Leading with Vulnerability and Cross-Functional Insight

Lesly Cardec: Okay….

Leslie Vickrey: Do you me to go?

Lesly Cardec: Oh…

Leslie Vickrey: Oh…am I going?!

Leslie Vickrey: Laughing

Lesly Cardec: Laughing

Intro: Welcome to Honestly We’re Learning, a podcast from ClearEdge, the marketing agency that also helps marketers grow their careers.

Join Leslie Vickrey and Lesly Cardec as we explore the turning points that shape a person’s professional story, the highs, the stumbles, and everything in between. We’ll bring you candid conversations with leaders and rising talent, plus our own take on what’s changing in marketing and recruiting today. Because behind every success story is a few lessons learned the hard way. And honestly, we’re all still learning.

---

Lesly Cardec: Hi, Leslie!

Leslie Vickrey: Hey, LC!

Lesly Cardec: Good to see you!

Leslie Vickrey: Good to see you, Lesly. Another week, another podcast coming up.

Lesly Cardec: I know…it goes by so fast. I feel like we were just here.

Leslie Vickrey: I know. I do too.

Lesly Cardec: I was doom-scrolling over the weekend and saw the cutest and the most awesome video of Greyson, your son, on stage which like blew me away. So tell me what was he doing on stage and like just tell me all the things.

Leslie Vickrey: He, it was a talent show. So his school does a talent show and he did a song and dance to a light, his favorite light saber song, or beat saber song. So if you watch or play VR, there’s a game called Beat Saber. And it’s basically where it’s really fast music and there’s things coming at you and you’re taking your controllers and trying to beat them by hitting them to the beat of the song. So he picked his favorite. It is super fast and we thought it might be a challenge for him to pull off, but he did it beautifully. And he doesn’t get nervous, Lesly, it’s the wildest thing. So he’s nine years old and the song was, Love You, Need You. So he’s singing to this audience of kids about how much he loves them and needs them and wants to hold them. And I was like… this is amazing. It was so fun.

Lesly Cardec: That is awesome. Actually, I think it just clicked that my son has that game too. You said it’s a VR thing?

Leslie Vickrey: Yes, yes.

Lesly Cardec: I think I know what you’re talking about. I feel like I put it on one time. Was there like things flying through? That’s a fun game. And for him to do that in front of everyone, I mean, major kudos.

Leslie Vickrey: Have your son check out Love You Need You on Beat Saber and see, but that’s the song and it’s super fast. And he pulled it off. What fascinates me is one, he does not get nervous and two, he doesn’t really practice it. I kept asking him, you know, are you sure you’re ready? He knows he can memorize. He has a really great gift of memorization and he does have, I’m biased, but he does have a good voice. But I thought, well, you’re on stage in front of all these people. Don’t you want to practice a routine and whatnot? And he was like, no, I’ve got it. I’m good.

Lesly Cardec: Do you think he just has some great confidence or do feel like doing it too much would make him nervous?

Leslie Vickrey: That’s a good question. I think it’s that he just has the confidence in it and probably doesn’t want to practice. Yeah, or maybe in his head while he was playing beat saber, he was practicing

Lesly Cardec: It reminds me of, okay, first of all, my son, who’s 15, would never get on stage. I mean, I could offer him whatever he wanted, and he would never do it. But his response, Greyson’s response, reminds me of his where I’m like, do you want to study? And he’s like, nope, got it. I got it. And, you know, he ends up doing so-so, but I’m always like the one where, let’s practice. Let me prepare you, let me ask you questions.” And he’s like, no, I looked at it in school. I’m good.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah, I’m good, I got it, I got it, mom. Don’t worry about that. Yeah.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s amazing. My gosh. I wonder where that comes from. Were you a confident kid?

Leslie Vickrey: You know, I think it’s more the arts. He loves performing. And he, I don’t think I did, I mean, outside of like putting on shows for family, you know, little plays or song and dance. I was in dance, now that you say that. So I did do a lot of dance and baton and so forth. But my husband sang accapella in college. He played in a band and he definitely has that music art side to him. So for him, it just comes naturally. So I think for him, he’s just confident. And he goes up. What about you? What were you like as a kid?

Lesly Cardec: My God, the direct opposite. I was like hiding behind my mom, like going into stores. You know, it just comes really natural for some people and I just give them so much credit.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah, I think he’ll be definitely a little performer. With Spamalot coming up this week, Thursday is his first performance. So I’ll let you know how it goes.

Leslie Vickrey: Today we’re really excited to welcome Mike Smith to the podcast. And before we get into his impressive resume, I wanna start with how we actually first crossed paths, Mike.

We met last year at LinkedIn Talent Connect in San Diego, thanks to an introduction from Sue Marcus, Managing Director at Randstad Sourcerights North America. And it was one of those moments where you quickly realize, this is gonna be a good conversation. So I was really happy to meet you, which by the way, reinforced my long held belief that Randstad is really the Kevin Bacon of the staffing world somehow. All roads always lead back to Spherion or Randstad. In fact, all three of us, including Sue, go back quite a ways and where you really got your start. So I’m excited to share a little bit about that here.

So you’re the Chief Executive of Randstad Enterprise and a member of the global leadership team. For over more than two decades, you’ve helped some of the world’s leading organizations turn complex talent challenges into real strategic advantage. But Mike, I feel like what makes your story especially compelling is the breadth of your journey. You began your career as a graduate recruitment and went on to hold senior leadership and CEO roles really across the US, Europe and Asia, including leading Randstad UK and Randstad Sourceright at both the regional and global levels. And today, Mike, you oversee Randstad’s Global Solutions portfolio, spanning quite a bit. Let’s see, RPO, MSB, Career Transition, Coaching and Talent, Advisory. But beyond the roles and titles, Mike is really known for how he thinks about leadership and progress, a strong advocate for partnership-led innovation, bringing together human judgment, technology and strategy in a way that actually works in the real world. And Mike is also deeply committed to inclusion, which I love this about you, serving on the board of the Blind Institute of Technology and championing more accessible and inclusive workplace design. Thank you for all the work you do there.

Mike, we’re really looking forward to this conversation and welcome to the podcast.

Mike Smith: My pleasure. Thank you for the incredibly embarrassing introduction. It’s, I’ve been blessed to have an incredible career at Randstad, but, it’d be a remiss not to say from the start that, I only got to experience that because of the incredible people that I’ve worked with during that time.

Leslie Vickrey: Fantastic. It’s very kind of you. And again, when we met at LinkedIn, I remember thinking, maybe he’s in HR, maybe he’s a client of Sue’s, maybe he’s this or that. And then when we met, I was like, okay. I should have known who you were. And it was really nice to meet you. And again, we’re looking forward to having you here.

Mike Smith: Not at all, my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Lesly Cardec: I’m echoing what Leslie said, very happy to spend some more time with you today and I feel like it’s a little, even though we weren’t there maybe at the same time, just a little fellow reunion over here on the recording. Take us back a little bit, Mike, on what first pulled you into this work and how did your path unfold to get to where you are today?

Mike Smith: Yeah, I mean, like most people, don’t start out, I think, with the intention to say, I want to be a recruiter, you kind of fall into it. And my auntie was actually the head of HR for Qantas for many years. So during university, I did an internship at Qantas in HR and in their people experience organization and kind of fell in love with the idea of how much a difference, just being thoughtful and intentional, your idea around talent management, talent acquisition and talent experience and how when you get that right that that can create incredible discretionary effort in organizations. And I still think that people are the heartbeat of organizations today.

So when you’re able to kind of get the balance right between engagement, motivation, learning and development and creating an environment where people, lack of better words, to sound a bit cliched, really get joy and satisfaction from their work. I see that having a disproportionately positive impact on companies and organizations.

I had the opportunity after university to join Randstad’s graduate program at the time. It was kind of this really cool program where you got to rotate across all the different lines of business that Randstad had in Australia at that time. So you learn kind of the life of a timesheet to like understanding how back offices work to recruiting in the blue collar, white collar, executive space, accountants, HR, finance, et cetera. And you got to rotate all over Australia while you did that. So I spent time in lots of different cities in Australia, working with lots of different leaders. And it was just a cool, fun, super interesting learning experience where you got to augment very concretely the success of organizations through people.

So that kind of was the initial pull to get in there and then I’ve been lucky since then that the company has trusted me to be able to augment our ability to do that with some of the largest companies in the world in a bigger and broader way than I ever thought possible.

Leslie Vickrey: One of the things I love about the Randstad journey, even that I had when I was at Spherion and you mentioned it just now, is the development that they put into their people. Certainly companies develop their teams, but coming from a marketing background, I remember them saying, you know, to progress in the company, you really need to get to know the business and how the business operates from all angles. So HR, finance, sales, recruiting, kind of wear that, you know, seat and hat as much as you can before you can take on and progress into more leadership roles. And I talk a lot to marketing leaders about that today saying if you don’t get the business and you don’t understand how salespeople make money, recruiters make money, the company makes money, why clients are happy, what talent needs, you know, it’s really hard to do that marketing. So I think of that kind of on this linear basis a little bit from a leadership journey that it isn’t always, and we talk about this, right, just a straight line. Sometimes you have to go into different paths and different roles to get that experience. So we’re shaped by those moments where you make a call without all the answers.

Mike Smith: Yeah, well, I mean, we talk about this idea of enabling functions. We have what’s called an integrated approach, particularly in marketing. And the idea that we talk about is first and foremost, which you mentioned, Leslie, is do you understand how the company makes money today? And you can put that into how it creates value to society, to shareholders, et cetera. Like that’s point number one.

Point number two that we always discuss is do you understand how your co-insuring and driving the outcomes that sit within your function to make that true.

And then lastly, which is a bit of a soft one is, do you understand the soul of the company? And the soul of the company is like that the trust that it requires to be able to work in cross-functional, globally disparate, diverse teams to actually, irrespective of those first two things, work in a way that is conducive to grow the company, that leaves people to want to work with you, et cetera. You understand how things get done here. But they’re kind of three of the unspoken rules that we have at Randstad to make sure that like people in marketing or enabling functions actually align with people feeling like you’re part of my team. There’s not like a marketing team or HR team or a finance team, an operations team. Like we’re part of the team that’s working on the overall mission of the company.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah, breaking down those silos. Really, it’s that culture of accountability. It’s not just understanding how the company makes money to your point, that third piece, the soul of the company is so critical. I’d love to hear from you, Mike, as you then think about that journey and all those different kind of paths and experiences you’ve had. A lot of times in, it sounds like in this culture, you’re able to make some decisions, take some risks and really do that in a way that they have this culture of trust and support where you can feel safe doing that. Maybe tell us about a decision or risk or turning point that really changed your trajectory career-wise too.

Mike Smith: I would definitely describe this as a signature strength of Randstad in terms of kind of empowering young leaders to be able to make mistakes and learn from them. And that’s on the basis that I think we all learn so much more from our failures than from our successes.

I moved to Europe in 2020 and started running our outsourcing business there. I got there in December and I hadn’t come from a outsourcing background. So I hadn’t ran MSPs, RPOs, career transition coaching or advisory businesses before. I typically come from a contingent staffing branch based environment, et cetera. So it was a new world for me.

Our largest client at that time was going out for RFP or RFI. And as the new leader of the organization, it was my job to ensure that we retained that customer for the next three years, who had been a customer of ours for the last eight years. Needless to say, we did not retain that customer.

But I had a deep and introspective moment after that to say, wow, like that was probably like the first biggest loss that I’d had in my career thus far at Randstad. And it really kind of rocked me to the core from a confidence level.

And you’re faced with two decisions there. You can say, okay, well, maybe this career isn’t for me. Maybe I’ve got it wrong, et cetera. I remember sitting down with my wife and we just moved from Singapore to Amsterdam. It was a new house, new school. We’d only been there for kind of four or five months. And I was lamenting to my wife how like, oh, this is really bad. I’m not sure if we’re to be able to turn this around. How is this going to work? It’s really tough. This is a new culture and new environment, et cetera. And she kind of gave me the talking to and said, well, you’re going to have to suck it up. You just move like your family across the world. You’ve only been here for five months where you need to have a bit more of a stoic mindset to say, Hey, you’re going to learn from this. And without going into too much detail, she was a hundred percent right.

That moment led me to then have a different approach over the next couple of clients. And that the differentiation and learnings from that approach helped us re-win and win a number of new customers from there.

And the company went on to do really well at that point in time, which I felt incredibly like low and unsuccessful, the help of others and at least being a spectator to my own thoughts and understanding how you can turn a positive into a negative was critical in terms of getting me to where I am today. So like, if I look back on like my 21-year career, one of the most fundamental moments there was losing one of our largest customers. That was the one that taught me a significant amount, which most people don’t say, but it’s definitely the one that hurt me the most.

Lesly Cardec: I love that because it’s not always the triumphs and the wins that teach us the most. And it’s just a good example to remind everyone that we all go through it no matter what level we’re at, the top or middle or the bottom, whatever it is. Thank you for sharing that. It’s a good reminder for me as well.

So thinking about how much you probably have learned and are learning throughout your career, experience tends to shape how we think over time. And it reinforces what maybe we believed earlier in the career versus what we believe now. So when you think back on where you started as that intern, what’s something that you believed early on that maybe you see completely differently now?

Mike Smith: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first thing that I’d say is, I’m sure most young leaders experience this and that’s that, the false dichotomy that you have to have all the answers as opposed to being an enabler or facilitator of the right outcomes for your organization.

I think it takes a little while for people to say I feel really comfortable in my own skin and that comes out, I think, in vulnerability based trust. Some things that I would say now that I probably would never have said 10 or 15 years ago is, “I think you’re better at this than I am.” “Can I have your opinion?” “Can you help me on this?” “I thought about what I said last week on this topic and I was wrong and I want to apologize.” “I think we were discussing this point. We were having a passionate unfiltered debate. I think I crossed the line into a personal component of that. I’d like to pick up the argument on the right decision for the organization,” as well as saying things like, “I’ve listened to everyone’s point of view on this and my decision is what we’re going to do is X and I need you to get on board with that.”

That’s probably the biggest different, differentiator measuring your success on building something that prospers beyond your presence, as opposed to being the single point of success within the organization. And I think that’s a tough transition for leaders to make. You don’t make that overnight. You make it overtime.

Lesly Cardec: I think we’re hearing certain themes a few times with guests. One of the, it’s really about, it’s okay not to have all the answers and just being really transparent and honest and hiring really great people too to lean on and letting them, know, pushing them forward and letting them lead is something that I’m hearing consistently because from the outside in, many people think, you know, all the answers, right? And it’s not always the case. But I also love your point about you have to move forward and you have to make a decision that hearing everyone out, being respectful about it, but also saying this is what it is and I hope you’re on board type of message. So I think that’s so powerful.

Mike Smith: I think it’s a delicate balance. You need to be able to, like, if you just turn up to every meeting and say, I don’t know the answer, what do you guys think? And then you don’t come with some sort of bias for action. I think that can be equally frustrating and paralyzing for teams. So at some point you need to make a decision based on the synthesis of the information that you have.

But how you get to that decision should come from mining for conflict in your team, asking for data, challenging, asking the edge question in the room, et cetera, and not just defaulting to, this is the best way. I think I should do it. And I’m not interested in your opinion because most of the time people won’t get on board with the next steps with the same amount of energy if they haven’t been part of that process.

Lesly Cardec: So I want to sort of pivot a little bit to talk about our industry because it’s changed and is changing so much over the last few years. I don’t want to say…another AI I mention, but technology, expectation shifting, relationships that people have with companies, how they feel about work. And for leaders, I think it’s created opportunity, but also some tension. And you have such a great perspective. I was looking at some of the things that Randstad has put out. You’ve gone out there and started talking about in terms of, for example, Randstad’s Work Monitor Report, but through conversations also that you’ve been having lately with different C-level executives and technology global leaders.

So I saw a post recently that you joined a roundtable by Cisco at the World Economic Forum, and you shared some really interesting thoughts around and reflections around how we need to be deliberate with AI agents and to keep in mind that they also scale with the intent that we build in them. It’s such a great point. So when you think about the future of our industry, what gets you really excited and then alternatively, what keeps you up at night?

Mike Smith: I’ve said before that my kind of motto for some of the things that are now becoming possible with AI is both scary and exciting, I think.

If you look at most of the ways that we’re looking at utilizing AI through agents and agent orchestrators at the moment with most of our enterprise clients in line with the ask that we’re getting from customers, it’s really at the intersection of a couple of things. They’re saying, look, can we be in a position where we offer a more efficient, effective and inclusive process whilst at the same time acting with more speed and agility and being in a situation where we actually still increase the quality of individual who’s coming into our organization through more thoughtful and intentional matching of the company, the culture, the boss, the context, the operating environment, et cetera. So this like perfect spot of between the Venn diagram of all those three components.

At the same time, we have other examples where we’ve unintentionally scaled some of the bias in AI. And you need to be really conscious about having those circuit breakers in there to stop that. So like one of the examples I gave at the Cisco round table that we were talking about was we have a matching algorithm with a certain customer that matching algorithm recruiters gave feedback on an individual hiring basis between like thumbs up, thumbs down, three star, four star. And that pattern recognition over time is built into the actual candidates that are shortlisted for that customer.

Now, if a hiring manager has a particular bias towards shortlisting individuals who have a gap in their career history and over the space of four months you thumbs down every candidate that’s got a linear gap in their history, irrespective of the organization’s value saying we actually value individuals who have had carer, come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, et cetera. You unintentionally exclude candidates, which is obviously contradictory to the values of the organization simply because the recruiter is optimizing for a more efficient hiring manager preferences in that situation.

So like I’m excited about incredible like efficiency, quality, time, cost gains, and what we can do with the capacity that that creates to reinvent the value of a recruiter, which I’m not pessimistic about at all. I think we’ll always find a way to make that happen. We’ve done that for such a long time.

Yet at the same time, also think we need to be like super thoughtful about the unintentional consequences that can come when you are fully focused just on the here and now of efficiency without understanding and asking some of those like questions about, are we really sure that we can explain everyone that isn’t making it into the short list based on the agents that we have today?

We’re optimists here at Randstad. We’re a big believer in the benefit that can come from it, but we’re all super mindful about doing it in a way that is really conducive to our values and our clients’ values.

Leslie Vickrey: I love that you’re building that piece into it to your earlier point. You, you’re taking that value, you keep talking about value creative tasks, and so the client, you’re probably taking a task from them that they maybe feel like they could add value in other places too. So you’re moving up the value chain and then they’re able to do that too, which I’m sure they’re super appreciative of you doing. And of course, anything we can do to remove bias from process and system and even opening up the screening to more candidates.

I jokingly mentioned Spherion and Randstad being the Kevin Bacon of the staffing industry earlier, but when you…

Mike Smith: I love that, I’m gonna steal that.

Leslie Vickrey: A lot of our connections come from our networks and connections and we, know, other people don’t have those networks and connections. So the ability to use these AI tools for sourcing, screening, finding candidates even, it really opens a door for, you know, more candidates to be able to come into the fold, which I think is a beautiful thing. But to your point, we’ve got to keep an eye on that too.

Lesly Cardec: I appreciate the thoughtfulness that is being put behind it too. It’s enticing not to just like, let’s go, you know, roll it out to everyone. But being really thoughtful and precise about it, think is really smart.

Leslie Vickrey: So, Mike, I have to ask you a question in your role. I know when I get to the weekend even sometimes, last week was a heavy week for many, many reasons for us, just as a company, me personally with some friends going through some health things, and I needed a moment of just being, you know, like, grounded in life and myself. And I played in a pond hockey tournament. It’s the second one I’ve done and going out, the weather here in Breck is, really warm. So the ice was not even, it was kind of mushy, but it was, you know, I don’t want to say dangerous, but it got to a point where I had to get out of my CEO head, put things aside and really be grounded in this moment of playing with a team who I didn’t know anyone and playing in conditions that were maybe tricky, but coming out of it was the most fun, invigorating grounding moment for me where I just felt human and connected and ready to go for this week.

You know, not every weekend can bring that, but when we have those moments where we can do something or be that someone where people aren’t looking to you for all the answers, they’re not looking at you for direction, you don’t need to make decisions, you can just be you. What is that for you? When do you feel the most grounded or the most courageous or most, most human?

Mike Smith: I think a lot of individuals get a lot of, whether you’re a CEO or a leader at a big company, you get a lot of identity and fulfillment from doing a good job and for taking a serious level of responsibility for your employees and for the direction of the company, et cetera. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I think it can become unhealthy if you don’t have some level of balance in your life where you have other outlets by which to kind of get out some of that, let’s call it stressful energy or have fun with other individuals. And I have a couple of rules for that to kind of keep me grounded.

One is I like hanging around with people personally who absolutely couldn’t care less what I do for a job. That’s always nice.

Two, I’m a pretty avid reader, like you can probably see, but I’m like surrounded by books in my office. And I always find that reading triggers a great deal of introspection, creating, being a spectator to my own thoughts. So the ability to sit and lock myself in my office for kind of half an hour, at least once a day and read something, whether it’s something serious from a business perspective or whether it’s a thought piece, et cetera. I find I’m a big believer, I’m a big reader of the daily stoic by Ryan Holiday, which I find like incredibly grounding. So a plug for Ryan. I really enjoy that.

And then lastly, spending time with my family. I told this story, previously on a podcast that like five years ago, there’s a thing at my son’s school called Donuts with Dad. And like, I’m always traveling, I’m always in meeting or something. And, one of the things that my, son at that time said that was my favorite saying to say to him was, “Maybe later.” So was like, my God, that’s like the most heart wrenching thing my son can say about me. So I promised that I would never say maybe later ever again to my son over the next five year period. So I’m really happy that like I’ve kept to that.

What I probably didn’t appreciate at the time is playing with your kids is still one of the most grounding experiences I think you can have. Like yesterday it’s freezing here in Texas, relative to what Texas is usually like, but like we were outside for four hours playing the football, cooking s’mores by the fire, making up stupid songs and just spending time with your kids and seeing how much they enjoy just spending time with you is incredibly grounding and energizing I think.

Lesly Cardec: And kids obviously have a very, very good way of grounding you too. That was funny. I was talking to my daughter. She’s 11. And I said, I’m going to, we’re going to be launching this podcast and, I’m really excited about it. She’s like, yeah, okay. When can you, know, when can you take me here? And I’m like, okay, moving on. Moving on. Not important.

Mike Smith: Exercise is also important. a pretty avid CrossFitter. I think finding a way to kind of get some physical energy out is also critical. And I think like we talk about bringing your best self to work and in order to bring your best self to work, think often having your family and friends circle working well, having a good routine around your wellbeing and physical energy is important to turn up being your best self every day at work.

Lesly Cardec: Are you a morning workout person or after the day is over?

Mike Smith: I’m a morning workout person. Yeah. Yeah. I’m usually at the 5 a.m. class and I’m usually asleep by like 8:45 on the couch, but yeah.

Lesly Cardec: Yep. Awesome. Well, this has been so fun, Mike. Thank you so much for being so transparent and just having an open and honest conversation. Where else can listeners connect with you or follow you?

Mike Smith: Sure, they can just drop me note on LinkedIn. I’m usually at most of the large staffing events around the world. But if I can ever be helpful to anyone in the industry that’s been so helpful to me, I’d be more than happy to try and find a way to pay it forward. And they can just email me at michael.smith@randstad.com or reach out on LinkedIn.

Leslie Vickrey: Mike, thank you so much for showing up so thoughtfully. Today, we really appreciate your openness and the way you shared your perspective. I’m glad we’re connected.

Mike Smith: My pleasure. Thanks so much for the opportunity and keep up the good work.

Lesly Cardec: Thank you.

All right. So we are wrapped up with talking to Mike Smith. And that was a great conversation. There is, you know, trying to think about just pulling three things out. was a little challenging. My first time getting to know him, I think yours too, Leslie. I think we met him in person not too long ago. And it was nice to get that face time.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah, I agree. We met him at LinkedIn Talent Connect. I’ll start and share something that stood out to me. The three of us all came from the Randstad-Spherion days and it made me reflect back on when I was growing up in management and marketing. He was talking about, you know, the importance of understanding how sometimes it’s not always a linear path, but one of the opportunities he was given early in his career is to learn all of the different parts of the business, which was similar to what I was offered to when I was at Spherion. If you want to stay in marketing, but kind of move your way up into other operations roles, you had to take a kind of non-linear path, get to know HR, get to know sales, recruiting, different areas of the business, which is something we talk a lot about as marketers that in order to market the company, you need to know a few things.

So he focused in on, you have to understand how the company makes money. Do you understand how you in your role as a marketer are driving the outcomes to make it true? And then thirdly, which I really love, do you understand the soul of the company and the trust it takes to work together globally with disparate, dispersed teams? So those three things really taking into consideration in your position, in your role, regardless of where you are, is really critical for you to be successful.

So again, do you understand how the company makes money? Do you understand the role you play in that happening? Then do you really understand the soul of the company? Those three things stood out to me as far as how you can kind of understand the ins and outs of the business.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, I love that. I remember we used to have, I don’t know if they had it when you were there, but they used to have almost like a passport program. You literally get this physical passport and you were to go around to each. Now it wasn’t as extensive as what Mike was sharing, which I wish that I had that experience going around and almost like living that experience for a little bit. But, you know, you have to be really intentional about it, else you’ll be stuck in your lane and head down and gosh, how much more perspective do you get from being in different facets of the company and figuring out how everything runs and works together? I think it’s so, and should be required to be honest, that’s that important. Yeah. The other thing from my perspective was just how failure is the greatest teacher.

Lesly Cardec: I actually shared something from my own account recently that said, congratulations on failing. Most people don’t even try, something like that. And Mike talked about something that rocked his confidence as he took on a leadership role where he questioned himself. He moved his entire family. He had something that went the wrong way in a client. And it actually turned out to be almost a blessing in disguise because it led him to think differently and approach future conversations and opportunities really differently. And had he not had that experience, he probably, you know, wouldn’t have had that visibility into maybe what he should have brought with him to that conversation or opportunity. So I love that reminder that failures are lessons in disguise. I really, really believe that. And gosh, we, I… I know you, I mean, we have these conversations all the time. I feel like a professional failer. Is that a, is that a-

Leslie Vickrey: You’re about to just say, you fail. You fail all the time. Well, no. I need another permission. Like it’s actually.

Lesly Cardec: We all fail! We have these conversations too, transparently too, just launching a new podcast. There’s always reflections of like, we should have done this. We should have asked this. We should have opened it this way. I mean, it’s just constant. It’s constant learning and that came out the wrong way.

Leslie Vickrey: I’m laughing because our first podcasts were, I mean, I felt like I failed us because I was in a location that was terrible. So I was running around through the entire thing and people, you know, distracted during it and distracted you, the guests, the whole thing. But to his point, it’s the greatest teacher.

Lesly Cardec: No one knew that you had all that chaos happening.

Leslie Vickrey: Oh my gosh, it was not good, not good. Hopefully it doesn’t come out that way.

All right, the last point I have, or third point, was really being comfortable in your own skin as a leader that comes out of vulnerability and trust and making sure that we are seen as being vulnerable. We can help build trust that way. But understanding when you make the decision when it’s a team decision and how that works.

So it’s this delicate balance really of needing to understand how to make a decision with the information you have and when to leverage consensus for it and when to, as a CEO or leader of your team, make that decision. Whether it’s a regular, difficult, easy, whatever the decision is, you’ve got to be prepared to make that decision. And I know that sounds obvious, but it is this balance between wanting to get feedback from your team and understanding their point of view. But at the same time, you’re the leader for a reason and you need to be able to make those decisions and, you know, put yourself out there too.

The other thing I thought was interesting with that, Lesly, is that each leader we’ve had on this podcast, they’ve talked about that theme of we don’t always have all of the answers either. So you have to balance, you need to have the answers, you know, most of the time, but you can’t always possibly know everything and to lean on the people on your teams to help you with that because one, it shows your vulnerability and builds trust like Mike was saying, and two, it gives other people an opportunity to rise up as well. So as we look at themes that have come out of each one, that in particular is one that’s come out literally every single time.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, it has.

Leslie Vickrey: We’re not even teeing that up! They just say it!

Lesly Cardec: And it’s interesting because every episode has variations, different takes, different focuses, believe it or not. And we’ve been landing on that theme consistently. So maybe there’s something to that. But no, it was great. I think the conversation was vulnerable, taught me something as a leader and just how to navigate that and just the importance of knowing who you are and staying humble and all those things. I thought he was a great addition.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah, I agree. Staying humble. He definitely is staying grounded. I thought that was a great part of the conversation.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, yeah, you could tell.

Leslie Vickrey: Good, good. All right, well, those are kind of take threes for the latest episode. And it was one of those conversations that definitely kind of sticks with you.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, definitely. I would say, you know, if something resonated with you today, certainly let us know. We hope you carry it with you as you move forward and appreciate you all spending time with us. So thank you so much.

And if there’s someone, by the way, that you think would make a great guest, let us know. Drop us a note or a direct message and we’ll see you next time.

Leslie Vickrey: See you next time.

Outro: Thanks for listening to Honestly, We’re Learning. If you liked what you heard, you can drop us a like, review, or comment. And if you want to hear more, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.