You've Got To Keep Your Messages Simple To Drive Your Points Home

Alan Winters, chief people officer and chief diversity officer at Teleperformance Group, shared his key leadership lessons with my colleague,?David Reimer, CEO of?The ExCo Group, and me in our latest?Strategic CHRO interview. Subscribe?here?for future interviews.?

Reimer: What are the leadership muscles you built over the last two years that you want to carry forward?

Winters: We’re living in a new world that demands flexibility, pushing yourself to think outside the box, and open, honest, and transparent communications. The way things?worked even 18 months ago cannot and will not?work in today’s world, whether that’s the expectations of employees or how you run a business today. It impacts every aspect of how we manage.?

Bryant: What is it about your background that prepared you for leading in this kind of environment?

Winters: I never went to the same school for more than a year when I was growing up, until undergrad. My father was a stuntman in movies when he was younger, and he was a very adventurous man?and just loved to travel. There were five kids and my mom and dad, so all seven of us were always packing up and moving all over the place.?

We lived in many different countries, so I got to experience lots of different cultures as an adolescent. I’m able to think a little broader and outside the box. They’re called comfort zones for a reason, and the only way to grow is to go outside or push against those comfort zones.

Reimer: Another hallmark of this moment is the idea that employees increasingly feel like they should have a say in companies’ policies. What is your framework for thinking about that?

Winters: We’ve always done annual employee surveys to check on how people are feeling and thinking. We identified early on – pre-pandemic – that we need to hear more often from our people, and this gets to that transparency and clear communication piece. So we moved from annual surveys to a near real-time sentiment survey.?

Sometimes we just ask, how are you feeling today? Good, bad? What are the big issues? The goal is to provide that voice for people, and then make it real in terms of the programs we put in place to make sure we are addressing those concerns.?

You can’t address every concern. So you focus on the top five issues.

You can’t address every concern. So you focus on the top five issues that impact everybody or in a particular region or country, and you put plans in place and communicate them so people can see incremental change.

Bryant: What are some key lessons that you would share with a first-time CHRO?

Winters: Your influence skills are tremendously important – with the board, your colleagues on the leadership team, and the entire organization. You don’t have to manage people directly, nor do you have to report to someone directly, to influence whatever you’re trying to get accomplished or the message you’re trying to send.?

And you’ve got to keep that message simple. One of the biggest challenges, especially for people in new roles, is to put yourself on the other side of the table and understand what they’re going through. So you have to capture ideas in simple, easy to understand, bite-sized chunks to get your point home. Confidence also plays an important role in your ability to drive change at this?level.?

Reimer: You’ve had a lot of different roles before you became CHRO – privacy, compliance, innovation, etc. Was that part of a plan, and do you have a playbook for getting up to speed quickly in a new discipline?

Winters: Becoming a CHRO has been my career goal for 20 years. If you look at my experience, I’ve purposely chosen business verticals to go in as an operator to learn and understand those areas. On the playbook piece, I’m a really process-driven person, so if I’m presented with a new issue or challenge, I will do a lot of investigation and benchmarking, internal and external. I have found that companies often can get in this trap of not realizing they don’t know what they don’t know because their focus is more internal.?

Companies often can get in this trap of not realizing they don’t know what they don’t know.

I’ve met people who have been in their job for 20 years, and they’ve not done much benchmarking, so they don’t know where their industry or function is headed. What’s happening in the broader landscape? What’s happening from a company perspective and strategy? What are the gaps internally? What are the benchmarks externally? How do I fill or close the gap and put a plan in place??

Bryant: You don’t often meet people whose father was a stuntman. Did his work influence how you see the world?

Winters: There were many lessons, particularly around how adventurous he was. Can you imagine someone taking a family of seven around the world, moving to a new country every year? So I learned a lot about being open and adventurous and accepting new challenges.

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