The Evolution of the HR Business Partner, with Mona Kelly
Hosts: Rodney Apple, & Chris Gaffney
In This Episode:
In the latest episode of our “Supply Chain Talent Building and Engagement” series, we go in-depth with renowned executive coach and consultant Mona Kelly. Mona boasts a rich legacy with industry giants like Coca-Cola and numerous other diverse organizations. She shares her professional evolution and reflects on HR’s transformation from its conventional role to the strategic business partnerships seen today. Mona emphasizes HR’s pivotal role in strategy formulation, managing change, and addressing the inherent resistance that accompanies it. She passionately advocates for embracing diverse perspectives, underscoring their significance for both internal and external collaboration. Wrapping up our enlightening chat, Mona furnishes real-world examples of contemporary leadership dynamics and their focus on both self-growth and team engagement. She also imparts invaluable advice on striking a balance between family, thriving professionally, and the noble quest for wisdom.
Who is Mona Kelly?
Mona is the founder of Symmetry Coaching, LLC and is a certified executive coach, consultant, and strategic business partner to global executives and their leadership teams. She partners with clients to focus and align their individual, group, and organizational goals to facilitate planning, introspection, and processes vital to achieving significant business results and what matters most. She has over thirty years of experience as an Executive in Human Resources Management/Consultation, Organization Development, Executive and Leadership Coaching. Coached thousands of executives, their teams, and initiative teams across industries (The Coca-Cola Company, Quicken Loans, MarketSource, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Georgia State University, City of Los Angeles, Boys and Girls Club of America, NiSource, Ernst and Young, Markel Foundation, Flexport, UPS, San Diego University, Microsoft, and Chick-fil-A) and around the globe to improve leadership effectiveness, including confidence, executive presence, emotional intelligence, and team alignment.
[00:00:00] Mike Ogle: Welcome to the Supply Chain Careers podcast series on supply chain talent building and engagement. In this series, we speak with a wide variety of both journalists and specialists in human resources and talent management. Who work closely with supply chain professionals? Listen as they all share their insights, perspectives, and advice for improving the hiring, development, and retention of supply chain talent.
Plus, how to develop and manage teams of supply chain professionals. This podcast is made possible by SS C M Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm. Visit SCM talent [email protected]. To search for or to post supply chain jobs, visit the supply chain job [email protected].
Are you tired of struggling to optimize your supply chain? Look no further than profit Point the experts in supply chain, network design and technology integration solutions. Visit profit point.com to learn more. That’s profit pt.com. In this episode of our Supply Chain Careers podcast series titled Supply Chain Talent Building and Engagement, we speak with Mona Kelly, a highly experienced and certified executive coach, consultant and strategic business partner who draws on years of experience at Coca-Cola and many other large and diverse companies and organizations.
Mona provides her career journey and how the role of HR has changed over the years to the HR business partners of today. She talks with us about HR having a seat at the planning table, how to deal with change and having a plan for the inevitable resistance to change. Mona also emphasizes diversity of viewpoints to properly serve both internal and external stakeholders.
She closes out our conversation by providing a variety of examples of how leaders are working on both their own development and the engagement of their teams and individuals, plus her advice on setting priorities in your life, on family, how to thrive, and the pursuit of wisdom.
[00:02:09] Rodney Apple: I’m your podcast co-host Rodney Apple,
[00:02:12] Chris Gaffney: and I’m your podcast co-host Chris Gaffney
[00:02:18] Rodney Apple: Mona, welcome to the Supply Chain Careers Podcast, and our third episode of this new series we’ve titled Supply Chain Talent Building and Engagement.
[00:02:27] Mona Kelly: So I was glad to do this.
[00:02:30] Rodney Apple: Well, we appreciate you making the time. Would love to start out just getting an overview of your background, if you could do that for our audience and maybe highlight those experiences so that you had supporting the supply chain and related functions.
[00:02:43] Mona Kelly: So overall, I have 40 plus years of HR experience, and I started out more on the specialist side. I started out in staffing, I did compensation, I did recruiting, and then I ended up being an HR generalist. Of that 40 years, the last 15 years, I supported global supply chain, and I can tell you those were the fun times of my career and in those 15 years I was considered an HR business partner.
And in that role I work with senior supply chain leaders to really help understand what are the business needs, where are we going as a business, and then what are the talent, people, culture, organizational needs, and then help create a people plan, a culture plan that help the organizations achieve their desired values, goals, and performance.
And I would say in the last six years since leaving the Coca-Cola company, I’ve been focusing on executive and leadership coaching. And in that capacity I’ve coached leaders, supply chain leaders, specifically because I specifically have been coaching executive leaders.
[00:03:57] Chris Gaffney: So, Mona, when you got into the world of supporting supply chain teams, and maybe when you were at senior HR meetings and you had to sit here and say, listen, this supply chain group is different than supporting other client groups.
What’s your why in that? How do you try to explain to people to say you need a different skill set?
[00:04:14] Mona Kelly: What was unique for me in supporting supply chain, even back at the Coca-Cola company, and even now, two words come to mind are unique and dynamic. And what I mean by that, When you work with companies supply chain, you got food supply chain, beverage, supply chain, you got retail supply chain.
So depending on what industry you’re in, it’s different. The supply chain is significantly different. So from an HR perspective, the number one thing I had to do was really put on my boots and go into the operations and really understand what’s unique about this business. This entity. Talk to the employees, talk to the managers, talk to the leaders, look at the supply chain from the customer, from the shelf back to understand the whole process.
That was the only way I could provide, I would call it a systemic people solution to help a leader. I think about. The dynamic nature. My experience both at Koch and with the companies that I’m working with now, the environment, natural disasters, community and social events, significantly impact supply chains.
[00:05:40] Chris Gaffney: So supply chains have always had to be flexible and dynamic. And I think as you articulated that, it reminded me that the reality is if you’re supporting supply chain teams, they’re out there, I could say on the battlefield, but they’re at least on the playing field, and you’re not on the sidelines, you’re on the field with them if you’re gonna support ’em.
[00:05:56] Rodney Apple: The segues right into the kind of that. Human resources, business partner title that has evolved over the years. Mon, I know growing up earlier part of my career, it was HR manager or HR generalist, HR business partner. So that’s obviously become a lot more popular over the years. What’s your definition of that role and, and how have you seen it evolve?
[00:06:16] Mona Kelly: When I started out by saying 40 plus years of experience, we were called personnel analysts, personnel managers back in the day. So it has significantly shifted. It went from, I would call it an administrative function to a tool delivery function to a strategic function. And what I mean by that, The organization has had to take on a variety of roles to meet the dynamic needs of the business, and first and foremost, right now, an HR business partner, the role is to start with the business.
Understand what business are we in. What are the metrics? Who are the customers we’re serving? And what are the people initiatives from culture to talent, to leadership, to structure, organizational structure, understanding how all those pieces fit together to deliver and execute the business plan, meet the performance targets and the metrics.
So it’s really shifted Before we were more siloed in our approach. I would pull the functional components of HR together so that they could understand the complete people plan for supply chain so that a talent acquisition person isn’t operating in a vacuum. They understand why the shift this year is to find truck drivers or machine lift operators.
[00:07:56] Rodney Apple: You explained the whole business plan, the people strategy, so that when we went out to do our individual parts, it was integrated and connected, and we knew the what and the why. I remember being tasked with planning for the first time ever, and it was an eye-opening experience to sit down with the different functions and looking at historical data.
Where do we tend to have attrition? But then look at like, okay, what about acquisitions? What’s gonna be folded in? Are we opening or expanding new plants? Are we shutting any down? Are we consolidating? Are we outsourcing to third party? What’s gonna change the the resource needs? And I remember those days we partnered on that on the corporate side, so, If you’re right, it has to be integrated.
[00:08:27] Mona Kelly: I can tell you today, it’s more important than ever because as you’re in the business and the trenches, we all experience how the business operates, and if we work together to share those experience, we can operate in a way that delivers more optimal results.
[00:08:46] Chris Gaffney: Mona, in my work today, I interact with lots of people who run plant and DC operations, so they need senior level operating leaders managing those buildings.
And that’s a premium position. That’s a difficult position to fill. Mm-hmm. And in many cases, it’s a hard job to do well. Mm-hmm. You deal with labor issues, you deal with the customer expectations. So my sense of kind of that business partnership that you as an HR VP have to have with the supply chain leader, I.
[00:09:26] Mona Kelly: That’s a key focus of the support that you provide. So I wonder if you would talk about your ideas or your approach to developing the right level of leadership skills for different levels, but spent many years where leaders sat around the table after completing the business plan. They really focused on, okay, well what does that mean as far as my talent is concerned?
Well, I’m gonna use an old term pipeline or succession plan for those positions. So I would say you first understand where you’re trying to go as a business. What are those key experiences and skills, capabilities you need to fill? And then prioritize what areas are we gonna be working in? Is it gonna be in on the shop floor?
What are the key areas on the shop floor? What are at the corporate office? What are the key positions we need to recruit for and make sure we have the pipeline talent in place? Also, I would say at the back end of my career and is definitely more prevalent today, is now you have multiple ways of acquiring that talent.
You have to look at. Well, here’s the traditional way you raise the talent up in the organization, but now you gotta look at, well, where are some other industries that I can go in and leverage and get talent from? Do I need the deep technical expertise? Do I have someone that’s in another functional area in the company that can provide the leadership?
Because I’m strong with the technical skills in the operational side. So it’s exploring and looking at what are the various ways of getting that talent, buying it, developing it, rotating it, and growing it. So those are the key things. Let me summarize. I’ve said a lot is really understanding where the business is going.
What are the key areas you need to make sure you have the talent and skills for? What are the leadership skills you need, and then you understand where you need to go. Where are your gaps today? How do you need to go and fill those gaps and be innovative and looking at how you backfill or how you fill those gaps.
[00:11:27] Chris Gaffney: Mona, I’m gonna follow up on this one because you and I worked together a while. When you were in a global role, how is it more difficult when you’re saying, I don’t need to think about moving somebody from one part of the US to another, but I need to move them from Europe to Latin America or wherever to Asia?
[00:11:46] Mona Kelly: Both the mobility, the skills and capabilities, the cultural dynamics. I would say what we did, and I, I know that companies are doing it a little differently now because you have the. Opportunity to use the digital approach to staffing, but you really had to get to know the talent and who was willing to take the global assignments.
When I say willing, we really had to ask questions like, if you have a family, or even if you didn’t, are you mobile? So that’s the number one question. And how mobile are you? And then once you’re clear about the mobility of that talent, That also allows a leader to be strategic about where they’re gonna move, Chris, where they’re gonna move Mona, and where they’re gonna move Rodney, because Mona has said, I’m not a global player, but then I need to look at moving Mona strategically on the domestic side.
But Chris says he is mobile, and so it allowed us to really think about, well, where are the key experiences? Both in work and geography that Chris needs to go through in order for him to be optimized and the business. So it’s multi-layered in terms of how, how you do it. Then once you get the family over there, you’ve gotta also think about how do you keep that family whole from a benefits perspective and from a cultural integration perspective.
So it’s not just the business. Need that you’re having to think about, but you’re having to think about the person, their family, and efficiency in terms of where to move that talent based on what you are desiring to do with that talent, short and long term.
[00:13:30] Rodney Apple: So Mona, I know during our time at Coca, if anything was constant was change, and so lots of transformations, especially in supply chain, north America, the global side.
But when you think about transformations, what are your thoughts on the role of HR leaders when it comes to leading and influencing change throughout the organization in support of these transformations?
[00:13:51] Mona Kelly: I think the role of an HR leader is, Critical back in the day. I have an organization development background as well as a general, a HR functional background, and a lot of the training I went through, I don’t know if this number or percentage is still the same, but 85% of organization restructures failed because of lack of clarity.
Two things. Lack of clarity about where you’re going, why you’re going there, and how you’re gonna go. And the biggest thing that impacts organizational change is the lack of communication and reinforcing that communication. So hrs role is, I think, critically important to help the leaders communicate the what and the why and the how.
And not just at the top, but to cascade it down in the organization and to build in a reinforcing cycle of communicating the change. So I recently heard 53% of enterprise strategies are not successful, and the Y is the enterprises aren’t doing effective communication. They aren’t sharing the strategy widely.
They aren’t explaining the what and the why behind it. They aren’t providing regular updates, what’s working, what’s not working progress, and they don’t explain adjustments when adjustments need to be made or pivots as we call them today. So hrs role, I believe, is to partner with leadership, to not just have the thinking part of it, but to create the communication plan.
On the what, how, when, and the follow up.
[00:15:38] Chris Gaffney: So Mona, you and I were involved in some big changes. We were really trying to change the way work was done and despite best efforts mm-hmm. You run into that resistance, you can feel it. The organization, or at least elements of the organization are struggling with it.
In your experience, when you and your team heard that, whether it was informal interaction or wherever you got that information, how did you bring back to the leader and say, like it or not, we’ve got some retooling to do in our approach if we wanna bring people along with us.
[00:16:09] Mona Kelly: You always build resistance into your change plan.
You’ll always have early adapters. You are gonna have people that are going to go with the flow and say, I’m gonna try it. And then you’re gonna have those that are gonna dig in and fight the system. So I would say how to handle those resistors is to expect it and then you confront it. Not in a negative way, but it with empathy and with understanding.
In my experience, we engaged the resistors, we identified where the pockets were and where we anticipated them to be. And you engage the people that you knew were going to resist and get feedback from them. What’s a showstopper for you? What’s causing you angst? And you engage them in the process to help create a, a change plan and a process that will work for as many people as possible.
[00:17:04] Chris Gaffney: I’ll give you a follow up to that too. You’ve been a coach to chief supply chain officers, chief technical officers. Sometimes it’s your job to bring them, yeah. Information they need to hear. Mm-hmm. But may not want to hear whether maybe that’s in the context of change or not, but it’s like, Hey, this isn’t the way you want it to be, but it is.
[00:17:22] Mona Kelly: So let’s talk about what to do with it. Well, words that describe me, my team would describe me and even leaders when I would ask them for feedback, or they described me as a person that had a lot of courage. And I wasn’t afraid to be direct with them. So anytime I engage with the leader, a new leader, and even with coaching new clients and with leaders, I always say, we’ve got to work so tightly together that I’ve gotta be able to come to you and say some things that you’re absolutely gonna hate.
You don’t wanna hear it, I’m gonna bring it to you. And if you don’t wanna hear it, I’m just, we’re gonna make it absolutely clear that you’re choosing to turn a blind’s eye to it. Fine. I’m just gonna acknowledge it and put it on the table and as we go, I’m not gonna sweep things under the rugs. We’re going to deal with the real issues.
[00:18:17] Chris Gaffney: We’ve talked to other people, even if it’s for first time people, managers dealing with a performance issue, and that guidance we got is exactly what you got is direct and early is great advice. So thank you for that.
[00:18:31] Mike Ogle: During this short break, we recognize that this podcast is made possible by SS C M Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm visit, S C M Talent Group.
At SCM talent.com to search for or to post supply chain jobs, visit the supply chain job [email protected]. Are you tired of struggling to optimize your supply chain? Look no further than Profit Point. To be experts in supply chain, network design and technology integration solutions, visit profit point.com to learn more.
That’s profit pt.com.
[00:19:09] Rodney Apple: You said the word innovation a a little while ago, but how do you support that through the HR lens? ’cause the supply chain has to enable a lot of this innovation throughout the company to bring it to fruition. What are your strategies there for that building, that culture of innovation?
[00:19:24] Mona Kelly: I consider myself blessed in that HR had a seat at the table and because we had a seat at the table. When Koch embarked on anything, any change or innovation or anything, the HR business partner, the finance business partner, the legal business partner, we were all at the table. It allowed me as an HR business partner to then come to the table thinking differently.
Acting differently when it came to developing and delivering HR people practices. So it’s about an HR business partner coming to the table, not with the traditional hat on or the traditional mindset on, but really getting in step with, let me understand, where are we trying to go as a business with a business partner, testing out different options we can take, testing them out and asking questions.
The biggest thing that I experienced and the biggest learning for me, and I’m glad I had it, and I use it today in my coaching, is for you to change your behaviors and to change results. It definitely requires you to change how you think about stuff, what your beliefs, what your assumptions are, how you view reality versus what you think about reality.
So innovation definitely causes you to change your mindset and thinking, and thus you create different results.
[00:20:59] Chris Gaffney: Mona, I’m gonna shift gears. Somebody close to me works with senior folks and they work on boards, and they made an observation. They said, if I walk in a room, Everyone looks like me. One thing I’m sure of is there’s not gonna be a lot of new ideas and you, you can, or you don’t do or don’t need to comment on that, but it was a very interesting comment and in that context, You and I were at Koch at a time where de and I became more important.
Mm-hmm. And it was more of a priority and more intentional thinking and action around it. So how do you think about how de and I initiatives impact talent development and maybe specifically in supply chain DE
[00:21:38] Mona Kelly: It’s is simple. If you don’t have the diversity and inclusion, you are missing out on broader.
Thinking and diversity. It’s really not that complex. I found that if you are in a room and everybody looks the same, but when you walk out of that room, you see a different kind of planet. My. Thoughts are, how are you going to inspire, engage, and activate the thinking of that team when you are not having them represented in the thinking of the plan going forward.
So I just think it’s a basic missing out. And if you think about your an organization environment, like you do the natural environment, all the pieces play a part and they make up a beautiful tapestry. Different trees, they play a different role. And the same trees, flowers, beads, birds, the whole, I can continue, but the same thing with your leadership team.
It should be representative of that environment that you work in. So I just think about it from a system perspective, and as far as equity, it is about just having an equal playing field. If you don’t have a playing field that is equitable, it impacts trust, it impacts engagement. So as a business, I just encourage leaders to really think about what are you desiring?
How do you want people to describe your culture? How do you want people, your customers, your employees, to describe you? And if you are not doing anything intentional about creating that, then. Take D n I off of your strategy and just do what you’ve been doing.
[00:23:28] Chris Gaffney: I appreciate that because I think I grew up as a people leader in whatever the last 25 years or whatever, and I think it’s really when that light bulb came on to say, I need the best team on the field to deal with a diversity of consumer, customer, and business challenges.
And if I’m gonna be selfish, I’m gonna say, how do I get the best team? And once you understand that mosaic is a key kind of tool in your belt, then you can shift your gears. And from that standpoint, your lens has changed and you’re just saying, I’m gonna use this to advantage for me to deliver business results from a executive coaching perspective.
[00:24:08] Rodney Apple: Mm-hmm. And that’s what you’re doing now. What’s your thoughts on the importance of executives and especially supply chain leaders? Having coaches, any differences in your mindset from a coach versus a mentor? And do you have maybe a story you could share from some impact you’ve made? I know you’re coaching folks right now in supply chain.
[00:24:28] Mona Kelly: I would say a leader would need a coach is it really provides a safe. Structured, trustworthy environment for the client to, I would say, maximize their personal and professional potential. And working in with coaches, I find many come to the table with absolute clarity around what they want or need.
There are coaches that, clients that come to me because they’re being developed for future leadership positions. And they somewhat know what they’re working on. And then I have others that come to me that really don’t have a clue. So I will say working with executives, I found this sometimes difficult for them to pinpoint what exactly is holding me back from what I want to do and how I want to thrive.
So I start with just really exploring with the leader. Really exploring what matters most for them personally and professionally in terms of where they’re trying to go, where they’re trying to go professionally in that company, professionally in life. And once a leader gets clear about where they’re trying to go as an individual, then they can step back and say, Hmm, now I know what I need to be working on.
In this position that I’m in to enhance the capacity, my capacity as a leader, and the capacity of my organization to create what matters most. So it’s really helping them to go look forward, where are you trying to go? And then you go inward and say, okay, where am I now? And what really, really matters?
And help them pinpoint what they’re doing. And for a couple of examples, Uh, supply chain on the West coast. I happened to start coaching this person at the beginning of the pandemic and all the way through the pandemic, a supply chain leader, helping this leader really get clear about where they want to go.
They just hadn’t thought about it. So by the end of the engagement, they got a promotion, which was good, but the promotion was more meaningful because now they have had more clarity. Around. Wow. Moving in. This role is gonna help me get to where I think I wanna go. Second, we were able to identify some leadership gaps.
That this leader need to work on. And one of the biggest one, it goes back to that change question that you asked me, was him connecting the company strategy to his strategy and then taking it to his team. His team didn’t really understand what the company strategies were and how their strategies related to that, and he didn’t have the patience.
He didn’t think it was necessary. If they just followed his lead, they will get it. But he found out by sharing and getting them more engaged, he was able to work less because if they knew more, they could do more and they could think differently about what they were doing. Long story short, it ended up, he extended the contract from six months to a year.
They had a big layoff and he was retained. Because he was more clear about two things, more clear about where the company was going, had a point of view on how he could help the company reach his goals. And he thanked me on that. And the other one was, they were looking at taking this leader from a smaller geography in Latin America to become the Latin America president.
And that was a part of the succession plan, but leadership gaps the person needed to work on. And we identified them. I actually had two conversations with the chief operating officer of that company with this candidate, and he was able to expand his identity as a leader. He saw himself as more than just a functional leader over this piece of the supply chain to more of a company leader, and he was able to integrate across the supply chain.
With his peers as well as down in the organization. So I would say expanding his capacity to think more broadly helped him leverage more of what the company is offering for his region of the world. So he got promoted in. That was that. So I love to expand the leader’s thinking, help them pinpoint what they want and why, and then how to get there.
[00:29:19] Chris Gaffney: So Mona, I deal with senior supply chain folks in my consulting work. And so a topic that’s been hot for a lot of them is having enough frontline employees in the last couple of years. And so you and I grew up in the world of employee engagement and I hear people talking about, Being an employer of choice because you can’t make any money if you can’t make the stuff and move the stuff.
So when you talk about engagement and success in differentiating from an engagement standpoint with your clients, what are the hot buttons?
[00:29:49] Mona Kelly: I’ve got two clients focused on engagement, but I ask both of them, and I’ve asked this a couple of times, are you more concerned with the score or the culture really changing?
So what I mean by that is they get these scores and then they realize, oh, black mark on my scorecard, and your organization’s been doing these engagement surveys for years. What have you done differently to change the results? So where I’m going with that is I just really ask leaders to really understand what’s driving you.
Is it a desired culture or is it the score? And if they say it’s the score, I’m gonna say, just keep doing what you’re doing. It doesn’t matter. But if you are wanting to drive change and impact the culture, you’ve got to really, you’ve gotta own it. You’ve gotta be the one out there listening to what your employees are saying.
You’ve gotta work with. Be it your HR business partners and now employees are establishing this new role. Employee experience leaders. So the HR business partners now aren’t necessarily the people doing, but work with your employee experience leader, your HR business partner, listening to your employees, creating results, creating plans that matter and drive change, and you be the voice.
To go back and talk to your people about here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we are not gonna do, and here’s why. But you be the voice, not your HR business partner and not your experience leader.
[00:31:32] Rodney Apple: So Mona, segueing into back into coaching, as we start wrapping up this session, we’d love to hear more about your company.
Yeah. Could you give our audience just an overview of the core service offerings and the value you’re trying to generate for your clients? And then where can they go to, okay. To find more information.
[00:31:50] Mona Kelly: So Symmetry, first of all, you can go to symmetry coaching.com. Symmetry coaching.com, and that’s my website.
And when I created my symbol that represented symmetry, it was a counter circle. So normally you would go from the right to the left to draw. I went counterclockwise because I believe my goal is to help you go inward. And really reimagine your life and let go of those thoughts or behaviors that undermine you and to help you create new stories, help you see new stories.
And once you see your current stories and you can see what else could be true, then you can start creating a plan for where you want to go. I still work globally. I work with Fortune 100 500 companies and nonprofits. My sweet spot is leadership and executive coaching, and we start from the inside out with your heart to find out what is keeping you from getting what you want most.
Not just from a professional lens, but from life is how I work with clients. And the last thing I would say, I really focus on clients being conscious of their leadership. And what I mean by conscious of their leadership is how self-aware are they in terms of what they pay attention to impact? What impact do I create across my organization, across my team?
What’s my intended impact? Next is pace. Am I evolving at a pace that will ensure. Relevancy and that I can lead the change that needs to be led now and in the future. And the last one is adaptability is really how adaptable and capable am I at meeting the complexity of the business and the business needs.
So conscious awareness that starts from the inside out.
[00:33:55] Chris Gaffney: Well, Mona, you’ve offered us some great advice so far today. You’ve offered me great advice over the years. I’m curious if you can think of the one or two kind of best pieces of advice you’ve ever received.
[00:34:09] Mona Kelly: Mike Walters, I don’t know if you guys remember Mike, but when I was Mike’s executive assistant, the first week I started working for Mike, he said, do not lose sight of your marriage and your family.
And that blew my mind. I was, at that day, I was looking at all the Koch executives working 80 plus hours a week from what I could see, and there was no balance. And he was like, well, let me explain to you from his own learning, do not lose sight of your marriage and your family. So in addition to that advice, because I definitely took that into heart, I’ve been married 43 years and my daughters are doing well as adults.
My advice, in addition to them not losing sight of your family, don’t just survive but thrive. And what I mean by that is thriving is you are flourishing, you’re finding meaning in life and there’s resilience. And you know how you do that is you gotta make sure you’re taking care of yourself, rest, physical, your breathing, all of that, your flow.
Make sure that you’re present, mindful and engaged, and then wonder, I call it the wonder of being, making sure that you’re appreciating where you are and who you have in your life. That you’re still learning, you’re seeking and you’re growing. And the last one is wisdom. Have a vision for where you’re trying to go and think about you as a, as a whole person.
And I think if you can show up, thriving. You have the ability to empower others and engage others. People will wanna be around you and wanna work with you. So empower and energize maximizing others, but start with yourself. Well,
[00:36:02] Chris Gaffney: I must have been listening along the way because I have an employee who we work together.
When it came to work, I said, there’s one thing I want you to do is take care of you. And I said, you get to define what that looks like. And he was a high performer. And whenever we talked about performance and development, that’s the only thing I really talked about. And after we worked together, he made a huge life shift and really dramatically improved his health.
And I just got a note back from him as he went back to work for someone you and I know. And he said, I just have a new person that I am wow eating. And he said that’s the first thing I told him, take care of you. And then all the rest will come from beyond that. So Mona, thank you.
[00:36:40] Mona Kelly: Enjoyed this and I wish you well.
[00:36:42] Rodney Apple: Thank you so much, Mona. It’s, it’s good to reconnect with you today and this has been an incredible episode.
[00:36:50] Mike Ogle: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Supply Chain Careers podcast. Be sure to listen to other episodes and sign up to be notified when future episodes are released as we continue to interview industry leading supply chain experts. This podcast is made possible by S C M Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.
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