How Small Firms Can Compete for Top Talent

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 61: Running Human Resources Like Big Law, Even if You’re Small with Laura Tolhoek

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host as always, Jan Roos, and I am here today with Laura Tolhook, who is the founder of essential HR. And I know you guys have been getting a lot of really great feedback from the episodes that have related to our hiring, which is one of the biggest sorts of leverages you can have in your law practice.

Jan Roos: So I'm super excited to have Laura here because you've got some really interesting theories on not only hiring, but developing your people and also having your place be someplace that people want to work. So thanks for coming on the show, Laura.

Laura Tolhoek: Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. So I had to stop myself in our pre call because you mentioned something that was really interesting and I wanted to dig into it for the first time. So you were [00:01:00] talking about, and this is the first time I've ever heard this term before, but cultivating an employer brand. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that is and how you guys came upon this concept?

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah, absolutely. I wish we made it up. Unfortunately, we've just, use the term, but we didn't, we don't make up that concept because if you think about brand and we've heard brand so many times, you got to have a brand for your business. You got your brand has to be a B or C. And we think about the large companies like Starbucks or target or Southwest airlines.

Laura Tolhoek: And immediately we have these characteristics of who they are as a company and their brand. But I want you to think, instead of thinking they're a Customer brand. I want you to think of their employer brand. So when you think about Starbucks or Target or Southwest Airlines, what do you think about as them as an employer?

Laura Tolhoek: What do you know about them as an employer? And what have you heard about them as an employer? That is what cultivates their employer brand. So now we're going to scale that down to our small business environment. Kids might be thinking I only have [00:02:00] seven people. I only have 10 people. Why do I need to have an employer brand?

Laura Tolhoek: At the end of the day, we as a small business owners are competing for the same top talent as these larger organizations. And we need to know who we are as a small business and who we are as an employer in order to really be able to sell ourselves. These top talent individuals that we may be recruiting and in competition with from large organizations or competitors down the street.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And it's really interesting too, because I think like one of these situations, and this is actually going to set the stage for a lot of what I had planned to talk about, but like some of these things that. People consider later things to establish things like corporate culture. You might think, Hey, look, this isn't something I have to really look into until I have 50 or a hundred employees.

Jan Roos: But the reality is a lot of small law firms out there. A lot of them listen to this podcast and I'd probably say the other way around, a lot of people listen to this podcast, our small law firms. I wish I could say we had every single small law firm listen to this podcast. But I digress, but anyway, a lot of these [00:03:00] people are going to be familiar with the concept, especially if somebody ever worked with big law.

Jan Roos: If I say the words, Kirkland and Ellis, you know what that brand represents, what it's like, I say, Paul Weiss, you have an idea of what it's like to work there and we know what a career there will look like. And again, to your point, if you're attracting the top talent, then, that's who you're up against, whether you realize it or not.

Jan Roos: So let's zoom in a little bit to somebody who's. Potentially encountering, either a hiring challenge for the first time. Like, how do you really start building the blocks to get that brand together?

Laura Tolhoek: So I think the first thing you have to come to terms with is what is your employer brand and you talk about how, a lot of companies when they're 50 people plus start building an employee culture you don't need to build an employee culture, you already have one, so whether you know it or not, whether it was intentional or not, your organization already has a business culture.

Laura Tolhoek: So part of understanding your employee brand, identifying it and amplifying it is first understanding who you already are and where you want to go with [00:04:00] your organization. And that could be your physical workspace, your team environment, your mentorship the type of culture you have, the type of perks you offer.

Laura Tolhoek: There's all types of things that work into that employer brand. So identifying those things is really important in order to. To almost have your elevator pitch of who you are as an employer.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And, if it's not too much to ask, is there any sort of like an exercise or a concrete step that somebody could take to get an idea of what things that might already be there are for their firm?

Laura Tolhoek: Oh you're taking the surprise away. I think that's Great download that we've created to help small businesses identify and amplify their employer brand, which we can certainly make available to your listeners.

Jan Roos: Okay. We'll get, this is where the jazz approach to interviewing ends up biting you in the butt sometimes, but that's fantastic.

Jan Roos: But I guess, yeah, like a little preview. Okay. So there are. Steps that you can take to maybe find out what these things are. And it's interesting too, because this kind of reminds me of I was [00:05:00] talking with another friend of mine and this is a person who was in, they ran a marketing agency.

Jan Roos: And to your point also, it's a lot of people think about this stuff, maybe a little bit too late. So they found themselves in a position where they had a couple of toxic. Members of the team that were bringing not only the performance and where they were working down, but the people adjacent to them.

Jan Roos: And they, they almost had to cut these guys out whatever, like a infection or something like that. And it ended up being super costly because it's tough to replace these people. So I guess what are the times when you see people coming to you for help with this?

Jan Roos: Or what's the right time to start having this conversation with yourself?

Laura Tolhoek: When we first started essential HR the idea behind it was I was working for some pretty large organizations and doing HR from, corporate from the corporate side. But I had a lot of friends and family who had, I grew up in a family of small business and they were calling about, how do I deal with this?

Laura Tolhoek: Or Laura, what do I do about this employee? What are my options? And so what I realized is that you don't have to be 500 people on your [00:06:00] team in order to have. Problems that you need the help of an HR expert for. And so when we go about talking about this, I would say you could have three people on your team and still have issues that are difficult to navigate.

Laura Tolhoek: And you can have 13 people on your team and never have a problem. It really isn't a, there, there's really no cut and dry saying if we have five, we're good. If we have 15, it's going to be too much. There's always going to be issues that come up that are new to us for the first time. So having somebody to go to, whether it's a business coach, whether it's, an HR expert, whether it's an employment lawyer Is really somebody who's going to be on your side to help you deal with these types of situations.

Jan Roos: And yeah to give a little bit more color to like the specific kinds of situations, like what are the common things that will come up when somebody is reaching out to you guys for the first time?

Laura Tolhoek: Oh, it could be everything from, employment related situations to let's be honest as small business owners.

Laura Tolhoek: We are already so busy that all of a sudden you need to hire somebody. And, we have zero, zero time to do that whole recruitment [00:07:00] search. So people reach out to us to help them with the recruitment search onboarding programs, for example. So what happens when you bring on a new team member, you've put all your time and effort into the recruitment and finding this person, does your onboarding program solidify that new team members belief that they made the right choice to join your team?

Laura Tolhoek: As well as the whole idea of performance management, what do we do when person A has, posted on social media in a way that affects another team member's, characteristics or even the company's reputation to things like, person B had a second accident in a company vehicle.

Laura Tolhoek: What are my options? Oh man.

Jan Roos: There's a lot

Laura Tolhoek: of things that come up that we navigate help managers and business owners navigate through.

Jan Roos: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So it could be all over the board, but yeah, you're also bringing up another thing that's top of mind right now, which is these challenges related to hiring specifically for the small business owner and to give like a little bit of context.

Jan Roos: So I, if I, if you don't mind I'll run through a situation that we've been seeing pretty frequently, and I'd love to have some maybe a bit of [00:08:00] advice on the show, but super common situation that we've seen a couple of different times. In the course of working with some more clients, they've had the situation where they're a little bit overwhelmed.

Jan Roos: Specifically around hiring people for intake, for example. So they either have a office manager, paralegal, front desk person, whatever you want to call it. That might've either not been great for the role or they have moved into more of a fulfillment perspective. Especially with the stuff that we're doing, a lot of this is a state planning stuff.

Jan Roos: So it's like a lot of this is document preparation, that kind of stuff. So a lot of times we've seen some clients of ours have some false starts. And basically I don't think it's through any fault of their own, but, it's obviously no tremendous variability in the amount of people that you're getting onto your team.

Jan Roos: And especially as you talk, I'm realizing this a little bit more what ends up happening after they get on the team. And I think we've spoken with a couple of people on the show about kind of the importance of really filtering well in the interview process, but not as much as I would have liked on, what to have happen.

Jan Roos: After people end up getting on the team. So I know a broad question, but what kind of stuff are you recommending [00:09:00] people have? I know you mentioned the, reaffirming that they're in the right place, but can we rip on that for a little bit? And, how do you really get somebody to have the right start after you've made that hire?

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah. So as you mentioned, it takes a lot of time to get somebody on the team. It's a lot of emotion from the hiring manager. It's a lot of emotion from the new hire. And so we've, made that great offer. We've put our best foot forward in the interview. We've done our due diligence in, in that hiring decision.

Laura Tolhoek: And now what often happens because again, we're busy. I'm not saying that all these things magically happen with all the extra time we have, cause not. Many of us actually have a lot of extra time, but we bring the person on board and we give them a great first hour orientation here. So and so they're your teammate.

Laura Tolhoek: Here's your desk. Thanks so much. We're excited to have you. These are all the great plans we have for you. And then, maybe we take them out for lunch to get to know them a little bit better. But by the afternoon of the first day, they're sitting at a fairly empty desk with, two pens and.[00:10:00]

Laura Tolhoek: A stack of maybe policies, operating procedures, an employee handbook, who knows, wondering what's going to, what's what they're going to do with the next three hours of their life, because they were just told here, read these documents and the day just drags on because they're now thinking, what am I going to do from two o'clock to four o'clock?

Laura Tolhoek: Cause I'm done reading the documents. And we have this disconnect where we're so excited to have them on board. And the individual wants to start contributing as humans, I think with any job that. Most of us have started. We want to contribute. We want to make an impact as quickly as possible. And oftentimes our onboarding process actually hinders that and makes people feel awkward and not knowing what their next step is.

Laura Tolhoek: So having an onboarding process that again is going to take time up front to build it out but that really solidifies the belief of that individual that they made the right hiring choice, whether that's hiring a handing off the implementation of the onboarding to somebody who actually has [00:11:00] the opportunity to really bring that individual on board and make them feel welcome, because we're not all extroverts.

Laura Tolhoek: The hiring manager might not be an extrovert. They might not be the person who's going to show the organization in the, within the best light. There might be another person on your team who is that person who loves meeting new people, who really integrates people into the community. That might be a person you want to lead your onboarding because they might be the better choice for really showing people what the culture and the team is like.

Jan Roos: You face some pretty interesting situations because a lot of the times you were talking about that crazy, huge fortune 500 company, you got to, director of new impressions or some crazy stuff, but when you're talking about these five, 10 person companies, sometimes it's, you might not have that be a full time role for someone.

Jan Roos: So I think that's a really great idea to have somebody who might not have this be their full time role, but it's something that they'll, they work into their job description or like, how do you usually see that play out?

Laura Tolhoek: I don't even think it's a job description thing. I think it's just, is it the right person [00:12:00] to be the person who onboards individuals?

Laura Tolhoek: So maybe it's not from a technical standpoint, but maybe your administrative assistant is just a welcoming, warm individual who goes out of her way to make other people feel included and special. That might be the person that you want to be the mentor or the onboarder for your organization. She's not going to, he or she is not going to.

Laura Tolhoek: Be the technical trainer, but they are going to be the cultural onboarder. So having that mentor, having that buddy for lack of a better term, who's going to make sure that you're checking in with the new hire, how's day one going? How's our one? How's our six going? Can we go for lunch? This is what's going to happen tomorrow and have that person to bounce those ideas off of so that they have somebody they can connect with easily and quickly within the organization.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's so interesting too, because it's like, you always hear that phrase. People don't leave bad companies. They leave bad managers. And maybe it's just, I'd leave bad cultures that they don't have anyone that they feel like is [00:13:00] on their side. I can imagine how helpful that could be, but just to zoom out and connected to what ends up happening when you get this settled, could we maybe do a little bit of a, Goobus and gallant style, like what happens when this works out versus what happens when, this isn't set up properly.

Laura Tolhoek: Sure. So if you do, if you Google it a little bit, you'll realize there's some pretty stark statistics out there that said, say a person who is onboarded well, so whose training is implemented, whose followup, who's got a communication protocol in place within their organization, individuals who are onboarded have a greater chance.

Laura Tolhoek: Of staying long term within the organization that's past the 90 days that's into the years. But the other thing that happens when you onboard. Is you have people who are up to speed more quickly. So they're able to produce more quickly they're able to be effective. More quickly, so though it takes more time up front, it's going to pay off in efficiency and in productive work on the flip side.

Laura Tolhoek: If you don't onboard. [00:14:00] You have, John Smith sitting in the corner, trying to figure out what to do with two hours. Not comfortable enough to ask anybody what his next steps are. And eventually John Smith gets up and running and eventually he, figures out what he's supposed to do and starts contributing, but it's not as quick, it's not as efficient.

Laura Tolhoek: And he's not as well integrated into how your operation runs.

Jan Roos: Okay. And then especially connecting it back to lawyers too. If you can put the amount of money that you guys are billing per hour, it's probably pretty tangible when you can cut that thing down to get somebody up to full capacity.

Jan Roos: And one of the things I wanted to ask too, and I'm sure there's probably not a hard and fast answer to this. But I always I always used to tell mom, this is, I don't know who actually told him this in the first place. I think this is one of the coaches we worked with, but I was always set with the expectation that when you hire people, it's going to take a lot more time before your time is going to be a lot more filled before it ends up being freed up, but as far as like the onboarding process, what do you see?

Jan Roos: And if it's not an exact number, maybe a range, like how much, to really make a good first impression on somebody, how long should you [00:15:00] be planning for?

Laura Tolhoek: So that's an interesting question because we've built A lot of onboarding processes, and we built a lot of hands on onboarding. So a lot of face to face communication interaction, and we built a lot of self taught onboarding so that it's not somebody with handling standing beside the individual for a week straight.

Laura Tolhoek: So it really is going to be determined based off of what you want it to look like, but I would say in the first day, there's definitely a, probably 75 percent of the day, you'll want somebody with this individual. Followed by, and that would go down throughout the days. So maybe day two, you set up some interviews with other members of the team so that they can get a better understanding of what their role is, how their role interacts with them.

Laura Tolhoek: And then all the way down to once all of the training is done and they should be more fairly self sufficient, but it could be anywhere from investing. I would say. 20 plus hours to full eight hours a day for, three months. If you wanted [00:16:00] it to be that way, which I don't think anybody does.

Laura Tolhoek: But it really depends on the culture of the organization and what you want included in that onboarding.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Gotcha. And I want to actually add something to, just I hate to be too topical, but, as far as the times go to, I imagine some of this stuff is harder to pull off when there's no physical proximity, because of the situation we find ourselves in as a, I guess we're US and Canada.

Jan Roos: So as a continent at the moment how have you guys been adapting to that or what kind of recommendations are you making for people who might be onboarding fully remotely at this point?

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah. You know what? I'll be honest with you. There's not a lot that changes. The only difference is that we have to learn how to work through those zoom calls and those go to meetings.

Laura Tolhoek: So it's still very similar. I actually had to do an onboarding about six weeks ago. With somebody who was. And it's the same type of connection that you're looking for. It's the same type of information that you're providing. You're setting up, we set up zoom calls with other members of the team that she would be interacting with so that she got to know the team in that same [00:17:00] sense.

Laura Tolhoek: But at the end of the day, whatever HR system or whatever HR protocols you go to, it all boils down to one thing and that's communication. Okay. And especially in this environment where so many of us are remote, you can't under communicate. It's almost impossible in these types of environments to under communicate with your teams.

Laura Tolhoek: Oftentimes many businesses struggle with communication within the, its internal culture. Anyways not many organizations. Will really stand on their platform and say, we've nailed this communication thing down. We've got it a hundred percent. We're all striving to be better at communication. And especially when we start turning to remote teams to remote onboarding, we have to double down on that communication.

Jan Roos: And I can see that too. It's like when that old Warren Buffett quote, it's like, it's not until the tide goes out that you can see who wasn't wearing swim trunks. It's maybe some of these bad communication habits were just shored up by people who had, be well, I wouldn't call it a crutch, but the [00:18:00] convenience of being able to be physically with someone.

Jan Roos: So it just forces you to take a better look on it. And I also want to add this to I think so much of this has parallels with. The marketing process and the client intake process for law firms. Just because, if you have, everyone is concerned about that first impression as far as somebody walking in the door to retain you for your services.

Jan Roos: But if you have an SOP for, when the, when they get their cup of mineral water, but you're throwing people into the desk in the corner and saying, go get them champ, you got to think about a lot of this stuff, like holistically,

Laura Tolhoek: we have these SOPs. We have these customer service expectations.

Laura Tolhoek: We have these client onboarding. And the way that we deal with a crisis with our clients and our customers is usually very well thought out. Yet, when we have internal customers, our teams, and when we have internal client issues within our teams or new hires, we don't approach it with the same Sense of urgency that we do our external customers.

Laura Tolhoek: And that if we think about our teams as our internal customers and how we approach those situations, when people have issues or when [00:19:00] people are going through things, it really helps us frame better how to manage our internal teams.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really interesting. And there's also like that sort of tertiary connection where it's that old saw, your frontline staff will treat your clients the way that you treat your frontline staff.

Jan Roos: It's, I think there's a lot of synergies to look into this maybe earlier than people have been. So I want to switch gears a little bit to Kind of employee development, right? And that's the thing too, like it's obviously a big step for a lot of a lot of law firm owners, especially with that first hire to get people who might be 80 percent as good as them in a given domain, getting through that delegation, but eventually getting them to the point where they're not only as good as you were when you made that hire, but ultimately better than you were because they have the time and the focus.

Jan Roos: So let's talk about employee development pass that onboarding process. How often, how quickly do you want to get. Metrics in place and how do you advise people get started on that?

Laura Tolhoek: Oh, that's one of my favorite questions. I think that there is no better time to give somebody the [00:20:00] objectives of their role and the key performance indicators, their metrics than day one.

Laura Tolhoek: Because at the end of the day, it comes back to that communication, that clarification. And if, if I think about myself, when do I want to know what's expected of me within a new role? I want to know on day one, I might not be able to hit it right away, but I want to know what the expectations are for my performance.

Laura Tolhoek: So you could go even as far as saying when you provide the job offer letter, it comes with the job description with the key performance indicators and the objectives on it. Because at the end of the day, we don't want to hold back that information, especially if it's a written document. We don't want to hold that back from somebody knowing we could have told you what we expected of you, back in September, but we waited until January, I don't think that's a fair assessment of somebody on.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And then basically, so even if they know it, I don't think there's too much of a downside to, because it's obviously like the expectation is that somebody is going to take some time to ramp up, but if they know where the, the end goal is, it's going to allow them to better orient to, how to get there.

Laura Tolhoek: [00:21:00] Absolutely. And if you have been providing that within the interview process, for example, or the job offer, you might be able to weed out a few candidates who say, Oh, you need me to do X, Y, Z in this amount of time. It takes me three times as long, so perhaps this isn't the place for me.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And also another huge parallel. I'm actually thinking about a podcast we've recently recorded with Ricky Walter and Gary winters of Lovex, they were talking about the importance of getting stuff deeper in the process from, the actual intake process. So the questions that are coming from the consultation, bringing those all the way up to the first call.

Jan Roos: That the frontline staff are working with. So some interesting parallels here taking those core concepts and moving them further into your hiring process could, prevent some big problems down the line. Yeah, it's at the end of the day too. I was actually thinking about this the other day too.

Jan Roos: It was like there's always that that old quote trust the process and I was thinking I was going to record a podcast on this, that was just called trust. Process cross out the, it's just, when you're taking a, a serious look at things, it's just, that's why it's useful to have people to focus on this [00:22:00] all the time, like you do, right?

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah we have a client in the, exactly that in the PR space. And she was really competing for a talent right out of. Out of university. And she said, I really need this girl. She's amazing. I want her on my team, but I offered her the job. And she said she wanted to wait till Monday. Cause she had a new, another job offer, another job interview that she wanted to attend to just to make sure that she was leaving no stone unturned in her career search.

Laura Tolhoek: Out of university. And so she emailed us, she's I just, I really want her. We said, you know what, you have everything in place. You are a fantastic organization. You've showed her all of your cards and what you can present. You have a great structure and recruitment flow, a great candidate experience.

Laura Tolhoek: So just wait. And literally this young lady emailed her. Half an hour after her other interview and just said, it's taking this other interview only solidified my belief that going with you was the right choice. And that all comes back again to that employer brand. What are you putting out into the world as [00:23:00] who you are as an employer?

Jan Roos: Yeah. And there's the win wins keep stacking up here too, because it's like, getting the clarity for yourself on the KPIs also shows what kind of company you are, what kind of transparency you have. Cause it's a lot of the negative things you've spoken about potentially happening.

Jan Roos: It's you, it doesn't matter if though you like the name on the door, if you're, if you're Johnny in the corner on the first week, it's not going to be a great of a situation. Yeah. All right. So going back on the development stuff. We have developments That go great every once in a while, you'll find that rockstar, how do you suss out where people are at as far as their kind of potential?

Jan Roos: And like, how does that process usually look? Do you believe that you can switch somebody from being a steady player to an a player or, vice versa, what kind of coaching do you need for people that are really good?

Laura Tolhoek: Okay. So

Jan Roos: that was a lot of questions.

Laura Tolhoek: Which one do I want to choose?

Laura Tolhoek: Let's talk about our superstars. Because I think sometimes we forget about our superstars. We forget about those people who are doing well, and we put them off to the side in the whole performance management process. We just, oh, just keep doing what you're doing. We really need to figure out what makes [00:24:00] people tick.

Laura Tolhoek: So why is our superstar? What are they doing, and what are we doing that is helping them be successful in their role? Maybe that high competence and high commitment that they have to the organization requires us to have, very little support and little direction, but what if all of a sudden we changed somehow and we became micromanaging with them?

Laura Tolhoek: What would happen to that engagement in that and that performance? It would probably, fall pretty quickly. But what is it that makes them tick? What is it that really keeps them motivated? And I think if we can't figure out what keeps them motivated, we're not going to be able to keep them. So there's a book I'm sure you've heard of it.

Laura Tolhoek: Five love languages. They actually have the five levels of appreciation within a workplace, a great read because it takes it down really to the basics of why are people motivated and What motivates people and how do people feel appreciated? Because, maybe you are all [00:25:00] you need is someone to say, Hey, great job.

Laura Tolhoek: Really appreciate that. And you're like, yes, that filled my cup, but maybe you go to the next person and you say that and they're like, okay, cool, whatever. But maybe if you wrote it in a note, it was a written communication that had such such an impact on them that made the difference. Or, somebody brings you a coffee in the morning.

Laura Tolhoek: You're like, cool. They got me a coffee, but somebody else, you provided that to them and they just felt the impact and felt appreciated from it. And we all have these ways that we feel appreciated. And so those superstars, we have to figure out what makes them tick because at the end of the day, even a superstar wants to feel appreciated.

Jan Roos: And you bring up a couple of really interesting things here. So we've got basically, the, is this technically, cause I'll out myself as being a bit of a sappy romantic, but I have actually read the file of languages. Is this a separate book or is this within the within that book?

Jan Roos: Gary

Laura Tolhoek: Chapman, five languages of appreciation in the workplace. And it goes right in line with that five love languages. It takes a little bit away from the physical touch aspect. Yeah,

Jan Roos: I'd imagine.

Laura Tolhoek: But yeah, it's very much in line [00:26:00] with the five love languages. And it's just, it's a very easy read.

Laura Tolhoek: It's so simple to start comprehending how people appreciate it, feel appreciated differently within the workplace.

Jan Roos: Yeah. So you met, we have, that's something that we want to know. I know you just mentioned some things, this was in passing, but it seemed like these were things that you had a really good idea of from a hiring perspective, competence and commitment to the company are these things that you're.

Jan Roos: Filtering for, or like, how do you gauge that from somebody that's coming in?

Laura Tolhoek: So whenever you have somebody coming in, who is new to a role, new to your company, they're going to have a high commitment, but they might not understand what is going on within your organization. So there is going to be a little bit more hands on that's needed, even with a great performer, they're still going to want to know the basics of what your organization is like.

Laura Tolhoek: So leaving them in a corner is not going to motivate them, giving them a little bit of work to do to get them feeling apart and being able to help them see. [00:27:00] Ask the questions that they don't know the answers to within your organization is really going to get them ramping up quickly. And as they ramp up, they're going to realize there's might be gaps between their last organization and this organization and that there's more that they need to know.

Laura Tolhoek: So we can't even with a star performer who's new to our team, just let them go at it because we still need to have a little bit more touch points with those individuals. But as they grow within the organization, we're going to see not only their competence within that individual business grow, we're going to see the commitment grow as well.

Laura Tolhoek: And those star performers, again, they had that high commitment and high competence, and that's why they do so well. But if you micromanage a high commitment and high competent person, you're going to, like I said, you're going to plummet that engagement that they have in the same sense that if you don't give high touch, Communication and high touch motivation to somebody who's new.

Laura Tolhoek: They're also going to think, what is [00:28:00] going on in this company? Nobody talks to me, nobody cares what I'm doing. Nobody's even checking in on me to see if I'm doing anything for that matter.

Jan Roos: And would you, would it be fair to say, are these like fixed traits or will these move fluidly as somebody, ends up growing into a role?

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah, this is taken from situational leadership, which is a great course. But it. It's not a fixed rate. It's going to move as an individual's skills in a certain area are challenged and improved. So you might have somebody who's a star performer and you give them a really new task, something that's new to them and a challenge for them.

Laura Tolhoek: And they might be able to take some of what they did in their star performer role. But this new test, they're going to need a whole new set of touch points for. So if you give them a completely new task, you give your start performer, Hey, I need you to build this computer. They're going to attempt it, but it's going to be very demotivating because they don't have the touch points.

Laura Tolhoek: If you say, Hey, I need you to build this computer. And here's the steps that I need you to take in order to do because you've never [00:29:00] done so before. It's a lot more motivating for that individual. Now, if you give your it guy, Hey, I need you to build this computer. And here's the steps I need you to take.

Laura Tolhoek: They're going to look at you and think you're crazy. Of course, I know how to do this. I'm your it guy. But really depends on. On what task that they're doing at that time depends on the touch points. You want to give them for the motivation, for the encouragement, for the managing aspect of it.

Jan Roos: Okay. Yeah.

Jan Roos: That's very interesting too. Cause it's I always ask about like the fluid versus fixing. Cause it's there are certain things that people talk about often. And I'm actually very curious. It's are there any sort of personality tests that you put more or less weight into as far as people that are coming into an organization or how to lead people?

Laura Tolhoek: I do have a few that I look at, but I always find that personality tests we use, we usually can understand them and use them to our advantage in an organization once we already know people. So when we have a, some kind of characteristic or [00:30:00] workplace test to a new person, we don't know them. We can't attribute the characteristics on a written document to who they are.

Laura Tolhoek: Whereas once they are part of our. Community for three, six months, a year. And then we see that psychological profile. We say, ah, that's why they do this or that's why when this situation occurred, I always get the example we used strengths finder within our group of. Our team here at essential HR and my one team member, she, I always was amazed because I would say something and all of a sudden it was done like two days later.

Laura Tolhoek: And it was literally a passing thought in my brain and she executed it. And then once we did strengths finder, I realized one of her strengths, the explanation of it was that she had such a strong sense of loyalty. She could never leave things undone. So I had to make it very clear this is important and this is not

Jan Roos: right.

Laura Tolhoek: This thought is passing, please disregard it because she had such a strong sense of getting things done and loyalty. But with just reading that as a document before I [00:31:00] hired her, I've been like, okay, that's cool. That's a great to have. I didn't understand its practicality within her as an individual.

Jan Roos: Okay. So maybe not super useful as a diagnostic process or for the onboarding, but I guess once you have people up and running, or maybe something to keep in, consider for teams that have been around for a while, you mentioned strengths finders, but other, are there any other ones that, that he takes stock in?

Laura Tolhoek: Oh, you're putting me on the spot now because I do have two or three and you know what I will. Certainly get them to you. We can put them in the show notes. Some of the ones I really like who are psychologically who are based in psychological principles rather than just feel good principles.

Laura Tolhoek: And make sure that they're well documented within, educational setting that, cause there's a lot of them out there and I just like the ones that are, more, more based in. Psychological principles.

Jan Roos: We actually only use astrological principles internally. I'm getting

Laura Tolhoek: told me that I should make sure that, I call my mom tonight.

Jan Roos: Okay. Awesome. All right, so that's good. Basically we have a little bit more context than what we might have once we have those, but okay. So you've spoken about the superstars, but [00:32:00] no, what about things that go in the other direction? I know it's not really fun to talk about, but underperforming or yeah.

Jan Roos: Like what do we do when somebody seems that they're falling short of their KPIs?

Laura Tolhoek: So we've all heard of the sandwich feedback that like the feedback sandwich, and I would like to throw out there that I hate the feedback sandwich. So the feedback sandwich for those of our listeners who haven't heard it before is when you start with, the positive you, you put in the.

Laura Tolhoek: opportunistic feedback, and then you end on a positive. And that way, you don't ruin the person's day and they try to take it because they know you still love them. And at the end of the day, in my, almost two decades of HR experience, what I've realized about the feedback sandwich is that when you give somebody great positivity and then slice in a little bit of, the opportunity feedback of what they need to change and ended in positivity, all they hear is two ends of positivity.

Laura Tolhoek: And that little piece that you've, put your emotional resources into and having that conversation and wondering how are you going to do it and losing sleep [00:33:00] at night because you want to make sure you do it right. That little piece, that little meat that you put in the middle gets completely lost.

Laura Tolhoek: And so we go on two weeks later and the same issues are happening and there's no change and we're like, but we had the conversation. Why did nothing change? Nothing changed because we had the conversation and we let 10 percent of the conversation be about the actual problem and sandwiched it between two pieces of great feedback.

Laura Tolhoek: So my personal belief is at the end of the day, treat other people, treat these conversations the same way you would want to be treated. If you had a an area of opportunity within your own performance that needed to be addressed, how would you want it addressed? And I know for me and for a lot of people that I speak to, they just want people to be straight with them, be fair, be straight.

Laura Tolhoek: And just give them the information. If we try to sugarcoat it to really, at the end of the day, to make ourselves feel better, it never has the strength that it needs in order to provide the individual with the proper information about how to change their behavior in order to be more successful.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And [00:34:00] that's actually a really interesting perspective on it. Cause I was like, a lot of the times people go into this and try to soften a conversation because in their mind, their rationale is that they don't want to hurt them. That person. But in reality, what you're saying is that it's actually more selfish because you're not having to have the burden of having a tough conversation, having your blood pressure rise for all there.

Jan Roos: But that's also interesting too, cause it's if you had so many, I think a lot of the times too, and just from experience on our own team too, it's like whenever. Things get pointed out or like I've, there, we had a situation with with one of our employees a long time ago.

Jan Roos: And basically it was it was a little bit of an asynchronous situation and we weren't really sure that the hours are being filled up. And basically I was like, Hey I'm not really seeing, eight hours a day on this. I don't know what you're saying. They're like, Oh my God, I'm so glad that you asked me because I felt like I've been stealing time for the past week.

Jan Roos: And I was like, okay. I was really surprised to hear that. But, I think a lot of these things too, I try to think about this if you're walking around with spinach in your teeth, like you want something to tell you, they wouldn't have to like, like dance around the topic.

Jan Roos: You just want to get the spinach [00:35:00] out of your teeth.

Laura Tolhoek: Hey, did you, what did you have for lunch? Was it a good lunch? Just tell me I have the spinach.

Jan Roos: Exactly. Just to close things out a little bit there's obviously process to keep this going, but like, how do you think about making sure, in between the highs and lows, do you ever, you Think about any sort of process to keep people on track or it's funny, like a lot of times, I think a lot of small business owners, especially when they come from a larger business background they're super anti, TPS reports and this and that, and maybe to their own detriment, but how do you think about keeping, new hires, old hires, everyone on track as far as hitting their goals?

Laura Tolhoek: There's a couple of different schools of thought and I, the number one advice I can give is what is your communication culture already? Let's build the whole idea of development and performance into what your communication culture is already. Is everybody really independent and just does their own thing and then comes together when need be, maybe monthly, maybe weekly, maybe quarterly, who knows?

Laura Tolhoek: Let's build our system of [00:36:00] development and goal setting. Into that. Are you already talking with most of your team members or your supervisors and managers talking to most of your team members on a weekly, daily, hourly basis? Let's use that as our jumping off point for our succession and our development plans.

Laura Tolhoek: Because at the end of the day, if we start building a system for performance and development that goes against what the communication culture already is, it's going to be a fight. But if you're already talking to your people on a regular basis about. What their goals are, what their projects are, what are they working on, reflecting back on what we could do differently next time.

Laura Tolhoek: Why would we do that again in three months or six months? So if we can build a culture where, our communication is with our supervisors and our teams is on a regular basis, I would even throw it out there. Do we really need an annual performance?

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really interesting too. And I get very hot take as they say, but no, that makes a lot of sense too.

Jan Roos: And there's also no one size fits all plan at the end of the day. [00:37:00] It if you're brushing your teeth every day, you might not have to get a root canal every three, five years. And it

Laura Tolhoek: brings it back to that idea that HR is really about communication.

Laura Tolhoek: And so the annual performance review is really about communication, but if you already have a culture of communication, like those annual performance reviews, They can be redundant, they can feel scary, they can be cringeworthy. If you've built communication into your everyday weekly activities with your team, if they already know what's going on and you're working towards goals and plans, let's stop looking in reverse.

Laura Tolhoek: And let's start looking at development because if there's a problem, we're not going to talk about it with them in six months. Let's talk about them today.

Jan Roos: Okay. Awesome. I think that's a really great place in at the end coming full circle, if you're not, if you're not looking at the past, you can end up looking at the future and end up working towards a better future, which I think is probably a good point.

Jan Roos: All right. So Laura, thank you so much for taking the time for this podcast. If people are interested, like what they hear, what's the best way to get in touch with you.

Laura Tolhoek: Yeah. So essentially charred. [00:38:00] ca is our website. And if you go to essentially char. ca slash LFGP, you can grab that identify and amplify your employer brand download that we've created for your listeners.

Jan Roos: Okay. Awesome. Super. Thanks for that.

Laura Tolhoek: And we are also on LinkedIn. That's the best place to find us. And we, we have some other channels, but we love LinkedIn.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Actually I love LinkedIn too. I gotta say, we threw a little bit of ad budget on this for the podcast on Facebook, but I'd say probably the most consistent place that we've been posting on is LinkedIn as well.

Jan Roos: So if you're hearing this on LinkedIn, then you know where to find Laura. Perfect. All right. Awesome, guys. Thanks again, Laura. Super appreciate it. And for everybody else, we will be back next week at Tuesday, 8 AM Eastern on The Law Firm Growth Podcast.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth Podcast.

Narrator: For show notes, free resources, and more, head on over to casefuel.com/podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next [00:39:00] episode.