Why Your Best Employees Are Quietly Quitting (and How to Fix It) - Ashley Herd

0:00I've spent my vacation writing this person's offer letter seven months ago. What do you mean you're telling me now and I have to spend my other vacation talking to you about how to let them go suddenly? That's not right.

0:14What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

0:51Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. I am Jessica Neal, your host, and I am here today with a lovely lady that I'm so excited to have on the show. Her name is Ashley Hurd. She is the founder and CEO of The Manager Method. And I want her to tell her story, but she has, I don't know, you and I might be just kind of soulmates in a sense, because we are out on a mission to tell truths about work. And so even though my podcast is called Truth Works and yours is called HR Besties, I feel like we're going to be besties after this because we like to talk about the same things. So welcome to the show, Ashley.

1:34Can you please tell our listeners your story and how you got into all this? Because it's fascinating and I know they want to know about it. Thank you, Jessica. And I'm absolutely happy to be life besties with you on this journey of talking about work and then what can we do to make work better so i so i'm ashley hurt i grew up in in louisville kentucky i live in atlanta wait i grew up in shelbyville no really yeah wait shut the front door wow i went i yeah i went to college in danville kentucky uh i guess i saw that on your profile but i didn't i mean i was i don't know i didn't know you grew up right next door to me The Commonwealth.

2:19I actually, I believe wholeheartedly that growing up in Louisville or the surrounding areas, I'll count Shelbyville. And the Shelbyville horse show is very fun, by the way. Shoot, you've been to the Shelbyville horse show. Oh my God. Of course. But I do think being from Kentucky, being from these areas, there is a unique, unique thing, and I should have better more than thing, but you appreciate things. Like I, there is a connection that you find when you meet people from Kentucky or like I live in Atlanta now and I say like Atlanta will have like oh my gosh like seven crazy events in one weekend and nobody really knows the difference you're in the Louisville area and it is like things on every every poll and people just they care and they get excited for things and that's something that I brought into literally into the workplace of like wanting things to be fun wanting to have fun even in like tough moments and so I do I cite being from Kentucky as a huge part yeah and you say Louisville correctly?

3:14Of course. Of course I do. Because it's a code word as well. What if I tried to claim I was from Louisville? You'd be like, that's witness protection background there. I went to college in New York and people would ask me where I was from. And I always said Louisville because pretty much I was because anything we wanted to do in Shelbyville, we had to go to Louisville to do it. They wouldn't know Shelbyville other than the Simpsons, right? Because it was like a town on the Simpsons. And so I would say Louisville. And they'd be like, where? and then I'd have to go Louisville, Louisville, right?

3:44And then they're like, oh, Louisville, Kentucky. And I'm like, that's not how you say it. It's not how you say it. Or they'd be like, oh, do you go to the Derby? I'd be like, no, we're from that area. We go to the Oaks. Or now you go to Thurby or other retreating days. So yeah, anyway. The Oaks. So fun. Okay. Well, we're not here to talk about Kentucky all day, although I could. Yeah, same. And funny thing, my girlfriends want to take a little girl trip, but it's like Derby weekend. And I'm like, I can't. No, you can't. You absolutely cannot. No, we have even Atlanta, we have a derby party every year.

4:14It is an event. Yeah, I know. So anyways, okay, back to you. So you and I grow up in the same place. Maybe we even know same people. We'll get to that. I'm sure we do, yes. We don't want all the listeners to hear all of that, but we'll get to that at some point. So you grew up in Kentucky, you go to college in Kentucky. Then what happens? I moved to DC. And so I started, I worked for a best practices research firm. It was corporate executive board. Now Gartner, I started cold calling Fortune 1000 CFOs. So I quickly thickened my skin from my liberal arts background. I got promoted into the role that then I'd go, people, other people would make cold call appointments, I would show up on those appointments to meet with heads of HR across North America for the head of HR program.

4:56Wild. Wild. And so I always wanted to go to law school, I literally had no, there were no lawyers in my family. Although since my mom went to law school later in life, my brother is a couple years older than me is getting ready to graduate from law school part-time, but I didn't have any, but I just decided at the Kentucky State Fair at like 10 years old, I made this sheriff's badge at the time, Ashley Vinsel, corporate lawyer, which, you know, I was, I clued to be a dork as a kid, but I had this in my mind. And so I was going to go to law school and these heads of HR kept saying, go into employment law.

5:27You'll never be at a loss for work. And it's true. It was true because people have been peopling for decades and they're not stopping anytime soon. No, no, they're not. But I, so basically I was a lawyer. I did employment law. I worked in law firms. I did mostly management side employment work. I worked for a large, large firm. And then eventually went in-house and worked directly for a client. And so what that meant was going from being this lawyer in court to look, dealing with the things, the very legal issues, including like who's getting kicked out of the company parking lot. Like a lawyer should have said, that's an important decision.

6:01We should have, have a lawyer make that, those types of questions. But so one thing I saw is I worked at some different places. We actually, I was in Atlanta, but to be close to family, we moved back to Louisville. I worked at KFC. Okay, yeah. And we moved to Australia as a family for my husband's job. And so I rejoined a prior company, worked remotely, and then came back and was working for McKinsey Consulting Firm on their global legal team. And I was in that role and after a year had been asked to interview and gotten the role as head of HR for North America. McKinsey. And I'd started in the role and was leading a team and talking to someone.

6:38Which is huge. Which is huge. And especially I don't like those, those that know McKinsey or I've worked there, there is no place of imposter syndrome. Like when you look on the intranet and you'll be like, you know, somebody you're about to get on a call with, I'd look them up and I'd say, oh my gosh, they have five Ivy League degrees. I'm still, they'll still don't have any. Me neither. I was, oh my gosh. And so it's, you can be filled with that. But the reassuring thing that you see is what I saw. And I was telling someone on my team this, I'm like, you know, there were their senior partners at McKinsey that they could have a masterclass taught to them by an assistant restaurant manager at KFC about driving business, but also the impact on people's lives.

7:16And, you know, neither would think that they have much in common with each other, but they really do. And I had bought when we lived in Australia, I bought this domain, manager method.com did nothing with it, like, you know, many of us do with random domains. But I talked to this person, she's like, why? I'm like, I want to have a company that I help people across industry have difficult conversations, managers, difficult can mean lots of things. And this person said, why, why wouldn't you do that? I mean, I had answers, like I just got in this job, I never thought I would get. But it really stuck with me.

7:44And so I, I decided to leave McKinsey, start my company, I was able to also rejoin a prior company who was fine with me starting my business that that was not going to happen realistically at McKinsey. But yeah, right. Yeah. But so I was able to start and that was that was six years ago. So through it, I started this business. It looks wholly different than when I first started, but everything at the principle, helping people, helping managers across industry have difficult conversations. But I started posting on social media, making role play videos on TikTok. Again, those things you don't think you'll start doing in your forties.

8:17And met two other people from social media, Lee and Jamie, and we started the HR Besties podcast. And so it all blends. Because when I grew up, I actually went to manual high school, because this is what you have to talk about when you're from Kentucky. Yeah. Well, I went to KCD. Okay. And then I ended up graduating from Shelby County. Okay. So we definitely probably know some of the same people. But I did a program at Manual. It's the Youth Performing Arts School for playwriting. And I always wanted to be a playwright. But I went on to law school. You didn't hear me mention playwriting through my career quilt.

8:48But I now, everything I wanted to be when I was growing up with this idea of a playwright, I do it in like 59 second videos on social media, but branding my experience. And so it still is the same premise of helping work be better and using all the experiences, good and bad I had as a lawyer and an HR. But it's been a way that's been really fun for me to create something with my unique perspective. Yeah. Can I just say, look at us two badass Kentucky women. I love it. like becoming heads of HR for huge companies. Like, did you ever imagine? No. And with the thing, but that was part of the reason why, I mean, I literally was in the role at McKinsey.

9:32Like I'd started it when I resigned. Part of what I said, I was like, I don't like the person I am here. And I said, I really want to try something different. I've always had this urge to start this business. And one of the responses was, but we just put your face on this map, this presentation around the firm, which again, like McKinsey, the love language is definitely PowerPoint. But for me, it was, the thing I kept thinking about was nobody's going to believe it when I post this on LinkedIn. It's going to be great. I mean, already I was working there. But when I get this leadership role, people are going to be, you know, absolutely lose their mind.

10:05And then I stopped myself and thought, but that's not a reason. That's not a reason to do something. And so, you know, for me, I'm sure there are people that probably thought it was absolutely nuts. I know there were. that well sure yeah i mean like to leave that to go do your own thing like that's a little crazy but it is but it's when you put that i say the linkedin test aside and do what's really uniquely drives you and you feel like you have the skill at it is such a is such a fulfilling it's become such a fulfilling life and other adjectives but very fulfilling well congratulations and you super proud of you also for the listeners that can't see us we are twinning in red yeah so like Not only are we probably sisters from another mother that grew up in Kentucky, we also like the color red and we're twinning.

10:51So I feel like now we definitely are besties for life. Totally. It has to be. So let's get into this company that you start and you want to help people and you want to give them advice. How did you start it? What did you start talking about? obviously started making social posts and things like that. But what was the mission for the company? The big mission for the company is to help people have conversations that are often not had. And generally that was, as a lawyer, sometimes I saw people definitely doing and saying the wrong things. But more often I saw people not doing or saying something, especially things around performance, like the manager that comes to HR and says, we need to let this person go.

11:33And you've never heard anything. Okay, let me look at the performance review. Like, oh my gosh, fives out of fives. Tell me more. Oh, well, I didn't mean it. But okay, well. Right. This is why this people here, they hear me on the show talk about it all the time. Performance reviews are not an indicator of performance ever. They don't work. And the first question I would ask managers when they would come to me and say, I want to let somebody go. I'm like, what are they going to say when we come to them? Are they going to be surprised and they'd be like, yeah, okay. Same, same. Or they shouldn't be.

12:09Okay. Well, from your perspective. And so a lot of this is, so conversations I'd had all around where we're helping people think about it from the other person's perspective and the end game. You know, this person, I'm like, I spent some, I've spent my vacation writing this person's offer letter seven months ago. What do you mean you're telling me now I'm going to have to spend my other vacation talking to you about how to let them go suddenly? That's not, that's not right. Also, why is it always on vacation? It's always on vacation. I mean, Jessica, I'm sure you have the exact, you can visualize yourself on these vacations on your laptop, on your phone.

12:42Everyone's sweating you because they're like, I thought you were on vacation. You're like, we need a performance plan. Right. Right now. Right now. Always. So I thought about all these conversations. And again, I kept having the same conversation across industry. And so I first started with like employment document templates, you know, very exciting things, but which is needed. But helpful. Helpful. But really what I like better is thinking about the conversations that I'd had with managers. I feel like I never thought about it that way. Like, what do I do and say? And so I created this course Manager 101.

13:15And I created this as an idea of like really kind of being a substitute of the conversations I'd have with people. But a lot of people don't have that as a resource. Like you can't just pick up the phone and call someone. So I created this whole course on things managers need to know. And so originally, I was like, oh, I'm going to sell this to individual managers. Well, in the shocking turn of events, again, some people did buy it, some people support it. But the people that really need that aren't generally looking for it on the internet to purchase unless they're being required to by their organization as a condition of staying employed.

13:44And so quickly, I had HR contacts that reached out and said, hey, could we get this for a group of our managers? Again, if I'd thought about it, I'd been like, oh, that's a really good idea. So we really now, individuals can buy what we have, but a lot of it is working with organizations. And so over time, we have this course, so it's like a course and a resource guide. But then the head of HR said, do you have like a discussion group, something we could do? And so now what we have is a three-legged stool. So organizations get it, and there's videos and a resource guide. So each manager has it, it's self-paced.

14:19But then for HR, the third leg is everything from communications to a schedule to materials to run live cohort sessions with your managers. Because the other thing I saw happening was organizations are like, we need to bring someone in. But you have a lot of baked in expertise generally by your HR teams, L &D. What they often lack is time, maybe some knowledge, but really time. And so this is to help. They've heard best practices from me or practical practices through the course. but then they come together and it's their HR teams talking about, okay, this is how you bring it to life. And it's a kind of a role play or it is, it's a role play of in this scenario, what do you do?

14:56And so that's, we created that. And now we have a whole leadership platform with tools that go along with it. And so it's really to help to drive people at work. Yeah. So interesting and so needed because these organizations don't do that. I mean, even when I was a CHRO at Netflix, like I would make my team role play all the time. And I did it with the entire legal support that supported us to my HR business partners, to the recruiters, and it was like, let's get into the situations because those are the things that we're navigating every day. And I don't want you to be learning on the spot how to navigate some of these complex issues.

15:39And some of them are more complex than others, as you know. But when done badly, creates a lot more work for the whole company. Completely. It is. It's really, a lot of what I try to do is to fill in the gap between when a manager's alone, like before they're going to reach out to HR, sometimes legal, but have this idea of what to do and say in the moment. Because I led trainings, especially as a lawyer, that, I mean, people walked away with the definition of the Family Medical Leave Act, which is all fine and good. But if a manager is really in a position they need to know those specifics, we're probably far down the path.

16:15Generally, what people leaders need to know, especially first line people leaders, but even through senior executives is, OK, if someone tells you they need to take leave and it's a really busy time at work, it matters a lot how you respond to that person. And not, you know, you're not going to solve that alone, but how you respond in those moments. And so a lot of them are talking about the importance of that and that the approach that they just haven't thought about before. They don't know what to do. Yeah. And it's like, I don't know, there's all these programs and things out there that are super high level.

16:46And I find that what people need is like practical advice that navigates the day to day. Like they don't need this like high level concept, right? That like happens hardly ever. They need like advice and companies. and I think, you know, I talk about this all the time on the show, and I think I've heard you talk about it on your show as well, but companies do nothing to prepare managers to manage and lead. They have no resources, no tools to navigate when somebody needs to go on a leave, or if they have to fire somebody, or if somebody asks them for a raise, or anything. Yeah. It's, I mean, what we've what we've done and we have a team of five including my husband who left his role uh leading customer success for a large tech company earlier this year to join to really lead everything client from the sales to like our client process i love that which is great but he's like getting on the phone with like a head of head of hr i'm like be nice i'm super friendly with this person and he's laughing he's like i'm always nice but there's no way i can show up the same way that you do but he's but he's really helped to take take the company in an even bigger direction with as far as products and all that, and really being strategic and provide those levels of support that you want to, to make sure it's successful.

18:05But it's, it's so true. And so what I've loved is everything, again, is built to be really scalable so that a lot of our organizations we work with, if they have the program, we have access, we get them everything you need, their managers, then they have the toolkit, train the trainer videos to know how to run it. Sometimes I run those cohort sessions. Again, I generally say it's best to have those done internally, but it's been helpful for me to lead some of them. So I can always, you know, we've adapted it over the last few years, but there was a CEO of a very large company and that just got acquired by a larger company.

18:34And he was joining, joining all these calls. And he was talking about sharing some of these tips, like, oh, I learned this tip. And he's like, this is, this is how I've brought it into work. And it totally changes the dynamic because all of a sudden, when you get that buy-in from all levels of leadership, like practical tips are helpful. I mean, I just, I completely agree. I think so many people as a first line leader, I mean, they talk in corporate speak because they don't know what to do or say. And so when you have those practical tips, I think it can allow you to become much more relaxed and effective as a leader.

19:06Yeah. Well, let's talk about what you find in your work because we are all about telling the truth here on this podcast. Also, I just want you to know that I started out my career cold calling too. Because I was a headhunter. But it makes your skin really thick. But talk to me about what you find in some of the biggest issues at work, outside of this manager not being trained to be a manager. But what do you think is plaguing us right now? I definitely think a lack of human, I'd say, connection and consideration. Connection that I think, whether you're remote or whether you're in person and hybrid, all those different environments, people now with technology, you just communicate with technology.

19:58And you send things by email, and then you send something by email, it sounds a lot different. But then people make all these assumptions into it and start ratcheting things up. And you write someone off like, okay, this person is my work enemy when you're all on the same team. And so I just think not having as much actual communication really leads to so many issues. But there's issues of managers not being silent. So whether it's not having performance conversations because you don't know how to have it, it feels really mean. And so then when you get down the path, you're like, this person needs to go.

20:30And so you go from zero to 60. I think there's so much zero to 60 that happens. Or you have things like people have life moments that happen and people don't know what to do or say or there's news in the world. I really have no idea what to say. But sometimes just showing basic levels of care and, you know, I'm here for you. I care about you personally and professionally. And just having some of those sentences can make all the difference. Because I think a lot of us feel like you come to work, nobody's going to care about you. You're just a spreadsheet. You have all these things. You just got to stuff them inside.

21:00And while work is work, the human aspect is so absolutely important and lacking. Yeah, no, it's so true. And I talk about this all the time too, because I think the biggest issues in the workplace today are centered around communication and clarity. Like people aren't good at communicating and they're not good at being clear. And it's everything from what you're talking about to showing care for life events. like, you know, I'm thinking about all the things that happened this weekend, right? And, you know, in Australia and at Brown, and by the way, everyone, I have terrible and we are thinking of anybody that that was impacted, and everybody that was not impacted as well, because it's just all heavy.

21:46But, you know, I was thinking back to like our training at Netflix about maternity leave, and we had to put in the training. And this is like not training, training. It's sort of more documentation things that like leaders could like read. It was like, first just say congratulations. You know, because they wouldn't. They would be like, well, how long? You know, that would be their first question. Or they'd be like, are you, really? Are you sure? Are you sure? What do we have to do? I mean, the have to, have to, totally. Right, what do we do? And so, but showing, you know, a little care and having clarity is good.

22:30But I mean, but you realize that, you know, managers and leaders aren't equipped with that. And if you go down layers in an organization, and I think actually McKinsey has some stats on this. I don't remember the exact stats. But if you go down, I think, below the vice president level, each level that you get further down, there's less clarity on goals, values, KPIs, like whatever you want. They don't have the context. And I just, it's a lot of work to get people the information and to be clear and to communicate. But if you can as a company, it solves a lot of problems. It does. I mean, I totally agree.

23:18It's like this game of telephone. And frequently, especially in large organizations, they'll say, well, I can't set goals for my team because I haven't gotten them for my boss's boss's boss. And while that's true, every organization, even if you're going to emphasize certain priorities, everybody should generally know what's expected of them. And it's really important for managers to know how to cascade that, including for managers of managers. Okay, what do you do when you have certain goals given to you, you have certain goals to, because that this execution of goals, or as a lot of people would say, like, how do we get work done?

23:49It's totally lacking. I mean, I have talked to people all the time that have that experience. And so a lot of a lot of what we try to do is to have those conversations. I mean, the biggest gaps I see are a manager who, yep, somebody's, we need to let this person go, you know, okay, have these conversations. And all of a sudden, you have a legal complaint that comes in. They're like, well, the person just requested to take medical leave. And you say, oh, my gosh. And so managers not realizing, again, that doesn't mean you can't do anything. It's still important to have a conversation. But you can't do things in a vacuum and knowing when you flag things in.

24:24Because people feel very alone at work or you're bothering people if you ask a question. But so we're actively talking about, oh, these are things to know. I mean, to your point, when I posted videos on social media, I started like January of 2022. and as a live interesting time for interesting interesting time and it was it's but so in july of 22 i had a video go viral and ended up gaining a ton of followers within the next few weeks and the video was about pumping at work and it was literally a 59 second role play of talking to a which is the worst by the way it's the worst and so it was but it was talking about the things that happen of like what space do we have to give them like jokes like it's like it's it's gross so all And then the flip of that, like, okay, it's also really hard.