Ep. 119: Mark Forsberg - 1-on-1 Leadership

Contact Mark Forsberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-forsberg/

Culligan Water: https://www.culliganwater.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson here to bring you episode 119 of our series. Today's conversation is between my co-host Mitch and the CFO of Culligan Water, Mark Forsberg. Mark is a senior leader who oversees the finance, human resources, and risk management functions. He is a distinguished Toastmaster and considers himself a lifelong learner and volunteer. In this episode, Mark emphasizes the value of one-on-one leadership and the return on time invested for the manager, the employee, and the rest of the organization. Keep listening as we go to their conversation now.
 
 Mitch: (00:45)
 So the purpose of today's conversation, what I would like to start things off with is, how is one-on-one leadership and one-on-one management different than traditional leadership conversations that are typically had in the workplace?
 
 Mark: (01:05)
 Well thank you Mitch, for the opportunity to be on the program today. If we give some context to this, one year ago, when COVID hit the United States, we had millions of people that went from working in their offices to working at home. And this was a real stress test on communications and managers, we all went to our bookshelves and re-read things like it's important to communicate, communicate, communicate. And another word that came up was the word essential. What's essential to happen. And I think what we all discovered with what's essential is the fundamental employee to supervisor one-to-one meeting. And in general, these meetings are weekly, biweekly, monthly check-ins with the employee and their boss and their employee directed talking about projects and priorities. Before the pandemic I would guess that many times these meetings fell off the radar, but after the work from home initiative started, they became really important. And I hope that many of the members in the community are continuing to do those because this is really not so much about why, or I should say it's more about why than it is the how. You can look up a lot of info on the web about these, but I would say that from my experience, I recommend scheduling one hour every two to three weeks, you ask open-ended questions and you get the employee to open up about things and you're there as a guide to them. As accountants, we all justify ROI on technology, on equipment purchases, on process improvement, but the ROI on that time with employees can really pay off at times. So what value do you place on investing time to gain that mutual trust and confidence? The end message really is the employee's work matters and they matter.
 
 Mitch: (03:28)
 So as far as the work that matters in these conversations, I agree, there certainly was a period of time when everyone was trying to adjust and figure things out for themselves and now we have to touch base again and make sure that we are all moving in the same direction within the organization, particularly within our function. So, once these one-on-one conversations either continue or pick back up, what are the added benefits after the fact?
 
 Mark: (03:55)
 The manager/employee or the supervisor/employee relationship is a special relationship and I like to give pause and think about if you're a manager, is it possible for you to compile a list of all the people that you've hired and supervised? And it may be hard to do that if you've been a supervisor manager for a couple of decades. But for all of us, leaders included, going back to that first W2 job, could you make a list of all the people that have hired you? And my guess is you get pretty darn close. There's a book, Truth About Leadership, and it gave me an insight and the insight has stuck with me for a long time and the insight was when they interviewed surveyed high school students and they asked who they envisioned as a leader in their lives. Number one was a family member, typically a parent. Behind that it was a teacher or a coach. But when they interviewed or surveyed people in their thirties and forties and asked who's a leader in their life, they said a parent, grandparent, family member, but number two was a boss. And the trust and confidence that can come with that relationship and the power of these open honest two-way conversations is not to be understated. And I think from that you really springboard to a lot of other opportunities. And I would close that question out by saying, get to know your employees as people, they're people first and what they do second. You might think of Jodi as an accountant who's been with you for eight years and she handles the Western region so on and so forth, but Jodi's got a life before coming to work for you and is doing other things on the side. Perhaps she's a mentor in the big sister program. Maybe she played college tennis, whatever it might be, get to know them as people and they will feel that. And then that's where sometimes the magic happens on employees becoming more engaged with the job and the supervisors and managers being more enlightened and you're really developing people versus supervising and managing people. They are developing right in front of your eyes.
 
 Mitch: (06:36)
 And then how does this one-on-one leadership from the manager/supervisor perspective, ultimately result in what I guess we could assume is better employee growth and retention?
 
 Mark: (06:49)
 Yeah in my career, the fundamentals of employee retention haven't changed all that much. You know, there are really four (fundamentals), employees like the work, they like who they report to and they trust and respect, they like what the company does and sees that the company has a future, and then they see an interesting future with the company. And I think an important message that I would share and it came out of, as I prepared for this is, you will walk into or stumble into conversations and opportunities for people to develop in their own job. You know in sports, a lot of times people will earn a position due to injury or be granted an opportunity due to injury of a player. And in business, a lot of times it's an unexpected employee turnover or planned transitions. And in those transitions, then there's an opportunity for people to grow on the job and for them to find that more interesting and holds onto a retention. I think also another point I would make is if you're doing one to ones over a period of time, let's say you have someone that reports to you for three years, you're going to have 50 one-on-ones over that time frame. What you'll get then is you'll get the opportunity with a huge sample size to really see how that person performs, their personality traits, how they fit values, are they naturally curious or assuming, do they expect responsibility or do they sometimes dodge it? And I think those are things that factor into your coaching of the employee as well as their advancement.
 
 Mitch: (08:45)
 And how about the bigger picture? So obviously we have employee retention, employee growth, you know, they have an opportunity to develop this strong relationship, the supervisor is able to kind of mold the employee and really enhance their working relationship and the job that gets done. But beyond that, what other effects does a strong supervisor/employee relationship have on other aspects of the organization?
 
 Mark: (09:11)
 You have to think about what's going on throughout...