305: Screwing Up Masterfully with Kristen Hadeed

Pete Mockaitis
Kristen, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Kristen Hadeed
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I think we’re going to have so much fun here. First, I want to hear the tale, I understand that one time you actually cleaned Tim Tebow’s house while in college. Did you bump into him? You didn’t know who he was? What’s the story here?

Kristen Hadeed
I’m the worst Gator football fan ever. I went to the University of Florida, which is a big school, cares about football. Yes, I cleaned Tim Tebow’s apartment several times and I did not even know it was him.

Pete Mockaitis
He was a student there?

Kristen Hadeed
He was a student. Yes. That was when he was – we won the National Championship. I should have known who he was, but nope. No clue.

Pete Mockaitis
He’s living large, college student having someone clean his house.

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah. I’d say so.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s funny. They treat the athletes well. There’s probably like a stipend for that or something.

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a good time. I’m so excited to get into this conversation. We’re going to talk a lot about mistakes and learning and screwing up. In a way it’s kind of meta because boy, so you and I we know each other through our agency for speaking on college campuses. Campus Speech shout out, yeah.

Kristen Hadeed
Hey.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s been a lot of fun chatting with you there. Then way back in 2013 you also joined me on the Student Leadership podcast.

Kristen Hadeed
Oh yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I know. I kind of forgot too. It was some years ago. Talk about mistakes, I made a lot of mistakes with that first podcast. It never really took off, but I learned so much from them. I think we’re going to have a better conversation this time around and it will reach about 100 times as many people.

Kristen Hadeed
There you go. Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Fo sho. Let’s orient us a little bit. The Student Maid, what’s your company all about?

Kristen Hadeed
Sure. I definitely was not one of those kids that came out of the womb saying I want to be a CEO one day. I want to start a company. I was super lost in college, changed my major nine times.

Finally ended up with finance because I’d heard that you can make a lot of money working on Wall Street. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I thought I could figure that out because to me at the time success was about making a lot of money.

I used to go to the mall all the time when I was in college and window shop because I could not afford to buy anything. I just so happened to go to the mall this one day. I fell in love with a pair of jeans that I could not afford. It sounds so silly, but my company started because of this pair of jeans. They were 99 dollars.

I thought what is something I could do to just make 99 bucks and buy this pair of jeans and just call it a day. My first idea was to put an ad on Craigslist to clean someone’s house. A woman hired me. It was a disaster.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh my. How so?

Kristen Hadeed
Well, I had no idea how to clean. She had a mansion. I told her it would take me two hours. I didn’t have any supplies. I only had like this sponge and a bottle of Windex to clean this 4,000 square foot house. It took me seven hours and I wasn’t even done at the seven hour mark. It was just – she was like, “You need to leave,” because it was dark outside. She had already put her kids to bed. It was a disaster.

But she paid me. Then I bought the jeans. Then she actually called me back and said I really need help. She joked and said she could teach me how to clean. That’s how the whole thing started.

I cleaned her house every week. She told her friends about me. I forgot to take the ad down off of Craigslist. Then in college as I – every year I gained more clients, but I never thought that this would be my career. The turning point really happened right before my senior year I got this big contract to clean hundreds of empty apartments.

Pete Mockaitis
It was just you at this point?

Kristen Hadeed
It was just me. Maybe I had a couple people helping me, but they weren’t – it wasn’t a serious business. This was just a side gig.

I get this contract. It’s 800 and something apartments. They’re filthy. I hire 60 people to help me with the work. These are all college students who I hired. I have no idea how to lead a team of people. I don’t have any real business experience. I have no idea what I’m doing. Terrible leader. A couple days into the contract, 45 of the 60 people just walk in and quit, like on the spot at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
It was like in unison, like a group meeting or how did it-

Kristen Hadeed
It should have been a movie. Yes. It was like – I was sitting in this air conditioned club house in the middle of the complex with my feet propped up eating a Cesar salad. Right before they walked in I remember thinking to myself, this is so easy. Maybe I could be an entrepreneur. I like this. Because I was doing nothing. I was just sitting in this room doing nothing.

They walk in. I know something’s wrong because they’re whispering. I can hear someone saying, “Do it. Do it. Do it.” I know in my gut something really serious is about to happen. Then one just stood forward and she said, “We quit.”

I remember – I was so shocked. I couldn’t even process what had just happened. It’s so funny to me that I had no clue. I remember thinking, “Why are they leaving,” but now looking back, of course they wanted to leave.

The work was absolutely horrible. You’re cleaning empty, filthy college apartments and then you have this leader who doesn’t seem to care about you at all, who’s sitting in the air conditioning with her feet propped up eating lunch and scrolling Facebook. Of course you want to quit.

Pete Mockaitis,
Understood. Was there like a speech or did they lay out their grievances or they just said, “We quit,” and then it’s done.

Kristen Hadeed
No, it’s just “We quit.” And they turned around and they walked out. I was shocked, then it turned to anger. I was thinking, “How could they do this? I’m paying them.” There was so much work to do and I only had 15 people left.

I ran and I found those people. I told them what happened. They weren’t really surprised. I said, “Well, can you help me figure this out? We have to get them back.” I think they wanted to help me because it sounded more fun than cleaning, not because they really wanted to help me.

Pete Mockaitis
This is a juicy drama. I want to be a part of this.

Kristen Hadeed
I know. Then someone had this idea to call an emergency meeting at my house that same night and that the way that we would get everyone there is by promising them an early paycheck because the way that it was is you’d have to wait the whole three weeks to get your paycheck, but if they came to this meeting that night, they would get it that night.

It was a great idea. Everyone showed up. I just – I was just honest. I said, “I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know what I did wrong.” I was honest about how scared I was that we had all this work, that I didn’t know how we would get it done. I think I just – I became a human to them. I think they realized that I was a good person, I just didn’t know how to be a leader.

One kind of said, “Oh, I’ll come back,” and then it was a domino effect. Another is coming back and then the next thing you know, they’re all coming back.

I always say that that changed the trajectory of my life because it made me really obsessed with learning how to be a better leader and most importantly learning how to build a company where people really, really wanted to be and they didn’t to walk out.

That was – that for me was I think looking back, that was the moment that I – I didn’t do it consciously, but I think that’s when I gave up my desire to move to New York and work on Wall Street because that summer really changed everything. We became a team and then I graduated. I turned down a job in finance to stick with Student Maid. Here we are. It’s been nine years.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so cool and congratulations to you. You share these tales and these lessons learned in your book, Permission to Screw Up. Why that title?

Kristen Hadeed
It’s pretty funny. I always wanted to write a book, but I never knew what I wanted to write about. The way I got my book contract was kind of a backwards way. I was giving a talk. My publisher was in the audience. I just so happened to be speaking about Millennials at that event.

My publisher said, “I want you to write a book,” and I started writing about Millennials because I thought that’s what he wanted me to write about. That’s what I had just spoken about. When I finished the book, I didn’t like it. I didn’t actually finish it. Halfway through I said this is not – everything I’m writing about applies to all people, not just Millennials. I threw that version away.

Then I started to write about Student Maid and just the journey of leadership and it was empty. I went to dinner with a friend, who’s written several really great books. I asked him, I said, “How do you know when you’re writing the right book?” He said, in my experience the right book is the one that’s really, really hard to write.”

I thought about that. The book I was writing was not hard. I changed my thinking to what would make it hard. That’s when I realized that I was writing about all the lessons I had learned, but I wasn’t talking about what it took to learn them.

Yeah, I know the importance of empowering people, but I only know that because I micromanage people and people quit. I know the importance of building a relationship that’s real and meaningful with your people, but only because I had superficial relationships that did not lead to trust and loyalty.

I wrote about the how I learned it part, which was not fun. Some of the stories I wrote about paint me in a light that I don’t really want to be painted in, but it’s the truth. It’s how I learned.

The title, Permission to Screw Up, it’s about giving yourself permission. You don’t need it from anybody else. You don’t have to be perfect. Give yourself permission to screw up and to be human and in doing that, you will inspire the people around you to be more human.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. I like that a lot. Thank you. Well, you’ve got a lot of wisdom packed in there.

Could you maybe share just a couple of the most dramatic shifts that you made in terms of, “Hm, before I was thinking this way and then I had this experience which showed me that, no, that’s totally wrong. I should think about it the other way,” so in the practices that you abandoned or adopted as a result of some of those insights?

Kristen Hadeed
I would say the first major shift really had to do with feedback. Because 45 people quit on me, I was really afraid to give critical feedback to people because I thought it would make them quit.

I was the kind of leader who would recognize people every day for things that really didn’t deserve recognition, like thank you for being on time today. But that’s their job. You’re supposed to be on time. On people’s birthdays I would say thank you for being born. I recognized everything about everyone because I thought that was what – I thought that meant they would be happy and they would stay.

I realized two things. One that when we overpraise and we over recognize we actually are doing people a disservice because it doesn’t help them understand what their true strengths and contributions are. It’s also not meaningful.

But number two, when we avoid feedback that really needs to be given, the critical feedback, the kind of feedback that really helps people grow, we’re hurting them because we have this opportunity, we see a way they could be better and we don’t speak up, we’re hurting their growth and their development.

There’s a student I had who – she did a couple of things. I mean things that were really bad, like trying on a client’s high heels and –

Pete Mockaitis
What? Doing what to the high heels?

Kristen Hadeed
Trying on a client’s high heels.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, just putting them. Okay.

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah. Or like playing Mary Had a Little Lamb on a client’s antique piano that clearly is off limits. Just stuff that would get under my skin. Every time I would hear about something I would say, “Okay, I’m going to confront her,” and I never did.

Then I finally got the courage to do it and I did it in an email. It was a total cop out and then she quit. Then I felt guilty because I felt like man, I really missed out on this opportunity to make her better. Now, chances are the values she had, it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, but I should have told her way earlier that this kind of behavior was not acceptable and I missed out on that opportunity to help her learn and to help her grow.

There’s a tool that I loved teaching. It’s in the book. It’s not my own. I learned it from a company called Barry-Wehmiller, one of my favorite companies in the world. It’s called the FBI. It’s a way to give feedback, both critical and recognition, that inspires behavior change or inspires someone to keep doing something great.

It’s a sentence. Each letter stands for something, so feeling, behavior, impact. How you felt about someone’s specific behavior and what the impact of that behavior was.

If someone’s late, for example, you can say, “I felt disappointed that you were 30 minutes late to our meeting this morning. The impact, even though I know it was not your intention, now the impact is I don’t know if I can rely on you. I don’t want to feel that way, so can you help me?”

The idea is that person probably didn’t wake up saying, “I can’t wait to be late so that you’re disappointed and you feel like you can’t rely on me,” but once we tell them, once we tell them how we feel, the impact it’s had, now they want to change that behavior.

On the flip side, recognition, you can say, “I felt proud when you spoke up at the meeting this morning and when you shared your opinion. The impact that had is everyone else felt comfortable sharing their own and we had a really productive meeting.” Now you’re telling that person I want to see that again. I want to see you share your opinion again when you have one in a meeting.

I love the FBI. Now, in my company, every single person on our team that’s one of the first things they learn even before they learn how to dust and vacuum. We’re big on the FBI.

The second thing I would say is about when is it time to give up. That was really hard for me. I’m someone who believes in everyone’s potential. I think it’s really hard when you’re programmed that way when is it time to walk away from someone.

On the flip side, if you’re working in an organization and you’re giving it your all and you see the potential in this organization, but it’s just not right for you right now, when do you walk away? Do you walk away?

We have this metaphor that we use at Student Maid. It’s called the line. It symbolizes what it takes for the relationship to really work.

What we say is the leadership team, the executive team, we’re going to stand at this line every day and what that means is we are going to invest in you, care about you, give you feedback to help you grow, support you, stand by you when you fail. We’re going to give you the tools to do your job and that’s what it’s like standing at the line for us.

But it only works if you’re at the line, which means that you’re doing something with the feedback we give you. You’re giving us feedback when there’s room for us to grow. You’re getting back up when you fail. You care.

What I’ve learned in this whole thing is you can’t make someone care. You can’t make someone change. You can’t make someone anything. They have to want it.

If you are standing at the line, whether you are leading a team of people, whether you’re not, but if you’re at the line and you’re by yourself, I think that’s how you know that it’s time to walk away because you can’t force that other party to stand at the line with you. They have to want to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Then it sounds like you’ve had some experiences then when others are not standing at the line and they needed to be let go.

Kristen Hadeed
Yes. There was a student we had many years ago. Her name was Kayla. Kayla, she was the best cleaner we had ever seen. You could eat off the floor after she cleaned it.

When I met her I learned early on that she had a really rocky home life. She was the first person in her family to go to school. She was fully supporting herself. She came from physical and emotional abuse and made it very clear that Student Maid was like her family. I made a vow to myself that I was going to protect her and keep her as a part of our family no matter what.

The problem was Kayla had a real issue with being on time. She was late very often. It wasn’t just five minutes late, ten minutes late, sometimes it would be 45 minutes late. I really struggled with, here’s this person, I know she’s struggling in her personal life and that we mean a lot to her. She’s also a really fantastic cleaner, but yet she can’t be on time. What do I do?

It started to cause a lot of tension on the team because other leaders in the company would say, “This isn’t fair. We’re requiring everyone else to have – to be on time, so we have to hold her to the same standard.”

What I ended up doing with her is I made exception after exception after exception. It got so bad that she started to not show up to work. Then I just had her cleaning my own house because I didn’t want her actions to impact anyone else.

Long story short, I found out that she had a substance abuse problem. She really needed to go and get help for that. I had to eventually walk away from her. She went to a rehab center and she got better.

Then after that she called me out of the blue one day and she thanked me for giving up on her. I thought, “Uh, wait, what?” It was the first time anyone ever thanked me for giving up on them. She said, “Had you not walked away from me, I would have never hit rock bottom and I would have never wanted to take ownership over my life.”

I realized that you can’t keep giving people chance after chance after chance. You have to – they have to want to change. They have to be open to that. They have to be ready for that.

That experience really helped me. It made me realize that sometimes the best thing you can do for someone and even the best thing you can do for an organization is to say, “I’m walking away,” because that’s when the other party decides, “Hm, I need to change something here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. I imagine there are other occasions, maybe less dramatic, in which folks aren’t living up to the line as well.

Kristen Hadeed
Of course. Yeah. I think the key is it should never be a surprise to someone when they’re being asked to leave. This should not be coming out of the blue here. Okay, we’ve talked about this. We’ve made a self-improvement plan. We’ve identified what happens if the plan doesn’t work. Now we’re here.

What we find in our company now is that people don’t – we usually don’t have to ask anyone to leave. They come forward and say, “Look, I know we had this agreement for this plan. I didn’t do my part and so now I know that I have to walk away.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yup. That’s powerful. I guess I’m so intrigued by some organizations in which there are some that have a really strong performance culture and expectations and clarity and folks who just clearly need to go and go, then others that just seem terrified of lawsuits and there are hideouts and stowaways and just severely underperforming folks who remain and there is no termination just out of a terror of lawsuits.

What’s your take on that? Have you had to deal with lawsuit issues or it’s just been pretty smooth? How do you think about the risk liability side of it all?

Kristen Hadeed
Well, I’ll just say this, you name what can happen in a business, I have been there. I’ve gotten the T-shirt. I’ve done it all, been through it all.

But I think when you’re operating out of fear, that’s a problem. The route that I take is let’s never get to that point where there is fear.

I think it starts at the beginning. Are you hiring people who really embody the values? Then do your people feel empowered to speak up when they notice that there’s someone on the team who isn’t living the values? How can you make sure that those people aren’t really a part of the company for too long?

Then, like I said, the feedback should be regular. It should be ongoing. It should never be a surprise that this person is letting the team down.

Yeah, I think you have to live – I think you have to if there’s someone who is not sitting at the line or they’re hurting the organization, they’re hurting the team, they aren’t ethical, they’re not living the values, they have to go.

Your fear of a lawsuit or whatever it may be cannot trump that because the message you’re sending to everyone else in the company is actually the values that we say are so important, aren’t that important because we’re letting this person stay on the team.

Pete Mockaitis
So you have been sued?

Kristen Hadeed
Oh yeah. Yeah. But the story I think of when you said that, there was someone I had on the team who I knew was stealing. People had come forward and told me. I was afraid of her. I was afraid that if I confronted her, she would sue me, which is so backwards because it’s like she was stealing from the company. Oh my goodness. What am I afraid?

But I let her stay on the team. I was afraid to confront her. The way that she was stealing, she was adding time to her payroll, so she was exaggerating her hours. What ended up happening is she would go to newer people who didn’t really – who were just brand new and she would kind of bully them into lying about their hours so that their hours would match hers.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, because they’re partners, right?

Kristen Hadeed
Yes, they’re partners. The toxicity spread to so many people. So many people exaggerated their hours. I ended up having to let them all go. Had I just dealt with the problem the first time I heard of it, it would have never grown into that.

But that was a huge mistake I made. It cost – then all of the people who came forward and said this is happening and then they watched me do nothing about it, I ended up losing those people because they didn’t want to work with a company where the values and everything we said we stood for we actually didn’t.

Kristen Hadeed
I think you just have to treat people like – you have to care about people and you have to treat them with respect. You have to treat them the way you’d want to be treated. If you do that, yes, sometimes things get ugly and people are hurt, but I try to look past that and think about what’s the real root of this.

Every time where there has been something where someone’s come back to the company, it’s because they were hurt. They didn’t feel cared for. They didn’t feel valued. That’s what made them take this action. I think we just learned a lot from those situations.

Sometimes it’s not related to me. Sometimes it’s related to someone who maybe was their leader and they didn’t make them feel valued and cared for. It’s really hard when you’re in this position of leadership. I think it’s really hard to learn the dance between holding people accountable and really making them feel cared for and valued. Until you figure out what that balance is, you’re going to mess up.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Cool. I just wanted to say or hear from you if you have that strong encouragement for those who are in that fearful place of someone needs to be let go but I’m terrified of a lawsuit. To summarize you’re saying, “Don’t live out of fear. It shouldn’t be a surprise.” You’re saying, “It’s absolutely worth it to just – to live out the values and experience some consequences because you really come out ahead.”

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah, yeah. A mentor once gave me some advice that helps me even today. Whenever I’m afraid of something, I think about what is the worst that can happen. I just wrap my mind around what’s the worst case scenario. Then I think about well, what would I do if that happened.

Now, all of the sudden I’m not worried because I’ve thought about the worst case. I know what I’ll do. How many times does the worst case actually happen? Hardly ever.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Cool. Give us some more pro tips when it comes to cultivating meaningful relationships. You said you used to host parties but that wasn’t quite doing the trick. What is doing the trick?

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah, I used to think relationships were about just being together. When I started the company I was the same age as my team. I had a graduation party and I invited them over. We would go to the same pool parties and this and that.

But at the end of the day our relationships were superficial. We were talking about what we were doing over the weekend or what our plans were for summer vacation. It wasn’t really about anything with any kind of depth.

Over time I learned that if you really want meaningful relationships, you have to know people deeply. You have to know where they come from. You have to know the experiences that really shape them and the moments in their life that really define who they are. The only way you know is by asking and sharing yourself and being vulnerable yourself.

We do regular exercises at Student Maid. It’s called development day. Every quarter we bring our whole company together.

We always start with three vulnerability questions. The leadership team will answer the questions in front of the whole room. Then everyone splits off into different teams and they answer the questions amongst their team.

Examples are “What is the most challenging relationship in your life and why?”  or “What’s a moment that really defined who you are that you haven’t shared with many people?” or “What’s one thing that’s preventing you from becoming a better you that you’re not doing that you should be doing?” Things that really are hard to talk about but when you do, you actually form a connection. You actually build trust.

A lot of people look at that and they say, “Wait a minute. This is a little too weird for work and you’re crossing a line.” We never force anyone to share anything they don’t want to share. I’ll say that. But I think it’s so crazy because we spend most of our time at work and with the people we work with and yet we are afraid of crossing this line and forming a real relationship.

Well, I don’t want to work with people who I don’t really enjoy working with, who I don’t have high sense of trust with. What is that? I think if we really want to create a place where there’s loyalty and trust, we have to create the space for those conversations to happen.

We do that. It’s a huge, huge component of Student Maid. I think actually I think it’s the reason that people want to work for a cleaning company because it’s certainly not the work that’s keeping them there.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. That is powerful. The vulnerability questions, which immediately makes me thing of Brene Brown. Then to start with the leadership and front and center is powerful because it’s kind of like we’re not just forcing you to do this, worker bees. Here we are showing the way and putting that example out there.

I guess the reason that folks are leaders is because they knew what they were getting into upfront is that this is a part of the game as opposed to – it might be a little bit trickier to spring that on people. “Hey, for tomorrow’s meeting, here’s kind of what I think-”

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah. I think you have to explain to – especially when you’re doing that, it’s – what is the purpose of this. Why are we doing this? What’s the end goal?

We always say that relationship is the foundation of accomplishment. Before we can ever talk about accomplishing any goal, we have to have a really strong foundation that’s built on trust and real, meaningful relationships. Until we have that, we can’t talk about our business goals because we don’t have a foundation to stand on to reach those.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. I would imagine it’s just like if you can share those kind of vulnerabilities – now I’m thinking about the movie Dodgeball. “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”

By that I mean, if you can say this thing that’s hard to say, that doesn’t have direct business impact or feedback about performance but it’s important to you, if you can say that, then in a way that just really kind of builds up your capabilities to have other difficult conversations in terms of, “You know what? This performance is really disappointing in these ways,” or “Here’s some perspective I have for you on how I found this challenging or upsetting.”

It’s like an icebreaker that actually breaks ice I guess is how I’m thinking about it.

Kristen Hadeed
Right. Yup. Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Now as a result of sort of all of this stuff, you’ve got some impressive retention rates for your workers as compared to I guess the cleaning industry at large. Could you share just a little bit of sort of where you’re sitting versus the industry norms and any other kind of elements of the secret sauce you think are behind that?

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah, the cleaning industry has such a high turnover rate. 75% is the average.

Pete Mockaitis
That means in one year 75% of a workforce will not be there the next year.

Kristen Hadeed
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Kristen Hadeed
Because of that the customer turnover is also equally high, 55% is the average.

That’s hard but then you add in that in our business model we hire primarily students. Not all students. If you’re a fit for our culture, you’re getting a job, but most of our team members are students. They come with not a lot of job experience.

Then the average profit margin of a cleaning company is only 15%, so you can’t really afford to pay people much above minimum wage. You’ve got hard, exhausting work, can’t afford to really train, develop. You don’t have a lot for that. Then you have people coming into my business with hardly any experience.

It’s a huge challenge, but we really evolved early on from being a cleaning company to a company that is centered around growth and leadership. We always say that we – our goal is to help our people build a skillset that really will help them be successful after they leave our doors. Everything we’re doing is about getting them ready and equipping them with the skills they need to be successful for after they leave us.

Because of that, I think people really feel invested in. I know they feel invested in and they don’t want to leave. While they’re cleaning, they’re taking courses on things like the FBI and how to find your strengths and articulate them in an interview and how to build meaningful relationships, what is vulnerability, what is empathy, how do you listen, what things should you text about, what things should you talk face-to-face about.

We do all of this stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with dusting or mopping or vacuuming but really does help you in your life.

Then what happens is people graduate and it’s time to move on from the company and they don’t want to go because they’re like, “Will I be able to find another company where I’m invested in?” Sadly I think there are a lot of companies that don’t do that. I wish more would. I dream of the day when every company invests in people like we do the bottom line.

I think the average person stays with us until they leave school. For some that may be four years, for some it’s two years, depending on when they join the team. It isn’t uncommon – sometimes we have to tell people, “You’ve got to go. It’s time to go and branch off and go out there and make the mark you want to have on the world.”

But I think it shows that it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what the work is that you’re doing, you can find a way to really inject purpose and meaning into that work. As long as you’re making people feel like they are the priority because they are, they usually don’t want to go anywhere else.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. So cool. I want to get your quick take on Millennials, not to belabor the point. But I mean you’ve got perhaps one of the most privileged vantage points of any human alive in terms of working with young folk, doing menial work. What’s your take on what’s real versus silly, overgeneralizations when it comes to Millennials?

Kristen Hadeed
I’ll tell you two stories quickly. One is a student who came into the office and said, “Do you know where I can get a stamp?” We said, “What? A stamp?” She said, “When I need one, my mom mails me one and I don’t have time to wait for that.” We’re like, “Your mom mails you a stamp when you need a stamp. Oh my goodness, we can get you a stamp way faster than that.”

It would be really easy for me to tell you that story and then at the end say, “Ah, Millennial,” but I’m not going to say that.

Then I’ll tell you this other story and it’s that my mom works with us. She’s a Baby Boomer. I gave everyone an assignment not too long ago where they had to write their own job description. I said it needs to be around 500 words. When my mom turned hers in she kept saying, “It’s either 503, 504, 498. I don’t know. I counted so many times. I keep getting a different number.”

I realized that she did not know about word count on Microsoft Word and she was hand counting every single word on her job description. It would be really easy for me to say, “Ah, Baby Boomers,” after that, but I’m not going to.

I think the point is, we’re all just trying to do our best. We’re all just trying to figure it out. It’s really easy to make fun of Baby Boomers, just like it’s really easy to make fun of Millennials, really easy to make fun of Gen X.

We’re all humans, so let’s just put this … away and let’s just instead focus on how can we just create a place that brings out the best in everyone, that helps everyone realize their potential, and remember that at the end of the day we all want to feel valued and significant and trusted. That’s the thing we have in common. Let’s focus on that.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds a lot easier than doing an elaborate segmented-

Kristen Hadeed
Yeah, it’s way easier.

Pete Mockaitis
-intervention person by person based on their generation. That’s great. It sounds like you don’t really buy into so much the so-called assertions that Millennials are this way as opposed to Boomers which are that way.

Kristen Hadeed
I do think that there are things that help shape a generation. We employ Gen Z as well as Millennials. That’s primarily our makeup.

I think technology has really affected both. I think that it’s affected our independent thinking because when we have a question our first thought is that we Google it instead of thinking of it on our own. When we need directions, we type in the address and step-by-step it tells us exactly what to do. We don’t have to think about where we are.

Then on the relationship end, we’re used to texting and social media, so sitting and having a real conversation that’s really based on vulnerability maybe isn’t comfortable because we’re not used to that.

But then I think about, well that’s definitely affected us, let’s look at everyone else. When I walk into conference rooms with other people, I see people on their phones all the time. It’s not just Millennials. I see people emailing about important things that really should be face-to-face all the time, not just Millennials.

I think technology has affected everyone and the way we interact and the way we think. I think it’s affected Millennial in Gen Z’ers more because that’s really the way that we grew up, but I think that’s something that’s widespread.

Also, almost 70% of the world is disengaged at work. That’s not a Millennial statistic. That’s a human statistic. To me what it’s saying is this isn’t a Millennial problem. This is a human engagement problem. We have to figure out how are we going to help everyone become more engaged.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, Kristen, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Kristen Hadeed
I think – no. You’re good.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh shucks.

Kristen Hadeed
I love this interview.

Pete Mockaitis
Flattery will get you everywhere Kristen. I appreciate it. Well, let’s do it. Tell us about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Kristen Hadeed
I don’t know who said it. Well, I have two. I don’t know who said either one. The first is, “Nothing goes to plan and that is the plan.” That just helps me realize that when something happens that’s a deviation, instead of getting frustrated, realize that it’s all part of the process. One day when you look back it will all make sense.

The other really helps me in terms of empathy. It’s that, “Hurt people hurt people. Loved people love people.” It helps me when someone’s emotions kind of exceed the moment or they’re angry about something and I cannot understand why they’re taking this out on me, I just remember that hurt people hurt people. They’re probably hurting inside about something else, so I need to come at them with empathy instead of anger.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent, thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Kristen Hadeed
Oh, I love John Gottman’s work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah.

Kristen Hadeed
I’m obsessed with it. He, if you don’t know John Gottman, look him up. He studies – he’s a psychologist who works a lot in marriage and family space, but I find a lot of the work he’s done can be applied to the workplace. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Kristen Hadeed
Oh, I have so many. Probably the book that influenced me most early on, Delivering Happiness, which is written by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.

It really helped me understand what culture is and that is that it’s not things like having the cool office and a ping pong table and beer on tap, that it’s really about how people feel. Then it got me thinking, how do I want people to feel and how do I help them feel that way.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit, something that helps you be awesome at your job? I’m sorry, scratch it. Your favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job.

Kristen Hadeed
I don’t know if this is a tool. I guess it’s more of a habit, but every night before I go to bed I think about what are the three things I want to accomplish tomorrow. I’m really clear on that because during the day there are so many things that happen that take you away from important stuff.

I think the night before identifying what are the three things that if I accomplish these, I’ll go to bed feeling like today was a win. It just helps me stay focused when things can get so crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks as you speak it?

Kristen Hadeed
Well, I think it’s the title of the book. I think it’s that you don’t need anyone to give you permission to screw up; give it to yourself.

Just give yourself permission to be human and talk about it because I think we’re making leadership unattainable because we’re acting as if you’ve got to have all the answers and know how to do everything in order to be a leader. That’s not true. Everyone can be a leader. Everyone can have an impact on the person to the right of them or the left of them.

Sometimes we’re going to mess up in figuring that out and it’s all right and that’s normal. Let’s just admit that.

Pete Mockaitis
If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Kristen Hadeed
Well, all my social media is my name Kristen Hadeed and then you can go to my website KristenHadded.com or StudentMaid.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Kristen Hadeed
Let’s see, since we talked about FBIs, how about give someone at work an FBI in person.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, Kristen thank you so much for sharing this. This was so much fun.

Kristen Hadeed
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
I wish you and Student Maid tons of luck going forward for another nine amazing years.

Kristen Hadeed
Thank you. Thank you.