovation multiplication
• a boom in revenues

The business case for workforce diversity is no longer up for debate.

Just as important, and part of the equation, are however concepts like inclusion, equity and belonging. Actually, they are essential.

In fact, diversity goes along with inclusion – you need to have inclusion to realize diversity.

Inclusion is all about proclaiming that thoughts, ideas and perspectives of all individuals matter.

Whilst diversity may be purposely easy to achieve, inclusion is much more delicate and tougher to realize: an employer needs to ensure that the work environment can welcome and respect colleagues who are different for religion, gender, sexual orientation, health impairment, socio-economic background and generation so that they do not have to hide important parts of themselves for fear of negative consequences.

Equity, which is really about constantly and consistently recognizing and redistributing power, is also a major element: the ability for the business to provide for different individuals as needed , so that they may achieve the same ambitions and results even when starting from a disadvantaged point, is of immense importance.

And only when the three of them are realized and combined, we can talk about belonging – where innovation thrives, and views, beliefs and values are integrated. This is the moment where individuals feel connected to a profession, a team of co-workers or even a company and can fully express themselves and contribute to the progress with the amplification of the others: passion and shared values drive their actions and commitment.

The above concepts apply fully to customer success - if I think about belonging for example, this is exactly what we have achieved in my team - we are herd animals after all, so it’s good to belong.

Whilst leaders may create teams diverse enough to be vibrant and innovative, they may then be challenged to keep them inclusive and cohesive enough to be effective – a very interesting topic that we will focus on in a future article.

Creating diverse teams, however, can be a challenge.

Generally speaking, the process of increasing diversity in a business goes through a combination of the hiring process and the cross pollination of individuals across teams and functions.

Companies that thrive in the Diversity & Inclusion space however, may struggle to consistently increase diversity.

This is what happened to my team, when we wanted to focus on diversity hiring. The corporation focussed on and regarded diversity as gender diversity and underrepresented minorities in the US.

Our team is based in EMEA and currently features a healthy 67% of women presence. So, we wanted to push the envelope: we pondered on what all this meant and as a consequence we started asking a few questions.

What dimensions of diversity did we consider important? What hiring principles did we want to apply? How could we structure the whole process to be comprehensive, yet respectful of candidates? What would the right balance of candidate attitude, versatility and skills be?

We came up with some interesting answers, which ultimately yielded to the [H}olly framework, currently powering our team’s growth ambitions and need for diversity.

> Diversity in Customer Success

There is no single definition of diversity. This is mainly because it is different for each organization and region, for each industry a business operates in, for every one of the customers consuming your product or service and for the unique set of responsibilities that your team delivers.

So, what does diversity really mean?

Diversity is allowing representation of those not like yourself.

I like this definition, as it seamlessly applies to all of us. In a reciprocal way: it depends on everybody’s experience and it elevates the beauty of differences.

Interestingly, diversity must apply across the organization and at all levels, including the decision-making table: it must span across the whole spectrum.

What kind of representation you might ask? This is a key point, as practically it is the foundational difference that distinguishes how an organization may execute on its diversity and inclusion program, as opposed to another.

What kind of representation, then?

Essentially, any dimension of diversity that you deem important in your business: for your people and your customers.

Also for dimensions, there’s plenty of lists around and they may differ depending on the same variables we listed at the beginning of the chapter. Some of these may even be defined by law, in any case the difficulty in arriving at a widely acceptable definition lies in the variety of situations in which people live.

Diversity might encompass the visible (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, age) or the invisible qualities (e.g. personality, family background, education, personal style, health impairment) that make individuals unique.

The following picture shows one of the many available views of a list of common dimensions for diversity and where they fit, spanning across four areas:

I would encourage every organization to create and own their unique definitions of diversity. This will inevitably start from a meaningful statement, which will inevitably refer to the dimensions of diversity which will ultimately make the difference. Identifying them will be a mandatory act of clarification.

This should be done at the corporate level, but also at the level of each functional team: it needs to be something that adapts to specific needs both for the team and also on how to serve customers and the business better.

When identifying their own definition of diversity, organizations must assume that diversity is the heterogeneity among everyone, rather than calling out any “minority” segment of the population which would the effect of marginalizing some from both the conversation and the solution. This process must be respectful and including all.

In big enterprises, a corporate definition of diversity will touch just a few dimensions: typical ones are gender identity, ethnicity and underrepresented minorities. Some companies will push the envelope by adding generational differences or internationality as dimensions of diversity that they take into account. However, it is only when you deep dive into a specific discipline, with the focus on a family of products, and an attention on specific industries and geographies that your picture of diversity can become interesting.

We challenged ourselves in our EMEA Customer Success team and came up with the following:

The above is what works for us: you must elaborate what is appropriate for your business and your people.

Some of the dimensions you may learn in the interviewing process: language is a good example, sometimes even a mandatory requirement. Citizenship is another one, when a professional may need to go through specific screening for security cleared jobs. Education is usually indicated in a CV. Generation is something you can usually deduce from a video or live interview (remember those?).

Other dimensions you can simply ask. In our team for example we go through an analysis of the DiSC assessment. DiSC is a personal assessment tool used by more than one million people every year to help improve teamwork, communication, and productivity in the workplace.

DiSC is an acronym that stands for the four main personality profiles described in the DiSC model: (D)ominance, (i)nfluence, (S)teadiness and (C)onscientiousness.

People with (D) personalities tend to be confident and place an emphasis on accomplishing bottom-line results, whilst people with (i) personalities tend to be more open and place an emphasis on relationships and influencing or persuading others. On the other hand, people with (S) personalities tend to be dependable and place the emphasis on sincerity and cooperation and lastly people with (C) personalities tend to place the emphasis on expertise, quality, accuracy, and competency.

We kindly ask candidates to run a free assessment so that we know where they land in the quadrant.

Some other dimensions we can learn after a candidate has landed on the team: his or her relationship status, the personality type.

Additionally, we favour a few dimensions over others: ethnicity and generational difference, for example, have a bigger significance in the hiring decision process as opposed to carer and parental status. When deciding who we hire, we take a holistic view of all dimensions, considering each one with its weight.

A disclaimer: as a principle we do not look for any specific trait. To be clear: we are not saying that do be a great Customer Success manager you need to have a specific trait in any of the dimensions we consider. In fact, we do not care about having a specific age. It’s not important if you exhibit dominance, influence, steadiness, or conscientiousness. We are not interested on what studies you’ve been through. Really! By knowing where the team lacks coverage we boost candidates that fill the gaps, but be warned: such boost is not enough to get the job – we still want to hire the person who is good for the job.

Suppose I have a team with both introverts and extroverts. And suppose I know that one of our customers is an introvert. I may want to decide to have a customer rotation and connect one introvert in my team with the customer, knowing that they will be able to speak the same language and ultimately become more comfortable in their business relationship, thus unleashing a greater relationship and a better chance of success. Or having a single mum able to connect with a single mum customer will improve the opportunity to have a more effective partnership as sharing the same challenges and experiences will help in the affinity. Not to mention scenarios where religious affiliation may interfere with forging a healthy relationship. What is important to me as a leader is that I have the widest representation of dimensions available in my team, so I have choice and can take the right decisions for the wellbeing of the team and the business.

Granted, we require our candidates to have a minimum set of characteristics to get an interview e.g., their amount of customer facing experience, but the bottom line is that we care about the personality and attitude, and the ability of that person to add to the colours, the ideas and the growth of the team.

I know, that sounds odd, but stay with me and I will explain more later.

Last but not least: all personal identifiable information is treated with the full respect of the local and international legislation. This applies to both external candidates and those who land in the team. No misuse on this is tolerated.

> The [H}olly Framework

When hiring for a new role, all employers’ desire is to recruit the most talented and skilled candidate possible – and preferably one with a great attitude and work ethic too.

The point is – you can teach skills. It may be a bit more laborious sometimes: you may need a buddy and extra time in the onboarding process, you may need to prioritize learning over business at times, you may need to slow time so that the person is comfortable in doing the next step rather than rushing it.

What you really need is the right attitude.

Customer Success Management is really all about being emotionally intelligent. When people are empathetic listeners and trusting teammates, they are resilient under pressure, open to feedback, set better examples for others to follow, and make thoughtful decisions.

Teaching how to be more empathetic and how to use your emotional intelligence for growing yourself and the customer is more challenging, if you do not have the right attitude.

When is the last time you asked a candidate how they de-stressed after a bad day at work? Or when was the last opportunity for them to give back to their communities and what they felt? Or the recipe for recovery after failure? Or their thoughts on Inclusion or Equity?

The answers to the questions above and more will paint a picture of the attitude and the versatility of the candidate. With the right nurturing environment, these can make a person thrive and this view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishments. This is how you create a growth mindset attitude, an open door to learning and improving skills.

Basically, we felt a needed to disengage from the idea of hiring for skills and enter the world of hiring for potential.

And then, we went the extra mile: we understood that the success of all of us individually and the business was ultimately carefully crafted by the success of the team: we rightly shifted to a team-based thinking.

While teamwork has always been a corporate cornerstone, we chose the collaborative mindset over individual effort, by gauging the success of each accomplishment based upon the efforts of the team as a whole.

This remarkably resembles the definition of “holistic”:

How could we ensure that we found the right balance and not run the risk of creating a culture in which everyone became similar? We wanted to ensure we valued the contributions of all, without stopping creativity.

There was only one answer.

What better engine than diversity (and inclusion, and equity, and belonging) could power achieving the richness of our collective potential, whilst treasuring our individual aptitudes?

Welcome to the [H}olly framework.

Before I share what this is all about – let me be clear: no candidates were harmed in the making and improving of this framework. We are strict on being respectful and empathetic at every stage of the process. We are humans and have all been through interviews and we know how important it is to create a positive experience. We love diversity and inclusion after all and we care! We may create some artificial tension in the role plays (watch out for the famous disgruntled customer) or twist our emotional intelligence questions in a way that may be strange, but both of these are promptly positioned as actorly situations and we always end with a smile. So that you know, in case you apply to one of the #VMCemeaCS position – that is our team hashtag!

In a nutshell: : in our team we find it extremely beneficial to our personal growth and to our ability to better serve our customers to relentlessly increase the diversity in our team. In order to keep this up, we defined the dimensions of diversity we are interested in, baselined our team and identified gaps. We then established a fair and balanced interviewing process focusing on attitude and not skills, and selected the top candidates for the job by keeping a special eye on those that could best fill our diversity gaps. We believe this is the best way to make the first step into the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging journey.

Here’s more details on the principles and techniques that we are following in our hiring journey:

Hire for attitude and versatility, not for skills

?There are typical areas where we would traditionally probe for an interview: check the candidate’s knowledge on the Cloud, understand their ability to use the tools, look for product familiarity, or even test on soft skills.

In the areas where we know we can teach skills we completely skip these conversations and some of us in the senior leadership team focus only on attitude, emotional intelligence and cultural complement - not cultural fit: we look for people that can add to the team, not conform.

We are on a journey to hire humans who can add to the team culture, rather than looking for who brings more of the same. We look for a new piece of the puzzle that can complement each other to form a whole, with its own shape. How exciting!

We are on a journey to hire humans who can add to the team culture, rather than looking for who brings more of the same. We look for a new piece of the puzzle that can complement each other to form a whole, with its own shape. How exciting!

Have a diverse interview panel

Ensure that the same people are not always on the panel and different people get to experience interviewing. This is an opportunity for everybody to grow, but also a systematic way to ensure diversity of opinions in the process. If the process is coordinated, then you can even afford having a rotation of people for the same pool of candidates, as their opinion will be synchronized. Also, you should artificially mix people representing different dimensions of diversity, so that these can be represented.

If you really really want to push this, consider using one of the available tools to anonymise (or blind) job applications (CVs, resumes, cover letters). This is when identifying information is removed to conceal the backgrounds of job applicants.

This is actually tricky in our framework, as by concealing information related to one of the dimensions you are considering may invalidate the search for filling the gap in that particular area. An example for our team would be information on the gender identity. If that decision is taken, then you may simply skip the advantage of filling the gap in that particular area.

By removing irrelevant information, you're ensuring that candidates are being assessed on what matters, but at the same time you would make your job of hiring for diversity harder.

Define the Customer Success Manager persona

Come up with a definition of who a Customer Success Manager is in your specific context. This will be an amazing tool for driving your career conversations, but also beautifully help in the hiring process by providing a structured interview process that you can assign to the different participants of the panel.

This is really important as it eliminates interviewer bias and ensures that the hiring decision isn’t made based on gut feeling – it will be the base for a great candidate experience too, by keeping all candidates on a level playing field.

We actually did this for our team and came up with the following:

Just don’t take as gold what we came up with:?forget what you just saw and develop your own!

Define what diversity means to you

As we previously said, defining diversity really means defining what dimensions of diversity are important to you and the business.

Granted, there should be some alignment with the corporate dimensions, and these would certainly be useful, yet limited. Dare to go beyond. In 2020 dimensions of diversity are intimately connected. Sometimes they even create glitches in the picture: you may ask your team about their opinion on respecting LGBTQI+ and get a strong sense of respect, yet the same people may declare themselves strongly affiliated to a religion. How could you relate the two statements above? The truth is, the more people understand each other, the more they respect each other and the more they will end up bonding and liking nuances, contradictions or uncertainties. The world of diversity is beautiful, but it is also true that is complex: start by considering a few initial dimensions of diversities and build from these: progress will bring the conversation to a more mature level, and then you can increase the complexity. One step at a time.

?

Map current state of the nation

Once your specific diversity is accepted and understood in your team, then it’s time to baseline your band.

Firstly, you will have to decide the segmentation: by role or by department. Direct and indirect reports?

Some dimensions may be obvious and you could feed it directly: take citizenship for example. Everybody will be proudly showing their citizenship. You can already record such info somehow.

Other data will be furnished upon request: a simple anonymous survey, done on a voluntary basis, with the option to opt out at any dimension clarification, will be sufficient.

The individuals in the team will certainly be at different levels of acceptance and understanding per each dimension, so although potentially diluting and polluting statistical data, flexibility and respect will need to be the basic ingredients.

The level of participation on each dimension will also provide a means of measuring progress on the journey!

Most importantly, all info will need to be collected anonymously: remember it’s all about the team here.

Identify gaps

Once the team panorama is mapped in all various diversity dimensions, then you can start identifying gaps and those gaps will be the focus of your thinking in the hiring process: you will want to consider how candidates compare when filling those gaps.

As an example, in our team we consider DiSC as one of the tools we measure the team dynamics. The following is the actual distribution of my team:

You may notice that we have gaps in the D/Di, iS and C/CS areas: these are the gaps we want to fill in eventually.

When a candidate reaches a certain level in the interview process, we ask them to run a free DiSC assessment and then we take into account their position as an additional element of decision.

Granted, all employment hiring decisions are ultimately based on merit (in our team related to the candidate’s ability to establish a relationship, show empathy and ultimately be proficient on their emotional intelligence) and never on protected personal characteristics, still we consider how we can complement the diversity of the team by prioritizing candidates that fill diversity gaps: you would not believe how many times these extra elements give guidance on deciding among candidates that exhibit great but similar merits.?

Use role play

The purpose of the role play is to place the candidate in an imaginary situation that resembles the typical conditions of the job and to see how they perform.

We specifically instruct the candidate to prepare for a scenario with a disgruntled customer and we observe the candidate in action.

This is very useful as it goes beyond the usual interview narrative “how would you react in this situation?” and forces the candidate to actually act in a simulated environment.

This is a safe game, as we always end up with a laugh: we are good people after all.

What we want to do is to identify the diversity of thought through different presentation and interaction approaches and also test the levels of empathy, emotional intelligence and critical thinking.

Write inclusive job descriptions

?When looking to increase the team diversity, you may want to adapt to the characteristics of a specific dimension of diversity where you lack representation and try to appeal to everyone.

Carefully craft the job descriptions so that they attract more.

You may want to create some gender-neutral job adverts and have them checked by tools to see where the result leans: there are many tools available for this, here’s a couple of freely available tools that you may want to start using: here and here.

?If Emotional Intelligence for you is as important as it is for us, then be warned: hiring emotionally intelligent people is a challenge. Emotional Intelligence is directly connected with a candidate’s mood and excitement for and in preparation for an interview. Understanding if this condition is temporary or even artificial, as opposed to a long term attitude may be difficult. Also, asking unconventional questions can prove to be uncomfortable for the person asking: there’s been many occasions where I personally forced myself to investigate specific areas or leveraging unexpected opportunities (like insisting in knowing the name of a barking dog in the background during the interview) to assess the candidate’s reaction, whilst I was pushing myself to the limit.

Regardless, if searching for candidates who possess the personality qualities your company values is important then start from the job description wording. Define the personality traits you need your new hire to have and make it known you’re seeking that type of person.

Go beyond short, cliche phrases like “team player” and “works well under pressure”. Rather, mention “adaptability” and “motivation” in the job advert.

Use words like “empathy” or sentences like “driving for satisfactory and rewarding results” or being able to “work with and through people”. Be honest and say that you are “looking for an amazing human”.

These open ended sentences will brighten and attract the right people and open the door to the conversation during the interview: start by asking a candidate to explain which of the above traits they find themselves more comfortable with and ask them to elaborate. You will surely appreciate the depth of reasoning and thinking that those candidates will have gone through their emotional journeys.

?Lastly, ensure you adapt your advertising strategies to help increase diversity efforts: post a job advert in places that strategically may appeal to candidates exhibiting a specific dimension of diversity and a gap you have identified in a team: do you need somebody that speak the language? Ask your colleagues speaking that language or living in that country to advertise in a local group or use their local network to look for candidate referrals!

Implement unconscious bias to all

?In a LinkedIn survey,?42% of respondents?said bias of interviewers was one of the reasons for poor hiring decisions. Unconscious bias in interviews is also unfair and discriminatory, leading in some cases even to legal troubles.

Everybody should be trained on understanding unconscious bias. You can run sessions in-house, or get a third party to train your employees. But do not over engineer this – just start acting: this is a long mindset change process, and even the act of starting the conversation can start to make the difference. Just make sure that everyone, and not just those responsible for recruiting, attends. You want your whole organization to be open and inclusive and making everyone aware of unconscious bias is the first step.

Create an interview timeline

Plan for interview steps and clarify where each round of interviews should focus to your panel.

With reference to the areas of the Customer Success Manager persona above, we focus in the following areas:

Iterate in a feedback loop

?Like for other areas of the business the framework is as good as it is really effectively helping in solving a challenge, so a good level of efficiency can only be achieved after failures, mistakes and therefore relentless improvement. Feedback from the interview panel and from new hires is essential, so the framework’s effectiveness can relentlessly grow and improve.

> Conclusion

Lots of time and emotional energy goes into hiring from all sides: it realizes the potential and the hopes of the candidate, and it’s important for companies that want to enlarge the business and retain their people by creating an amazing environment.

For inspired leaders, it is about finding the wise balance on how to nurture a growth mindset culture and how to sustain a high performing team’s performance, achievements and cohesiveness so that we not only progress the business conversation, but we also empower the people in their careers, and help them become better humans.

If like me you believe that hiring for diversity provides a benefit to the business and an advantage for your people to understand the richness of the world around them, then applying some of the principles and techniques described above will surely improve your ability to succeed.

For example, if I look at the dimension of Gender Identity, our last two hires were both women. Not that this would fill a gap in my team, quite the contrary. But this proves that the [H}olly framework works well when advocating for decisions based on merit and not on protected personal characteristics.

When hiring is done properly, beautiful candidates can flourish and become thriving employees, by whatever ways you measure employees’ performance and contribution.

Hiring for diversity done properly is the way to go.

I would like to thank everybody that with energy and excitement shared the joy of architecting and implementing the [H}olly framework and provided feedback and suggestions on how to improve every aspect. This also goes to those candidates that unknowingly participated in its evolution. Some of the lucky ones have joined the team and eventually provided direct feedback on their experience: they are now fully empowered in the next round of refinement.

Lastly, thank you to all those who provided suggestions, feedback and corrections when co-proofing this post: another successful social writing experiment!