People-First Leadership with Marketing Exec Candice Hahn

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: \ Hello, and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen 

Mike: and I'm Mike. 

Kristen: And today we have a fantastic guest with us. We have Candace Hahn. She has 25 plus years of experience as a leader in marketing and strategy services. She's been an executive at several top global marketing agencies. Like iCrossing, which is where I initially worked with her, as well as Publicist Modem, Modem Media.

Most recently she was an SVP and Managing Director at RGA for nine years, where she built out the Austin office and she's currently been working as a fractional CMO and consultant for small and mid sized agencies, and we are very happy to have her on the podcast. Thanks for being here, Candice.

Candice: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks

Kristen: So I'd love to hear, cause I think you, you have a background in, especially working with marketing agencies and what are, for people who are less familiar with that space, like what are some of the, the biggest challenges that leaders face

Candice: Oh, gosh, that list is long. Um, I mean, I think the 1st place to start is that it's a people business in terms of you're not manufacturing a widget. You're not selling a piece of software. You're selling people. They're your asset. And I think you have to, to think about how you manage that environment differently, because if you don't have people, or if you have high turnover, your quote unquote product really suffers because you're selling human capital.

And so I think that's the biggest piece is that,rather than being a purely client led business, you have to lead from the inside out because,high performing teams are teams that have worked together for a long time and that know each other and that understand how each other works.

And that, if you don't have that, if you don't cultivate that internally, then your exterior sort of product really suffers. I think that's the number one biggest challenge from my perspective is that you're selling people, and you have to make sure those people are, feel psychologically safe and are happy and are motivated and understand why you're doing what you do and all that stuff.

And then, the other big challenge is that clients are, have different attitudes towards the role that agencies play in their world. Some of them really look at you as partners and understand that. When you're a, and not just a marketing agency, but a service provider. I mean, your job is really to make them look like absolute rock stars to their bosses.

And there's others that sort of treat you as their punching bag. And,one of my beliefs is that, people's insecurities manifest themselves in the workplace. And you probably know that better than I do. You, this is what you study. But, but, I think that when you're the service provider, you're like the easy punching bag,for certain clients.

So I think navigating the client agency relationship is another big challenge. So

Kristen: Yes.

Candice: go on, but those are the two big buckets.

Kristen: Those feel very familiar to me from

Candice: Yeah.

Kristen: Six years in the digital agency side. It's like, that is the constant challenge where, yeah, you're kind of at the bottom when it comes to your clients and how they treat you and the challenges of keeping your employees happy and motivated when often they're just getting beaten on by their clients.

It's

Candice: And I, I think the other big thing too, is that. Clients have all kinds of reasons why they make the decisions they make and people in the agencies generally have pretty limited visibility into what's, what's driving those decisions. And from the agency perspective, they seem irrational or illogical, but most agency people have very little visibility into that 1000 pressures that clients have that are, that drive them to make the decisions that we do.

And I think if the relationship is healthier between the clients, the agency maybe understands a little bit of the why, but generally the, the client just says, that's great. We're not doing that. We're going to do this. And the agency is like, that's silly. That makes no sense to me. Why do you, why do they do that?

And you're like, there's a million things we don't know about what's going on. 

Mike: Why would an organization choose to,hire an outside agency that doesn't have this visibility rather than having an internal marketing team? Is that, is it lower cost for them, but it's ,

Candice: Yeah.

Mike: cost for them because they don't have, they can hire you on a contract basis or not.

Candice: No, that's right. You, that's a very expensive, that's a very expensive service to pay for and not have them understand your big picture,Yeah. I think there's a couple of reasons. One is that, oftentimes you need a quote, unquote, neutral third party to come in and I mean, within organizations, there's no shortage of ideas and there's no shortage of people who think that they know what direction they need to go in. So, it's, it's like having a mediator come in and say, okay, we've looked at the landscape.

We've talked to people. We understand. What's happening outside of your own organization? You need to,we're the 3rd party that doesn't have any vested interest in any 1 of you internally. So, you know, there's some sense of people that listen to that.The other thing from a cost perspective is that salaries are a different line item on your.

On your P and L than an external party. I mean, there's tons of organizations that can't because of the way they budget, hire a hundred thousand dollars a year marketing person, but they can pay an agency 500, 000 a year to do the same work. So

Mike: As someone who manages P and Ls a lot, I fully know what you're talking about, but I don't understand it. It's like, no, it's goes to a different line.. It's still the same money. You've got revenue expense that I don't know.

Candice: Yeah. And I think that the third reason is generally that agencies tend to be a little more on the forefront of what's happening in technology. What's happening in culture. We're able to share cross vertical learnings, there's certain verticals that aren't exactly known for being on the cutting edge of whether it be technology, customer experience, marketing, activations.

And so they're looking for someone to come in and that can share learnings from other industries. I mean, when I was early in my career, one of my first clients was Michelin tires, and we spent a lot of time in South Carolina talking to people about tires. And,and I distinctly remember this talking to a guy who had been, a lifer in the tire industry, whether it was with Michelin or somewhere else.

And, and I said, what is it that you think people care about tires? And he's like, well, there are these numbers on the side, like 35, 62. And I was like, no all people want to know is, will, this fit my car. Like I have a whatever, 2000 Audi, a four. Will this tire fit my car? Like the majority of people don't know what those numbers are on the side and they don't care.

Mike: They're confusing. I've had to change that. And it's like, what?

Candice: Yeah. So they just, they need someone to pull them out of looking down and look ahead. You know? Yeah.

Mike: I've seen too, now with digital marketing being the marketing for the most part, you have to understand a lot of complicated behind the scenes things. Whenever I talk to the marketing teams, they're using words that I don't understand and it's like things, search engine optimization.

Okay. I understand that, but they go a little bit deeper and you have to be like a real mechanic of these channels and they're complicated and I imagine they're ever evolving. It's different than like the Mad Men days when you took out an ad, you put it on a billboard or a magazine and now there's, limitless channels for visibility and for capturing, people's attention.

It seems very complicated.

Candice: Yeah. Yeah. And consumers have zero patience. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah,

You know, they don't, Prime now!

Candice: yeah, nobody wants to be advertised to. So the other challenge is, how do you like, do mental jujitsu and,make something relevant. But,I think the, the entire thing is complicated by the fact that.

A lot of people have very high expectations for a very seamless experience, whatever they're doing. And everybody now wants an omni channel experience where you walk into the store and they know that you bought something on an app. And, you know, decades ago, it was like, oh, well,that account was on the app and this is in the store and they're not merged yet. And us as consumers would say like, oh, I get it. It's complicated. Now people are like, screw that.

Mike: They want a seamless experience. That makes sense.

Candice: And they want it instantaneously. Like they want to be standing in the store, resetting their password. And the person at the register be like, oh, I see you just reset your password.

Okay. Everything's fine.

Mike: I do expect

Candice: Yeah.

Mike: What?

Candice: So

Mike: the store, you hand me an espresso and a Macbook. Perfect! You know me, Yeah, no one realizes that has to go, like, to the cloud, to a satellite, to somewhere else, to five data centers, and then get back into the store in, in two nanoseconds.Interesting.

Candice: Yeah, I never, I've never, I have a chemistry degree. I didn't ever think I would end up in this industry.

That's interesting. I did

Mike: Yeah, yeah, I was going to be a, well, I was a science nerd and still kind of am, but I didn't, yeah, it's funny. My dad was in marketing and when I was a kid, he said, don't ever go into marketing. I said, don't worry, I'm getting a chemistry degree. I'm never going to go into marketing. I'm going to, I don't know, do something else.Well, chemistry is very detailed and process oriented, right?

Candice: yeah, I mean, the thing about chemistry is figuring out how to solve problems. Which is useful in everyday life, but II ended up here because I followed people who I thought were really interesting to work for.

Kristen: Yeah, I'd love to talk more about that. Actually. You're like, you're career trajectory and how you've made different decisions along the way. What have been like some of the themes there?

Candice: Yeah. The biggest theme by far is working for good people.That's how I ended up on this career. I went, I was, In my 20s, I was going to grad school and I was going on at that time. Everyone said, oh, take practice interviews. The more you can, the more experience you can get interviewing, the better it goes.

And, I did, I went when I thought was a practice interview at a small consulting company that worked in HVAC, automotive, construction and chemicals and somewhere in the back of my mind. I was like, oh, yeah, chemistry. I remember that. I studied that.And I walked into the interview and it was a company that was headquartered in Michigan, ex consultants. They had a very small office in San Francisco, like four people at the time. And I walked in and I met with a guy and he wasn't that much older than I was, but he seemed so much wiser and worldly. He was born and raised in India and had come to the U S for grad school.

And I walked out of the interview and I thought, I want to work for this guy. And so I did, and that sort of set me off on the, in the professional services space. And so I worked there and that was amazing. And, he, I learned an absolute ton from him and he's still one of my mentors today. He lives back in India, but from there, I was in the Bay Area and it was the dot com boom at that point.

It was 2000. And, I ended up going to join. He moved on, wanted to move back to India and said, do you want to run the office? And I was like, I'm like 28 years old. I don't think I'm ready to run the office. I'd rather work for people and learn more. Like I need to be around people who I can learn from, particularly at that point in my career.

And so then I met another, I went on a bunch of interviews and I met another guy, whose name was Rick, who was also an ex consultant and he was the, he had just built a strategy team inside what essentially became a digital agency. And at that point, nobody knewreally what digital strategy was.

Internet was new. And so they were bringing in a lot of ex big five consultants to, to build these strategy functions. And I went and I met that guy and I thought, I want to work for this guy. And that's how I ended up in the marketing agency world. I'm definitely not someone who grew up as a kid watching advertising and thinking that's exactly what I want to do. And there are plenty of those people in this industry. I just wasn't one of them. And so that was definitely a big theme, is working for good people. And that kind of repeated itself throughout my career.And then the other theme for me personally was, opportunities to develop, um, ancillary or like adjacent skill sets.

Something that was going to put me in a position that was going to stretch me a little further. I had a boss who told me something that I've reused multiple times. If I paid him royalties, he'd probably, have a new car on me at this point for saying it. But he told me that leadership was about three concentric circles.

The middle circle is where you're safe and comfortable and can do something like with your eyes closed. The next circle is where you're uncomfortable. But you still succeed. And then the outside circle is where you fail. And so the goal for people should be to live in that middle circle where you're slightly uncomfortable, but you can grow, but you're in a structure or an infrastructure, an environment where you're not going to fail.

Quote unquote fail.And when I think about taking new jobs or what my career is or what I want to do, or even what clients I want to work on, I've always thought about that, that those like three concentric circles.

Mike: So you want to be outside your comfort zone, but not so far that you're going to fail for sure.

Candice: Yeah, I mean, I want to be in an environment where I mean, listen, everyone stumbles at work and does makes decisions that you think I probably make a different decision next time. but you want to be in an environment where, they don't throw you under the bus for doing that,

Kristen: Yeah. 

Candice: Yeah. Yeah. I think good leaders are people who see something in you that you don't see in yourself.And I remember when I got one of my first, big titles. I think it was my first VP title. And I was, I was young. I was in my 30s. And, I remember I was having dinner with my uncle and I said, I just got promoted to VP.

I'm not sure if you're, I don't know if I feel ready. And he looked at me and said, you're ready because people who know you really well believe that you're ready. I was like, oh, okay. That's a good one. I'm going to put that saying in my pocket also for the future. Um, so yeah, I think good leaders see potential in people.

Mike: And they also,this is going to sound silly, but they treat people like adults, like I'm a big anti micromanager,It doesn't sound silly

Candice: yeah. But I mean, I, yeah, I guess there are people out there who do enjoy being micromanaged. I'm not one of them. I don't know any of them, but they must exist because there are micromanagers and they're still micromanaging.

Well, I think it's comfortable. You don't have to bring too much of yourself you know somebody's gonna tell you what to do at all times and you can just fulfill that role and Pocket your check and go home and not have to invest too much of your I find that very unrewarding and personally, and I don't get it, but I get it, you know,

Yeah, it goes back to my belief that,

Mike: out.

Candice: Yeah, people's,insecurities manifest themselves at work. So if you're a micromanager, it's because there's, there's a lack of control somewhere else in your life. You know, um, I think good leaders, particularly in the industries I've worked in, which are people based, empathy is A big one.

Also, I think for me personally, understanding the role that work plays in someone's life, work is important to me. I give it 110%, but it's not my everything, like everybody makes mistakes at work and it's not worth reaming somebody out because they made a mistake. Or doing something that's going to have a long term effect on them.

There's, there's a saying that was like, we're not curing cancer, and so you got to put it in perspective in the role that we're playing in the world.There are no marketing emergencies. There really aren't, you know, um, you know, and.

Mike: like that. Yeah. If you're not actually, those, the job roles that say, do you work well under stress and a high pace? So are we actually in an emergency room or in combat or are you just manufacturing this, emergency and urgency through, through poor leadership and, Yeah. Calm down. It's okay. Calm down. It's going to be an outing.

Candice: I remember when I was,when Kristen and I working together, we had a client, William Sonoma and there was a crisis where a promotion for a coffee maker didn't launch on time. And listen, I get that it's important for our client. They need to do a good job, but I'm just like time out people.

Like,I'm not going to pull somebody out of a wedding that they're going to for the weekend so that they can get this promotion launched on time. Like we'll figure out another way.

Mike: Did they, somebody really want you to, that sounds real. Oh,

Candice: Yes. Oh, yes. It's real. Yes. It's real.

Kristen: So real. I have so many stories. Oh God. Of

Candice: just, I don't, I don't believe that people should, you know, force employees to cancel vacations because of something, the line of work that I'm in personally.

Mike: real understanding of the prioritization and the stakes, and being able to say, well, we'll work on that. And that's something that needs to be addressed, but I'm not going to start, an international incident over something that's most, that's, that takes such confidence and security as a leader to be like, I'll address that, but later.

Candice: Yeah. And I think the last, and that's, I sort of already talked about this in the scheme of other things, but I think good leaders recognize that they're actually in the people development business. That's their job.They're one person at the, near the top of the pyramid, and their job is to create an environment where everybody around them can do their best work. And that's, that's my belief as myself and a leader. I don't know everything. I try to hire people who know a lot more than I do and give them the credit that they deserve for knowing what they know. I guess that's another thing I believe too, is like, you need to share the credit and acknowledge people and recognize success.

Kristen: But my job is to create an environment where people can kick ass. And I want to work for people who believe that also.Absolutely. So you have the support in doing that and making, yeah, I think especially agency, there's so many situations where leadership wants to just do whatever the client wants and not push back on things because that's easier, right? Because you're like, this is where my business is coming from.

But if you're ultimately burning out your employees who are doing the work for those clients by doing that, it's not a strategy for long term success. So having leadership who's in alignment with that, it's so critical. 

Mike: I mean, these are really solid themes that we've been exploring. I think it's exactly what you say.

Find someone who sees things in you that you don't even see in yourself and do that for, and do that for other people too. That's easy. It's not easy, but that's how you get like real success over time.

Candice: Yeah. I also think being transparent and almost over communicative for me personally is a leadership style that I like and one that I think has worked for me personally. Um,helping people understand the why. You why you're making decisions and, why this happened and this didn't happen it, 1st of all, it gives them a sense that you trust them or helps them recognize that you trust them because you do. And I mean, listen, everyone has parts of your job that you love and parts that you don't love and. If you help people understand why we have to do all of these things, it makes the part that they don't love like more tolerable.

you know, In the services world, you know, the clients you choose to work on as a big driver. And I would always tell the teams, we have this opportunity. I know it's a brand that everyone thinks is really cool and hip, but here's why I don't think it's the right thing for us. And people are like, Oh, I get it. Versus it. I can't believe you just turned down an opportunity to work on Nike. I'm like, yeah, don't like, I get that Nike is a cool brand, but this is terrible work and they would treat you terribly. And you would have to work over all of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mike: Yeah, they want you to cancel your wedding

Candice: That's right.

They want you to

don't care. They don't cancel your wedding cancel your life. Just yeah, Oh, I mean, there are clients who want to have major pieces of work done and presented like the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Kristen: Yep

Candice: Just ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Is this really an American thing, you know I see so many memes like European boss versus American boss and the European boss is like, you know I want you guys to be relaxed go home leave at 4. You They take all of August off. Do you work with any European or, is this a veryAmerican type overachieving?

I have a lot

think, I don't think it's unique. I don't think it's unique to Americans. Like Asian cultures are very much, like I lived in Japan for 14 months. That's very much a work from sunset to sunset and Saturdays. And, um, but I do, I definitely think there are other cultures that value things that we don't value like meals, Meals, right. Food.

Candice: Yeah, I mean, having a siesta, we, one of my clients was Sonic, which is a,a fast food restaurant.

That's sort of fashioned after the old drive in where they have people on roller skates, delivering it and you pull in. We didn't have it where I grew up because I grew up in a really cold place and it's a more of a warm weather experience. You know, we started working with them and they talked about their failed global expansion.

And the reason is that only Americans think that it's okay to eat in your car. Like other people think that you should be sitting at a table and having conversation versus sitting in your car and shoving food in your mouth in like two minutes and then continuing on your way. And

I grew up with Sonic. I know Sonic. Sonic and Houston was big. Oh yeah,

Mike: My guys always wanted to go to Sonic and it's a car culture, America, I think probably more than definitely more than Europe is such a car culture. It makes sense. Oh, just eat in the car. We'll grab something on the way. We'll be, we'll feed ourselves on the way there.

And by the time we get there, we'll have eaten.

Candice: Yeah. But I think, there's lots of other cultures that understand that people need vacations and that's why they take August off and that's why people laugh and they say, Oh, You start a job and you have two weeks vacation. It's crazy.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. Europeans are like, yeah. Shock and horror. Oh

Candice: You know, different belief. 

Mike: There's gotta be some correlation to like, you get more done in the short term when you don't acknowledge the humanity that of the people working for you, but I think longterm. It's you pay the price longterm and I know Europe, I will say like they've, plundered resources from everybody else for a long time to be able to like have very stable economies, you know, they've been at war a lot too, but so I don't know that it's, it's a direct correlation to like China and how hard they've had to worked after the, communist and the cultural revolution to like reestablish their global dominance.

Yeah. But they have, and maybe you could take Sunday off now. I don't know. I'm not in charge, but

Candice: Yeah, there's a lot more companies that have tested the four day work week, with a lot of success.Imagine if you're a working parent and you could have one day a week, or even, this concept of a nine 80, which is you have every other friday off, if you had one day where you didn't have your kids in your family with you, and you couldn't get stuff done, I think you're my productivity would be during the time when you're working, my productivity would be much more focused.

Kristen: Absolutely.

Candice: So more and more companies have tested that 4 day work week. I think, I think we'll continue to see more of it.

Kristen: Hope so. That's definitely, yeah, flexibility and as somebody who has worked for corporations and has, is currently working for herself, it's the flexibility is worth so much it's worth, depending on the person, it's worth a lot in terms of compared to like compensation and stuff to you. Like, it's a very valuable benefit that you can give to people.

Candice: When we were at iCrossing, actually, there was one of the leaders who she basically set her schedule that she's to, she stopped working at one o'clock every Friday. And believe me, she put in a ton of work through the week and definitely worked more than her quote unquote 40. And she said that like mentally shutting down at one o'clock on Friday and having even just like a few hours to do other things was a game changer for her, you know, someday.

Kristen: That takes courage too, too. I 

Mike: kind of would like now, like two Sunday night becomes a tacit workday. You start getting the emails, you start getting the meat. So I would stop working similar, like one o'clock on a Friday and then six o'clock I'd log back in on Sunday and do like a quarter or a half day's work, and get ahead of that Monday morning, blitz. Smart.

Candice: Yeah.

Mike: One thing I would love to ask you about that's on this, the people focused side of things, right?

Kristen: One of the joys of having your own podcast is you get to bring on people who've been influential in your own career in various ways. And when I was working in ad agencies or at an a ad agency when I was early in my career, you were one of the best examples I had of a woman executive.

And I always remembered that and I think. I think a lot of people assume like, oh, marketing is probably has a lot of women in it. But if you look at like agency leadership, especially then I hope it's a little better now, but especially 10, 15 years ago, it's very much dominated by white men.

So I'd love to hear, from you, like how it's like mentoring women so important to you and what are like the main facets of that?

Candice: Yeah. Yeah. Well thank you. That's very sweet. And yeah, when I was hired into RGA, I was the first female managing director in the U S um, and over time there was more, but.I was. I guess surprised, not surprised that was the case. This is in 2014. It wasn't that long ago. So, um, yeah, I mean, the first thing that I believe about mentoring women is just like me to be a good role model and, behave the way I behave and lead the way I lead.

And people see that. I don't think I ever set off and said, I want to mentor people. I just did what I did. And I think people took notice maybe because there wasn't a lot of women leading. But I think, you knowone of the most common challenges women have is this idea of imposter syndrome. And I just told you an example of what I had it, which is, when I got my first sort of big title and I was like, I'm ready.

I'm sorry, but no dude ever said, I don't think I'm ready. You know? I mean, in fact, when you and I worked together at a male, a young male walked into my office who was in his twenties and said, I've been in this job for a year and a half. I've learned everything there is to learn what's next. And what I didn't say outside was like 30 more years of the same.

Get back to your desk and keep working. But anyway, I sat down and talked to him and said, what is it that you've seen this organization? What is it that you think, might be interesting to you? Meanwhile, I hope at this point, he realizes that he didn't know everything and he hadn't learned everything yet.

But, I mean,I can't think of a woman that I've ever encountered in my career that would ever come into my office and say that at the age of, like, 25.

Kristen: Right.

Candice: Um, so I think this idea.

Kristen: I'm going to learn.

Candice: Yeah. I haven't learned everything I'm going to learn. God, that would like life would be boring. If you thought like, Oh, I have, I've arrived, you know?

So I think for women, a big part of it is helping them, recognize that they can do more than they maybe think that they can do. And, moving through this kind of idea of imposter syndrome, and just giving, giving people a space to talk about,whatever it is that and interestingly,women have different challenges in the workplace than men do.

And I've managed a number of women who, for example, are trying to get pregnant and have fertility issues. And that's like a massive strain on your emotional well being, your physical well being, it's chemical. And so I think just, I don't know, I'm sure there are men who can successfully manage through that.

But I think because I'm a woman, it gives me a sort of a unique perspective on that. And so I, I just recognize the unique female journey in the workplace and in life and in the world and in, making the kind of decisions that women have to make. Do I want to keep working?

Do I want to stay home? Can I take a longer maternity leave and not get paid? Um,I have to go into a room and present that's full of men. How do I do it? Just recognizing that unique experience that maybe men aren't aware of, I think is led me to become a mentor or for people to see me as a mentor.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Imposter syndrome is something that, we, it's come up many times on our, our podcast so far. And it's, I think it's such an important thing to talk about, and especially for women, I don't think it's only women it impacts, but especially like high achieving women is I think where most of the original studies were done on it.

What are some of the strategies that you've found in your career have helped with that?

Candice: Yeah. So one of the things, honestly, is just, this is going to sound silly, but I, what I tell people is like.You're going into a room to present to somebody with a big title, a CMO or a CEO or whatever. And I literally say to people like they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you do like there.

Yes. They have a big title, but that doesn't mean that they do things differently than you and I do, like you don't need to think about them on a pedestal.And so just trying to help people recognize that, that it's in their own head and that it's like this construct that they've set up for themselves.

And also think that I try to give people experiences and give them the opportunity to build up their own confidence.We worked, we're a people based business, we work in a team environment, and so giving people an opportunity to live in that middle circle and push them and, just telling them that I believe in them and that everyone around them believes in them and give them an opportunity to build up that confidence in an environment where they feel psychologically safe to do it, has been another piece.

And it's one of those things where, I don't know if it's conscious that I did it or that I do it. It's just how I behaved and said yeah, of course, like you should lead strategy on this engagement. Like, you know, whatever, retail better than anybody.and they would be like, Oh, really? I could, I was like, sure, of course you can do that.

I'm trying to think, I think those are my major tools.

Kristen: Yeah, I think that kind of goes back to what you said about like working for people who see more in you than you do in yourself too.And then being able to trust that, which, with impostor syndrome is speaking loudly is harder. But, but that first step of working for people who will put you in those situations who see your ability to do that and will give you opportunities to grow as opposed to tear you down. Unfortunately, those leaders also exist.

Candice: Yeah. And the other thing I try to do, and it's not always easy, even for myself is, I don't, I try not to think about things as failures. Listen, we all make a million decisions a day and we make those decisions with the information we have at our fingertips. Do circumstances change?

Do things change? Sure. But I try to say, okay, I would make that decision differently next time versusthinking about it as a failure or as a quote unquote mistake. No one goes in and says, I'm going to make a bunch of shitty decisions today. No one says that. I don't think I don't say that. and so I, even when I interview people for jobs and that, I don't, I ask people like, what are some of their biggest character building moments? And, what's a decision that you made that you would make differently today?I don't ask, I don't say, what's your biggest failure?I try to even position it as that, you know, I really do think like they're character building moments. I have them all the time still. So

Kristen: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, in my, in the work I do, I talk a lot about reframing failure or like destigmatizing failure and actually seeing it as something that is necessary, especially for the creative process, but for everybody in general, so yeah, I love that. It's much, it's especially much better than asking somebody like, what was your biggest failure?

Candice: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I, I have, I do it with myself today. I make decisions that I even today where I like, well, I'm going to do that one again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: I think that's a better interview question. Then give me your strengths and weaknesses. Give me some character building movements in your, I can come up with a bunch of those. If you ask me what my weakness is, that's weird. Cause those are imbalances, right? But you're definitely have moments where you had a moments of failure or unsuccessful.

And you hopefully learn from them and you need a long enough career, at least to see that you can still recover from those and that those can become informative to, how you do things moving forward. That's a great question. I'm going to start asking people. Yeah.

Candice: Yeah. I still, if someone to ask me some of my character building moments, I have very distinct memories of things that, that happened in my twenties that are there, you know,

Mike: You're like burned in there.

Candice: yes, Yes.

Mike: But those shape you moving forward, you know, they shape you and they shape how you become as a leader and how you treat other people

Candice: Yeah. I don't believe that, you should destroy someone's confidence because a promotion for a coffee maker didn't launch on time. You know,

Mike: No

Candice: it's not a thing. Yeah.

Mike: Okay Yes

Candice: Yep.

Kristen: So many of those memories. Really? 

Mike: Oh yeah. What you describe is, you know, it's funny. Like people think marketing, okay. Agency, but what you're describing sounds very much like the service industry that I'm long familiar with being a waiter and hotels. I already made my rooms not ready. Well, sir, you know, 200 people checked out three minutes ago and we're cleaning, but they don't, they have a fit, you know, they unrealistic expectations of, of what you talked about, like a seamless experience.

Kristen: Well, no, they're actually humans doing this. Uh, it's very familiar, even though it's a totally not related industry. But it's service. It's service. Yeah, we're 

Mike: All providing a service,

Candice: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mike: Like I feel that I'm like, Oh my God, your room's not ready. I'm sorry. Let me check on your food, sir. Let me, let me check.

Candice: I mean, yeah, I would, I always think, particularly in the air, when I look at people who work in the airline industry, I'm like, it's nice that you think that everything is in that person's control, but like, they don't control the weather. They don't control whether this screw is loose on an airplane.

Like, please. I feel

Mike: It's so, that industry is so complicated. I'm amazed it works at all. It's so complicated.

Candice: It is.

Mike: So complicated and they're not nice to those people. Oh my gosh. Like. It's just the gate agent, man. Like, she, there's, stop, you know.

Candice: Yeah.

Mike: Kindness seems to be a theme for all the things in understanding other people and where they come from and what motivates them, what they need, empathy.

Candice: Yes.

Mike: are familiar, important themes.

Candice: I'm a big believer in kindness, although I think it's becoming a lost, a little bit of a lost art. So.

I think COVID did something to that, you know, for a minute, I think we became understanding of each other and then COVID went away as a, as an experience for the society. And then everybody came back out and forgot how to behave. At least that's what I experienced. I was still in hotels. They just, they forgot that like they isolated us for too long.

Mike: We didn't, we didn't socialize enough. And you know,

Candice: Yeah. Well, this could go down a whole different direction, I

Kristen: yes.

Candice: we don't want to go down.

Mike: No, no, no, no. I mean, we

Candice: But you know, when people see behavior at the top, they emulate it.

Kristen: Yeah,

Candice: They think that if somebody at the top behaves a certain way, that is like, that's a new norm. That's that's accepted.

Kristen: And so I think that,that is very true.

Candice: I mean, it's the same in any organization too. You see behaviors at the top and people emulate it and think that it's okay.

Kristen: Yeah. We talk a lot about that in various episodes too, where it's one thing to say what your values are and put them on a wall, but that the actual norms and behaviors that are happening with leadership is actually what everybody's looking at and what they tolerate

Candice: Yeah. Yeah.

Kristen: looking at to, to see what's allowed and what's accepted.

Candice: Like a hundred percent. And when you're a leader and you say, I believe you should take your vacation and then as leader, you work over the entire vacation. Like that's setting a terrible example.

Kristen: That speaks volumes.

Candice: Yeah.

Kristen: absolutely.

Candice: I am a big believer in vacations, by the way. I think everyone should take them.

Kristen: Me too. Yes. 

Mike: Well, that's something I learned from you that you should actually use your PTO. Rather than getting some giant lump sum at the end of three years. Like I was, yeah, I did not take vacations. Yeah, we've been, we've 

Kristen: been working on that. We've been working on that, 

Mike: it's a work in progress.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. California has got this nice kind of like rollover thing. Most, a lot of States don't have that. That is true.

Candice: but you should take your vacation. She makes me. Well, I'd love to,ask you in closing, if you're going to talking to an emerging leader who wants to get to the executive level and make the biggest impact they can, what would be like your biggest piece of advice for them? Gosh.

Kristen: Um, Well, the very first thing that came to my mind is don't change your moral compass.I feel like that's also a uniquely female thing to say. but that's literally like my immediate reaction. Because there is, at least for me personally, I There are ways to get to the top that are, more wholesome.

Candice: And there are ways that are not wholesome and the not wholesome ways are like, I don't care who I step on when I get there. And for me, it was always important. Like the end, you have to sleep at night,you have to sleep at night and. And feel okay with whatever decisions you made.And so for me personally, you know,being true to your moral compass has been, is a big thing.

Whether that's like the fastest way to get to the top. I don't think so, but for me, it was, it's important. You know,I think, asking for what you want,while it would be amazing if everyone had great bosses and recognize something in you that you didn't recognize in yourself and said, I'm just going to promote you just because like, that would be amazing, but that's not the reality of how things work.

you really do need to advocate for yourself and it's really hard. it's hard at every stage. It's even, sometimes hard for me, but you really do need to advocate for yourself. And it's annoying and we wish it was different and we wish it were different, but it's not So, you know say here's the five things I've achieved. These were my goals and I've exceeded all of them So, youI should be promoted or I should move up.

So And I think also, being clear on what the expectations are of you is important so that you can make that case when the time comes.and. It's what's amazing. I've worked in a lot of different organizations and some of them are really,really good at having very clear expectations or job descriptions or KPIs for individual people.

And some are absolutely abysmal.I don't know if I can say organization names, but an organization I worked at previously was amazing. They had for every role. It said, this is the role. And these are the four skills that if you can demonstrate these for three months, consecutive, you are eligible for promotion consideration.

And it was like, when you got the job description, you looked at the four things that were in bold. And if you could say, I demonstrated these four things for three months, eligible for promotion. And it was very clear. And it was very,it was a meritocracy and then a different organization didn't have a single thing documented around what,what it took to get promoted or to move up in the organization.

And it was shocking to me because it was a very successful company. But they had no. They couldn't provide employees anything. There was no competency models. And I was shocked that there, that there had never been competency models. They're like, Oh, some like they did it for this capability, but this other capability doesn't have it.

I'm like, I'm a leader and I'm managing people in every capability and I need to be able to tell them, here's exactly what you can do to get, to move up. So I think having clear expectations is important. Let's see, what else is important? There's probably loads of things, but I've never thought about it in this way before.

I've just, like, done them.Let's see. I think there's a lot that falls under sort of advocating for yourself. Not just for, moving up, but for, for new opportunities. And say, hey, I want to learn this thing. Can I go take these classes? Or, can I go get this certificate?

Or things like that. Because most of working is finding out what you don't like.It's a lot easier for people to identify what they don't like than what they do like you know, when you come home at the end of the day, you generally are like, well, this sucked and this sucked, but you never, I mean, that's why, so many people practice gratitude because you have to consciously think about the positive.

Mike: But I think most of people's, your work journey is identifying the things that you don't like, and that pushes you in a different direction.you use the word meritocracy a lot. I love it and for what you're describing, you know advocating for yourself and then also being very clear about the expectations for you. I think we're moving away from systems. I hope that we are that promote you based on are you part of a certain class? Do you look a certain way and we didn't need to clarify those things before and now it's very much like well these are the actual responsibilities of the job, the characteristics, the skills that we're looking for.

And if you have them, we don't care what you look like or what you, where you come from, tho that's a meritocracy. And that's, I think, the start ofa really positive change to civilization as a whole. Yeah. I would love for that to be the case.

Candice: Yeah, I think so too. And I think one of the challenges there is creating a structure that doesn't end up resulting in an organization where everyone looks and acts the same.

Mike: Mm,

Candice: Um, and you probably know this a lot better than I do, butthere's this idea of like a culture fit versus a culture add..

And for so many years, people were sort of taught and conditioned to say, do they fit our culture? Do they fit our culture? They fit our culture. And what I think should happen is do they add to our culture? However you define culture, is this person a culture add? Because I feel likewhen you try to do a culture fit, you end up with like McKinsey.

It's like, everyone looks the same and does the same and behaves the same. And I shouldn't say, I shouldn't say individual company names, but,

Mike: They're, They're not listening to us

Candice: Yeah, uh, but I think, but I think that concept of culture add is actually really hard, even, you know, the bosses and the hiring managers to sort of reorient their brain around that.

But there's

Mike: I've never heard that term before. That's a

Candice: really? Yeah.

Mike: I, now that you say it like that, I can see the bias that we all have and the, do they fit our culture sounds like. Are they like us? Do they look like us? Do they think like us? and do we want that? No, we want, shouldn't we want somebody that expands, this, Ecosystem of our, that fits in, that connects somehow positively, but not same, same.

Yeah. That's awesome. I've

Candice: But I mean, a culture fit is, I mean, it's easier. People are inherently afraid of things that they don't know and don't understand and are different from them. And it is harder to focus on a culture add. but it's, I think it's really important.

Kristen: Yeah. I love it. We need to do a 

Mike: whole interview with, with her on that, on what that looks like. How do you do culture add to your organization? 

Kristen: Yeah. We always identify more topics as a result of every interview, which is a good thing. We'll never run out of things to talk about on this podcast.

Candice: yeah. And like I said, I, by no way am I an expert at it, but it was something I learned about through, different trainings and,learning about your unconscious bias and things like that. And there's a ton of unconscious bias in interviewing because you do end up, you're like,you're like, I want to hire the person that I want to sit and have a drink with after work.

And you're like, that's not, that shouldn't be, that shouldn't be a thing you think about when you're hiring somebody, you know?

Kristen: Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely more episodes ahead.

Candice: Yeah. But since I learned about it several years ago, I mean, when I interview people and think about, you know, bringing people onto the team that was a big part of what was in the back of my head.

Kristen: I love it. Well, this has been amazing, Candice. Thank you so much for being on. There's been so many good insights and things that listeners can take away in their own leadership careers.

Candice: Oh, good. Yeah. It's been fun for me, too. I never think about,I'm not a big self analyzer. Right, wrong or indifferent, but, you know, I never really think about what I do and how I behave, I don't necessarily dissect my own behavior in this way. So it's good. Well, cathartic.

Mike: It's part

Candice: So, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I do enjoy it. And if you were to ask me, like, what I'm most proud of in my career. You haven't asked me the question. I'm just going

Mike: What are you, Candice, what are you most proud of in your career? She can edit that together, don't worry.

Candice: hold on.This bag is a bag filled with thank you notes that I've gotten from people throughout my career for being a mentor, thanking them for opportunities.

And it is like literally my, one of my most prized possessions.

Kristen: That's so cool. I love that. That was very 

Mike: close at hand, also.

Well I'm in my office and it's in my desk drawer. But I,that's verythat's very touching.

Candice: It is. I mean, that's, that's the, that's the proof that I've had, positive impact on people's lives. And, when you have those days where like, Oh my God, like, Oh wait, yeah, no, I'm just going to remind myself why I do what I do.

Kristen: Yeah. Well, also like a good thing to keep them all in one place and be able to refer back to it.

Candice: Yeah. Well, you know, when we all cleaned out our desks from COVID, it was just like, throw everything in a Ziploc bag and let's get out of here.

Mike: I see. 

Kristen: Amazing. Well, thank you again, Candice. For our, listeners we'll include a link to her LinkedIn profile so you can follow her there. And otherwise, thank you so much everybody for listening and we will see you guys next time. 

Candice: Thanks. 

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.