Optimizing Teams through Communication and Behavioral Change with Hillary Miller

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This is a podcast episode titled, Optimizing Teams through Communication and Behavioral Change with Hillary Miller. The summary for this episode is: <p>Dive into the evolving dynamics of teamwork with Hillary Miller, Chief Learning Officer at Penn State Health. In today's conversation on The Future of Teamwork, show host and HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld takes audiences into optimizing teams to work their best while aligning individual identity with team values and purpose. Together, the two discuss how certifications and organizational development can affect teams and hierarchies while reinforcing the basic building blocks of communication as instrumental to creating lasting behavioral change.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>Key Takeaways</p><ul><li>[01:58&nbsp;-&nbsp;04:33] Meet Hillary Miller, Chief Learning Officer at Penn State Health</li><li>[04:35&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:01] Starting with a lot of conversations to drive team performance and learning</li><li>[06:18&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:01] Navigating the vast map of certifications and skills in healthcare</li><li>[07:51&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:01] Organizational development in healthcare is more than clinical roles</li><li>[09:05&nbsp;-&nbsp;10:07] Transcending institutional hierarchy and human dynamics</li><li>[09:37&nbsp;-&nbsp;11:07] Discipline and desire, programs and products are important but shouldn't trump behavioral practices</li><li>[10:14&nbsp;-&nbsp;13:17] Rewiring organizational perceptions about roles, a checklist for success</li><li>[13:20&nbsp;-&nbsp;15:23] Technological boundaries: AI should not be your driver, it should be your co-pilot</li><li>[15:24&nbsp;-&nbsp;17:59] How do you discover the organizational development (OD) function in a business</li><li>[18:34&nbsp;-&nbsp;20:22] "You don't get into healthcare if you don't care about people" — cultures and subcultures, DEI, religion, and organizational values</li><li>[20:26&nbsp;-&nbsp;23:42] Individual and team identities, the tough job of a leader to balance these</li><li>[23:44&nbsp;-&nbsp;25:03] Leadership is managing expectations and understanding there is no 150%</li><li>[24:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;27:22] Avoiding burnout, Hillary talks about being an Enneagram 8. It's not about people pleasing. It's about getting it right.</li><li>[27:29&nbsp;-&nbsp;29:00] If people ask, "Why are we doing this?" we have missed the mark. Discussing the platform Crucial Conversations.</li><li>[29:01&nbsp;-&nbsp;32:15] The book Conversational Capacity, the role of a leader to elevate, champion, and advocate for quieter communicators</li><li>[32:18&nbsp;-&nbsp;34:32] A shift from HR to OD, a balancing act adding more organizational development professionals into the workplace</li><li>[34:32&nbsp;-&nbsp;35:21] Learning about performance standards</li><li>[35:23&nbsp;-&nbsp;37:19] Learning is moving to a higher priority in organizations, sometimes up to direct CEO reporting</li><li>[37:23&nbsp;-&nbsp;38:18] How is learning being reinforced, and how do we know it is happening?</li><li>[38:19&nbsp;-&nbsp;39:42] First-party, second-party, and third-party data</li><li>[39:43&nbsp;-&nbsp;41:04] Building a program like this without an OD professional on staff, make connections</li><li>[41:10&nbsp;-&nbsp;43:15] Teams That Work —&nbsp;Hillary's advice is to go back to the basics of communication</li><li>[41:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;43:15] Do one thing really well and build on it</li><li>[43:17&nbsp;-&nbsp;44:22] Connect with Hillary on LinkedIn</li></ul>
Meet Hillary Miller, Chief Learning Officer at Penn State Health
02:34 MIN
Starting with a lot of conversations to drive team performance and learning
04:25 MIN
Navigating the huge map of certifications and skills in healthcare
02:43 MIN
Transcending institutional hierarchy and human dynamics
01:02 MIN
Discipline and desire, programs and products are important but shouldn't trump behavioral practices
01:29 MIN
Rewiring organizational perceptions about roles, a checklist for success
03:03 MIN
Technological boundaries, AI should not be your driver, it should be your co-pilot.
02:03 MIN
How to discover the organizational development (OD) function in a business?
02:35 MIN
"You don't get into healthcare if you don't care about people" — Cultures and subcultures, DEI, religion, and organizational values
01:47 MIN
Individual and team identities, the tough job of a leader to balance these
03:16 MIN
Leadership is managing expectations, understanding there is no %150
01:19 MIN
Avoiding burnout, Hillary talks about being an Enneagram 8. Not about people pleasing, it's about getting it right.
02:41 MIN
If people are asking "why are we doing this?" then we have missed the mark. Discussing the platform Crucial Conversations
01:30 MIN
The book Conversational Capacity, the role of a leader to elevate, champion, and advocate for quieter communicators
03:13 MIN
A shift from HR to OD, a balancing act adding more organizational development professionals into the workplace
02:13 MIN
Learning about performance standards
00:49 MIN
Learning is moving to a higher priority in organizations, sometimes up to direct CEO reporting
01:56 MIN
How is learning being reinforced and how do we know it is happening?
00:54 MIN
First party, second-party, and third-party data
01:23 MIN
Building a program like this without an OD professional on staff, make connections
01:21 MIN
Teams That Work — Hillary's advice is to go back to the basics of communication
02:05 MIN
Connect with Hillary on LinkedIn
01:04 MIN

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting- edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your team excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dane Groeneveld, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Do you struggle with unlocking your team's full potential, feeling stuck despite various efforts? If so, today's episode promises to be a catalyst for transformation. Today we're thrilled to have with us a distinguished guest, Hillary Miller, the Chief Learning Officer at Penn State Health. She's at the forefront of shaping the future of healthcare education and development, and responsible for orchestrating a system- wide learning strategy for over twenty- one thousand employees. She bridges learning, technology, operational areas and service lines through comprehensive assessment and requirements. Now, Dane and Hillary are about to unpack how her knowledge directly applies to issues in organizational dynamics and learning development. First, Dane and Hillary will dive into the world of organizational development, uncovering its essential role in enhancing your organization. They'll explore how this critical aspect can transform workplace dynamics and contribute to overall success. Second, they'll discuss encouraging inclusive communication. Here, you'll discover effective strategies and thoughtful questions designed to encourage quieter colleagues to actively participate and share their insights and meetings. The segment highlights the importance of inclusive dialogue in creating a more collaborative and innovative work environment. Last, Dane and Hillary will focus on evaluating training effectiveness. Hillary will share her expert recommendations on evaluating if team members effectively absorb and apply training sessions. So teamwork makes the dream work, and we're here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team, put on your headphones, and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 Group, and today I'm joined by Hillary Miller. Hillary is the Chief Learning Officer at Penn State Health, and it's the first conversation I've had with a Chief Learning Officer. So thanks for coming on the show, Hillary. I'm looking forward to learning more.

Hillary Miller: Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to have a conversation with you.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about you. How did you come to be in this role and what is it that really drives you in the organization in unlocking human value?

Hillary Miller: It's such a great question. There's so many facets to this. So I started my career in public education, and so education has been woven throughout my career journey. It hasn't looked the same over the past 20 years. So public education to profit, to nonprofit, got into healthcare about 15 years ago and have served in multiple facets within that, revenue cycle, clinically based. And so when Penn State Health had the opportunity to have their first chief learning officer, it really piqued my interest. One, because I love strategy, so how do we create a common vision and what is it that we're really trying to do here? But two, it's rural based. And so I have a deep love for the populations that may not have equity and access. And Penn State Health is really connected to the community. We have a fantastic academic medical center. We're also unique, we have a college of medicine that is tied into our institution. So it's really awesome. So I was glad they chose me. It's a real honor.

Dane Groeneveld: That's unreal. And I hadn't thought, I always think Northeast and dense population, I never think rural, so that is, it's a real thing. You look at some of the people, we've got a number of our employees that are based remotely and access to healthcare, the best health often tends to fall in the larger cities. And that's not always easy to get an appointment in, let alone get to.

Hillary Miller: Yeah, exactly. And being in central Pennsylvania, which is really where we're located, it puts us right as a primary care center between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and so. But patients have the power of choice. We used to be the place and now we have a lot of other healthcare choices, and so, which is great for the community.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Hillary Miller: So.

Dane Groeneveld: No, that's neat. And when you described the excitement about taking on this chief learning officer role, you referenced that strategy, that common vision, that tends to show up a lot in our conversations around teamwork and how to drive great performance in teams, is that that clarity of vision is a central sort of anchor point. How does that frame up for you in the role when you look at the wider learning environment? Does it all start with strategy? How does that play out?

Hillary Miller: Oh, no. So it starts with a lot of conversations. Right? So when you come into a new organization, you've got to know what's going on. You really shouldn't be touching a whole lot. And so these are listening tours where you're connecting with other executives, understanding things regionally, what are the connection points, but also not just leaving that to the executive lens, going and talking with people who actually serve in the roles in the day- to- day is equally important. So I spent a lot of time in my first six months I would say, really listening, seeking out inputs from folks just to get a sense of the culture, because cultures there, the subcultures at each of the hospitals. What do people see learning as? How do they define that? So what was the definition? And then if there was one thing that they could wave a magic wand with when it comes to people being proficient in their jobs, what would that be? And boy did I get a lot of different responses on that, but it was really helpful for me to see just how people defined it. And the definition was all over the place. So I had to start with the basics.

Dane Groeneveld: Wow. And I would imagine there's already a bunch, particularly in a healthcare system, there's already a bunch of regulatory- driven training and certifications and safety and everything else that's already in situ. So you're kind of listening to what they think they need on top of what's already there. And it's a pretty big map, I would imagine, to navigate.

Hillary Miller: It's a really big map, and you have to make sense of the map that's more of like a scatterplot, right? While also recognizing you're coming into a place that already has some of these things in place. So is it a startup? Are they in a transformation state? Is it sustainment? And so we were in more of a transformation state will be because it's a growing healthcare system. And so you have to acknowledge the work that's already been done. When you come in, especially as an inaugural role, a real danger point is coming in and saying, " I know what we need to do and here's all the things that we're going to change." And that's just such a bad move until you have at least some sense of how things work here. And that's the spoken and unspoken.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's a big one. And I get that's the value of the learning, the listening tour because it's not already written or spoken about out in the open, but through the listening tour, maybe a few people show you their hand on what's really happening.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. And how receptive they are to having inquiry like that. So I pay attention to even the dynamics of the conversation of when I ask these questions, were people resistant, were they questioning my motive, all those things. And that plays into really the organizational development side of the house within the work that we do, because you have to understand how people perceive things, what their sense of reality is, and then what does that mean with what's in our data and how do our patients feel? But my job is in the care of the employees who take care of the patients. So although we have a huge responsibility with patient care, that's not our primary. Our primary are all the people who are providing that care, and that could be direct patient care or our supply chain or IT. There's just this huge conglomerate in healthcare. And a lot of people don't know in a healthcare system there's literally any job you could think of, finance, HR, supply chain, logistics.

Dane Groeneveld: Maintenance.

Hillary Miller: Maintenance. I mean, you literally could have your whole multifaceted career in a healthcare system, but often people see that front- facing as just a clinical role.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes. Yeah, that's a good call out. And when you work in those environments, what I've been led to believe through articles that I've read and stories that I've heard is that there has been sort of a legacy hierarchy of doctors and administrators and nurses. It's very scientifically driven industry, so that hierarchy can drive some interesting human dynamics as far as who questions what, particularly around psychological safety. So I would imagine you're seeing that evolving fairly quickly through what we've seen in recent years.

Hillary Miller: Yes. And helping people to understand why these things have. Changed when you have institutional practices, and this extends way beyond our institution, but just in general, there have been some practices that have just been inherent that have been in place for 60 years. Right? And so it's working through more of that human side of the house and helping folks to understand that this isn't about your credentials or your degrees, it's how we interact with each other.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. And that takes, in a world where you're busy, you've got a lot of front- line professionals, that takes, I would imagine, a lot of discipline to create the space to have that discussion in the first place.

Hillary Miller: Well, and the desire. Right?

Dane Groeneveld: Desire, too.

Hillary Miller: So usually when we start to think about these things, people immediately go to a product or a program. Programs and products are really important, but they shouldn't trump what we're trying to do behaviorally. Those should be supplemental and supportive of that. So I don't go to, " Oh, we need to create a program for that." Programs might come from the findings that we have in the focus groups and talking about the gaps, but we're looking at behavior. And so how do the things that we do tie into our institutional goals, but also it's more than what we're actually producing. Some of the work that's the most meaningful in the work that we do is the stuff that's happening behind the scenes, not the product that we're delivering.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes. So tell me a little bit more about programs there, because that piques my interest. I've personally been guilty of running into problems in organizations and saying, " Well, let's build this new committee or this meeting or this report and drive more awareness." But is that perhaps a danger of going too far without getting people's desire and understanding of the why first? Am I hearing that right?

Hillary Miller: It's tricky. It's tricky because sometimes we know something needs to happen and we haven't gathered the inputs from folks. But that also goes back to the perception question. Some groups think that they have to be involved in everything on every step, right? And this is where you have an understanding of roles and how these multidisciplinary teams interact. So when you haven't had a sound structure when it comes to learning that is not about academic medicine or higher ed institutions, but more of what does this mean for learning in our organization and development practices, you almost have to rewire people on when they think about that only as compliance- based training, and you put this thing in a learning management system and we go do it, and then it... We have a checklist. It's moving away from, " Yep. Those things are still important" to the real benefit of a sound and strong learning strategy and structure is actually the things that you might not be seeing in the day to day. Right? So how are we coach spot coaching? How are we building up our manager base to be confident and have this mindset, skill set, tool set that they need? And these are all things that we're evolving through, but I don't know that any organizations ever really arrive. I think it's an evolution because the market changes, the human condition changes, but there are some sound skill sets where you got to get the plumbing right in your organization. And that's not just alignment of where people sit, but it's clarity of role. What's our rules of engagement? What do you think I should be doing? Here's what I actually do. And that's all the way around.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's interesting. Roles and responsibilities, particularly in this day and age of generative AI, they've never been overly well- designed or updated. I love the way that you say it's kind of, you never arrive. It's always the target's always moving. Roles are changing. But now that you've got generative AI coming in, on one hand it could be exciting because maybe the AI can interact with you and be updating your roles and responsibilities and seeing gaps. But on the other hand, it's really scary because it could be people being even more asleep at the wheel on what roles and responsibilities are and just saying, " Hey, chat GPT. Give me the job description for this person's role."

Hillary Miller: Yeah, it's boundaries. We have these discussions a lot. I love it when we can look at technology, but I don't use it as a driver.

Dane Groeneveld: Right.

Hillary Miller: So my technology should not be my driver. It should be what are we trying to do here and how does the technology augment that, supplement that, support that? And I love AI, but I think there are boundaries with that. And I think those are just now starting to be looked at, right? Where you can get really complacent with the, " Oh, I just had this thing do this for me and it produced this." You have to still have an audit QA process around that. There's ethical components. But I actually love it because if you can look at it as an augment to the work that you do, or taking away some of those tasks that don't require that heavy human piece, letting go of everything doesn't have to be designed by a person. If this thing can do it better, cool. I'd rather spend more time in moving people into those things that require human interaction. Organizational development's one of those where you have to have the relationship and the communication and an AI tool is not going to be able to do that. So I actually think it allows us to do more of what we're supposed to be doing if we use it in the right ways.

Dane Groeneveld: That makes a lot of sense. I've often had conversations with people where the upside of this technology is we get out of the burdensome tasks that we've created for ourselves at work, and we do more of the human connectivity. I hadn't thought about organizational development quite as crisply as that, as our relationships and ways of communicating with each other. How do you find the OD function in a business? If you're the chief learning officer, is OD reporting up to you? Is it a peer function?

Hillary Miller: It is.

Dane Groeneveld: It is, great.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. And here's the thing too. So you have your OD practitioner, and these are skill sets, right? You have to come in with understanding change management and team dynamics, but also diagnosis. So how do you go in and know what's actually going on here? Because often what we get on the surface isn't the root of what's really happening. And so that requires a skilled practitioner who can come in an internal consultative capacity to do that and be Switzerland. Right? They're neutral to, they're more about the success of what this thing is, not how people feel about it, but they have to be able to gather those because there's a lot of psychological components to that perceptions, what's actually fact, what's a story and a narrative that we're telling ourselves. So that side of the house is so important. But I'll tell you who else is a really key partner in that. And it doesn't matter about reporting. This is where understanding multidisciplinary teams and roles matter. A human resources business partner is a critical partner in the work that we do because they're in that day- to- day work. So they're that person that sits really within HR that understands the employee dynamics that are happening in the day- to- day, because we might not be sitting in these spaces.

Dane Groeneveld: So they're sort of your corporals lieutenants out in the field that are sort of capturing what's happening and sending it back up.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. We have a lot of tentacles, right? And so although we're responsible for working through the standards and practices that are evidence- based, right? That there's OD that's really rooted in evidence of how this should be done effectively. But then there's the who should we be partnering with? And I think that stakeholder list change depending on what you're trying to do. So we might be working specifically with physicians or we're working with a group of unit leaders who've had massive change in their department. And so oftentimes we're looking at what are your rules of engagement today? And if they can't tell us that, we usually start there.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's a good question. On rules of engagement, we've been having a lot of conversations with guests lately around things like purpose and values and behaviors, and whether it sits entirely, exclusively at the corporation level, at the institution level or how it breaks down. And you mentioned subcultures earlier, but for rules of engagement, is there a master sort of corporate rules of engagement and then more of a department or facility level rules of engagement that differ conflict? I don't know. How does that play out?

Hillary Miller: Yeah, Hillary's personal opinion here, not representative of Penn State Health, but when I look at those things, it's not a one size fits all. So you should have, we have very strong values, a corporate mission. Our job is really to provide health and well- being to Pennsylvanians, right? And so that's our core mission. You don't get into healthcare if you don't care about people. So that's kind of a natural lens for us when it comes to our values, which are right values. So respect, integrity, teamwork and excellence. There's now sub flavors that come from that. Right? So you have that as your core, but you really should have sub- climates. We have religious- based hospitals in a larger non- religious affiliated system. And so it's really important that those religious- based hospitals can maintain their identity while still being connected to what we say matters to us as a healthcare system. And so there's a lot of competing dynamics within that, and especially when you get into the complexity of diversity, equity, and inclusion, some things that might be on the religious side directly conflict with a DEI initiative. And so we have to find the balance between those where we're not removing the identity of either. And that takes really strong folks who have expertise in their areas to have quality conversations to say, what does this look like? And they're not simple answers. We're navigating through those things all the time. But that's one of the things that makes a place great, is that recognizing you're part of a whole, but that you shouldn't feel like your identity has to go away because you're a part of this larger enterprise.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. I like that a lot. I had a conversation yesterday with John Estafanous from RallyBright and their platform's all about teams and resilient teams, and it's really cool. And we were sitting there talking about it and he said, " Yes, you've got the corporate mission, purpose and an individual's going to have their own identity." But his whole thing was teams need their identity too. And I think sometimes that gets lost. I think sometimes we're really heavily focusing on serving the individuals and we're serving the organization, but not necessarily the teams. So that religious- based hospitals a really good example of...

Hillary Miller: Oh, and personally I love it.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Hillary Miller: I think it makes us a really rich in wellness. There's so many things that when you have that level of diversity just that way, it's a really beautiful thing, but it's complicated. Right? But it also gives the people within our community's choice. People may choose a religious- based facility just for that reason. That's amazing. That's how we create inclusion and what makes us a great healthcare system with that. I think the other thing I would add here, Dane, is that this is also highlighting just how important, but how hard the job of a leader is. You're not only looking at how do I take care of people within my care, are they equipped to be able to do the things that they need to be doing, am I equipped to do the things that I have to be doing, how do I manage all the different operational things while recognizing people as individuals? And so one thing that I spend a lot of time in, and this is more in the strategic house, is maximizing and adjusting folks for where their strengths are.

Dane Groeneveld: inaudible.

Hillary Miller: And you have to have that skill set and leadership to say, " Yeah, you might be in this role today. I'm starting to see a skill set develop in you that actually would support this thing over there." So arranging and maximizing is something critical because regardless of how the market changes the needs within our own business, what does that mean in connection to the community, when you can see folks for what they bring to the table while also valuing them as a person, they'll shift with you in a lot of different places. But it's complicated because how I see value for me as a person might be wildly different than how each one of my team members, let alone all the folks we work with across the organization see it. So that's where the rules of engagement comes back into play to say, " Do we have a shared understanding of this thing? What's your perception? What's mine? Can we walk away with a shared meaning of that?" Because that's where communication is rooted in, is if we are not starting off with the same understanding of what we're trying to do here, then how do we communicate and work together?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Building shared understanding, it can be overlooked because it takes some work. It's not just inaudible

Hillary Miller: It all takes work.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it does.

Hillary Miller: This is like the heart work, the head work, the I'm doing really great one day and horrible the next. It's like the nine stages of grief.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah. You and I were talking before the show, sometimes it's about letting the team know that it's okay to just suck a little less today rather than constantly be striving for-

Hillary Miller: Yes.

Dane Groeneveld: ...perfectionism and execution. Sometimes it is, one day might just have to be put down to a learning day or a sharing day.

Hillary Miller: Well, you know what kills me? Is I'll hear people say, " I need to give 150%." And I'll go, " Gosh, do you mind if I offer some insight there just for me and you can treasure or trash it? Is we only have a hundred percent ever. So there is no 150%. And number two, a hundred percent one day might be 50% the next day, and that might be all that you need there." And so some of this is emotional regulation and are your personal expectations so much higher than what we're actually seeing? And people see that as a lowering of standard, it isn't.

Dane Groeneveld: No.

Hillary Miller: But when your self- expectations are just so unrealistic, what's between the gap there of what we said we need here and what you are trying to do, you're wearing yourself out. So burnout sometimes happens in that gap. Are you placing expectations on yourself unknowingly and then you're failing at them because they weren't attainable to begin with?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. And that's, you mentioned, it's really hard. The job of a leader is really hard right now, but that's going to be a compounding effect. If you're a leader that's setting out a bold vision, a huge growth objective or a huge shift in customer care, patient care, and you haven't got everyone around you understanding with that shared understanding of how you're going to get there, then it's not just you that's going to burnout, it's a lot of your team because they're pushing rope up a hill on a lot of different initiatives.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. Me as a human, so I'm an Enneagram eight, which is the Maverick. I'm a Scorpio, and I also am just more of a risk- taker, and that comes with its advantages and its disadvantages. So I have to be aware of where I can push and where that's okay versus pace and grace of people just aren't there yet. Doesn't mean we can't do it later. And that's hard to navigate sometimes. And that's why you have to have trusted partners in an organization who will have the candid feedback with you to say, " Knock it off. You're going too quick." Or, " Hey, I didn't feel like you communicated with me." So when they give us that feedback, I go, " Gosh, I am so sorry. Are we missing a channel that we didn't know about that we can now engage in a better way?" And so when folks are brave enough to come back and say, " I don't feel like you're doing a good job with this," we listen to it and say, " Okay, how can we do that better in your mind?" But this isn't about people pleasing. This is about are we getting it right. And sometimes that comes with discontent because rooted in change is figuring out all the dynamics of people might feel like you're taking something from them, or, " What's my value now that this looks different?" You have to know those things, and that's where your OD team matters so much because they're skilled in identifying what's the resistance and where's that coming from. That could be at an individual level, a team level, a department level. There's just so many dynamics with that.

Dane Groeneveld: And resistance is a good place to start I would imagine, because you mentioned it on your listening tour, is if you run into the resistance, it's a telltale sign that there's something there. You don't know what it is, but it's a reason to go explore.

Hillary Miller: You need to dig in.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. You need to dig in. Sometimes folks, and this is what I would offer to our audience, sometimes folks aren't going to offer that up. And so you have to take the best information that you have to make a better decision moving forward. And that doesn't always mean that people are going to be on board, but one of the biggest telltale signs is if people are asking, " Why are we doing this?" we missed the mark. Because if they don't know why, then you got to go back to that. And it doesn't matter where you are in your change process, why should be at the forefront regardless of where you are in the cycle. And people need to hear that a hundred times before it sticks. But usually, I don't know how familiar you are with the Crucial Conversations' platform through Crucial Learning?

Dane Groeneveld: Not the platform, no. Tell me more.

Hillary Miller: Oh, it's so awesome. It's such a good thing, and I really am a fan of that communication building. But one thing that's really interesting that comes out of that is when people are silent, that is more concerning to me than when people are vocal. Because at least when they're vocal, they're trying to tell you something. When people are silent, you really have to navigate that to say, " What aren't we talking about here?"

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. A missing conversation.

Hillary Miller: And that could be psych safety. Yeah. So many things. So if you're a person who's come into a meeting and you've shared some ideas and they got shot down, depending on your confidence level, your sense of psychological safety, you may never suggest something ever again.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. One of my favorite coaches on conversational capacity, he wrote a book called Conversational Capacity, Craig Weber. He talks about that and he calls it the Sweet Spot, and he's like, " You've got the winners and the minimizers." I don't know if that's similar to the Crucial Conversations platform, but.

Hillary Miller: Probably, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: It's really cool because those winners are in there and their goal when they come into any meeting is to get their point across, to win, to be the person that's right. But they're not curious. Right? And then you've got a really smart, capable person who's minimizing because they're saying, " Well, I don't want to put my job at risk or my reputation at risk, or get into an uncomfortable situation." And so they see something, but they won't say it because this person's shouting what they want to see done. And so neither of the two people in the meeting, there might be more, are winning because they're not in the middle balancing candor and curiosity. And it's-

Hillary Miller: This is where I think the role of a leader matters so much. Right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Hillary Miller: So we have to be in tune with whether it's our meeting or not, if you're present, you have a role and responsibility to elevate, champion and advocate when you're picking up on the fact that we're not saying something. So oftentimes in a meeting, and again, I tend to be more overt, but I like to use the term radical candor. Kim Scott's great with that. Because being candid is not being brash or unkind or just saying whatever comes to your mind, but when we can build up the skill of leadership, people who have people responsibility to call those things out, then you have a whole slew of champions who are mitigating that in the moment rather than talking about it later when we could have just fixed it on the spot. So an example of that would be when you know have a subject matter expert in the meeting and whether it's title or whatever, and you have a lot of heavy hitters in the room by title, and they're not saying anything, a real easy way for a leader is to say, " Gosh, you know what? We have so- and- so in here, who actually has direct responsibility for this. I'd really love to hear from them."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I like that. I think that's really powerful. And I've also heard that often another way to invite those people into the conversations is to frame a statement. " I'm hearing that we're going in this direction because of X, Y, and Z." And then lead with the question, " What are we missing here? What have we not seen?" And often that's a safer way for them to come in, and it's very powerful once you get that whole team contributing.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. Instead of asking, " What questions do you have?" Because people are like, " Where do I start?" Give them something that they can respond to. So I love that, " What are we missing?" Another helpful one that we use, " Is this true? Is this how you see this? What's your source of reality?" Because again, going back to the perceptions, doesn't matter if it's not fact, if that's how people are consuming, projecting and aligning. So it's just interesting.

Dane Groeneveld: It's super interesting. So this whole OD theme, I was actually just talking to a customer the other day and they were explaining that they've reduced the number of HR business partners in their organization and then hired more OD professionals in. Now they're a reasonable sized organization. Some organizations can't have either. It might be the business owner running HR. But where is that balance trending towards in your eyes? Do you think we're going to see organizations hiring more OD practitioners and maybe having them play more of a interactive role, kind of leaning into what's traditionally been the HRBP function?

Hillary Miller: Another great question that I don't have a clear answer on. A lot of this, I have folks ask me this kind of question a lot, not necessarily specific to OD, but what's the right framework? There isn't a framework that you can pick up when it comes to learning and development that is going to directly apply to each institution. This is industry agnostic. This is where the evaluation assessment, what's our value stream, what are we trying to do here, because you really should be using major models like centralized or federated or decentralized. But you have to know what those things mean. Our job is not to come in and say, " This is exactly how this should be done." It should be using these frameworks to say, " Here's what some of the best practices indicate for us, but where are we trying to get to as an organization?" That's a beautiful thing because it allows you to construct that based off of the organizational needs. Where I would caution is not flipping these unique roles that really aren't elsewhere. So have an OD consultant, how you utilize that within your organization, you get to choose and define that. So there isn't a construct that I could offer to you that says, this is exactly what you need to do, but there are performance standards for these key roles that we should all be using if you have those roles in your organization.

Dane Groeneveld: Got it. And where's a good place to go and learn about those performance standards if you are kind of first in?

Hillary Miller: Well, there's a couple. So I will send you some links.

Dane Groeneveld: Great.

Hillary Miller: But when I think about OD structure, I was just looking here on my computer, because we're talking live.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah.

Hillary Miller: ATD is really great. So the Association for Talent Development. But there's also AIHR, so the Academy to Innovate HR. And here's the other thing that makes this a little bit more complicated, it also is inherent on where these things report into.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Hillary Miller: So if you have something sitting under HR, it tends to take on more of that HR lens versus if something's sitting under the CEO or an operational member out in the business, and you're going to see learning sitting everywhere.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I was actually just having that conversation with a friend the other day, that learning has started to move more centrally into direct- to- CEO reporting. Because traditionally, while sales would do their own learning and finance would do their learning and marketing would do their learning, and there was a common core, but each department was doing its thing. And now we're starting to realize, and I actually think COVID's accelerated that, that if each department's doing their own learning, it's actually at the cost of the interconnectivity, the connective tissue between these teams.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. I think there's some complexity to that, and it really does depend on the organization. So if you're more agile and you've agreed to a common framework where this is how we use these type of roles, and you have a strong understanding and adherence and governance model to that, then you can probably have a more decentralized unit because they're adhering to those practices, but focusing on their area of content. In healthcare, there's some things that should be aligned a hundred percent within a learning structure, and then other things where there should be an association or a connection to it. But we have to help people think about these as roles that not just anybody can jump into. You have to think about the same niche skills. So it's not, " Anybody can teach or anybody can be a designer." Well, on some things, sure. But if you're talking about really promoting the field and influencing this, you have to know that there's a development pathway for that. And I'm not just talking about degrees and those kinds of things, but there are certain standards that we need to be able to uphold that are foundational. So if you can't do assessment and you don't know how to measure it, frankly, I don't really care about what you're producing because we don't know if it's effective.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yep. And we talked about that just in the lead up to this show, is that there are a lot of people that have gone out and put a program in place or gone and bought a technology and they've turned it on, but they've turned five or six things on, and they're not measuring before, during, and after, so they don't really know what's driving the outcomes. And I think that's probably been a challenge for a lot of organizations that were reacting to how much has changed in the workplace in the last few years.

Hillary Miller: Well, and I think it's fundamentally changing it from who's attended and how many people are using it. We hear, " Oh, those aren't important metrics." They are, but they're not the driving metric. Just because somebody showed up doesn't mean that they engaged in it, that they took anything away from it or that they're applying it. This is where when you think about programs, it's not just what's being delivered virtually in person or through e- learning, it's how is that being reinforced and how do we know it's happening?

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. And what type of metrics will you look to within a business unit or a function to see that it is happening?

Hillary Miller: Yeah. Well, I think you have to think about first party, second party, and third party data. So first party is the things that a learning team should own. That's anything around completion rates, level one, two, three type surveys. How is this showing up, right? Because have the recency factor in surveys after a class. So they know it really well because they just did it. It's the 90- day follow- up and check- ins with focus groups in the coaching, where you pick up on that. Second party data is we sit in HR, so retention rates, promotion rates, what's the longitudinal data of how are people engaging in things? And then how long are they staying with us? Third party data is marketing and what are our communication tools here? What's happening out in our physical markets? What are the things that have changed for us? So learning teams cannot use just their data.

Dane Groeneveld: Got it.

Hillary Miller: To see if that's making movement. You have to see what's happening out in the organization and how what you are doing is actually tying to that. And especially if you don't have your learning tied to organizational goals, you are not going to get the footing that you need to be able to produce behavioral results. And that's not an easy task.

Dane Groeneveld: No, it's not. So if you're a small team and you don't have a chief learning officer or a chief HR officer, the chief people officer that is sufficiently sophisticated in building one of these programs, are there OD consultants out there? Are there organizations that are a good place to go and make a start that you're aware of?

Hillary Miller: Yeah, I'll send you some links after this.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.

Hillary Miller: But one thing I would encourage folks, and it's easier said than done, is don't get locked into the title. My title just affords me the ability to have advocacy across the organization. You can still influence, make the connections, ask people what their problems are. So whether you're a shop of one or a shop of 50, whatever the mix of roles are, your job is to make those connections and build the best possible relationship because influence comes from that. So we always think we have to have the title or the seat at the table. Often the seat at the table comes from the influence.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that.

Hillary Miller: So start with pilots, get some momentum, get a group that really sees the value of what you're doing, and then start to scale that.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that focus on connection and influence, and I love pilots. I think pilots are the-

Hillary Miller: Me too.

Dane Groeneveld: ...the safe way to just jump in and get some early adopters around it and learn together.

Hillary Miller: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That's really neat. We're rounding up. This has been a wonderful conversation. And before the show, you mentioned to me a book that you like, Teams That Work, and you were sharing that you particularly like the dynamics of teams that's referenced in the book. It doesn't all have to be a group of performers. As you think towards your hopes and views on the future of teams in workplaces and that whole construct of the dynamic of teams, what would be good for you to be seeing more of in the next few years across the business?

Hillary Miller: In my mind, sometimes we get so caught in the fancy. So, " What's the really fancy thing? And what's all the literature and research saying? And we got to go after this next big movement." If your basics aren't right, don't worry about going after that really big thing. Make sure the basics. Do we have clear rules of engagement? How do we communicate with each other? Where does communication go? So really focus on getting those foundations right, and then you can work on all the fun things like the plumbing and other things. But focus on the basics. And then the Teams That Work book actually highlights seven drivers of team effectiveness. And I'm really throwing out a feeler here because it's not what you think they would be. So I really love that book. They did a really good job in bringing research and facts into this, and it's industry agnostic.

Dane Groeneveld: Awesome. Well, I'll make sure Alicia adds that to the show notes. And yeah, good call to action. Just get back to basics. Drive good communication across the organization and teams.

Hillary Miller: Yeah. Do one thing really well, and then build on that. Right? And so oftentimes we try to fix all the problems of the world, and that's where I see a lot of folks get frustrated or burnt out or scared or, yeah, you're going to fail. When you take risk, you are going to fail. That's where pilots and testing are so helpful because you're risky. It's a risky, thoughtful failure. And then you have the resilience to say, " Yep, got that wrong. Now what do we need to adjust to get it right next time?"

Dane Groeneveld: No, that's really powerful. Well, Hillary, it's been a wonderful conversation. So many great points. It's hard to summarize, but I definitely took away a lot around that. The listening tours, the discovery, digging in around resistance, rules of engagement, and this whole piece on communication are huge. So thank you for sharing your story with myself and with the listeners.

Hillary Miller: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's so fun, and it's really, really lovely now to have a connection with you.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, likewise. And if people listening to the show want to connect and bounce some ideas around LinkedIn, where's the best place to find you?

Hillary Miller: Yeah. So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. You'll know me immediately when you see my photo. It's a really bright, flamboyant photo, and I usually have a diversity, equity, and inclusion celebration for the month in my background. But feel free to have a message. I don't require that you have to know me.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.

Hillary Miller: To message me. And then if you have questions where I can be of help to you, we're all learning here. So don't be intimidated by title. It just affords me advocacy.

Dane Groeneveld: Love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much, Hillary.

Hillary Miller: Thanks, Dane.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams, but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork. com. There, you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.

DESCRIPTION

Dive into the evolving dynamics of teamwork with Hillary Miller, Chief Learning Officer at Penn State Health. In today's conversation on The Future of Teamwork, show host and HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld takes audiences into optimizing teams to work their best while aligning individual identity with team values and purpose. Together, the two discuss how certifications and organizational development can affect teams and hierarchies while reinforcing the basic building blocks of communication as instrumental to creating lasting behavioral change.