Sylvie Milverton
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

Drop us an email at hello@lynxeducate.com. And if you’re looking for support on your talent development strategy, head over to Lynxeducate.com to learn more about our career mobility solution. That’s LYNX educate.com.

Sylvie Milverton
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

Drop us an email at hello@lynxeducate.com. And if you’re looking for support on your talent development strategy, head over to Lynxeducate.com to learn more about our career mobility solution. That’s LYNX educate.com.

Émilie Narcy
Recruitment is connecting to people. Whether you’re an employer and a candidate, or a recruitment agency with your client and your candidate, it’s all about that.

Sylvie Milverton
Hi, I’m Sylvie Milverton, CEO of Lynx Educate. This is Talent is Everywhere. We are here to talk about how to keep talent and how to develop talent. In order to build a strong business. We’ll interview leaders to hear their best experiences of how they invested in people.

Sylvie Milverton
So today we are speaking in English with two French guests who run a recruitment firm called Approach People in Dublin, Laurent Girard-Claudon and Émilie Narcy, Welcome to the podcast.

Émilie Narcy
Thank you very much.

Laurent Girard-Claudo
Hello.

Sylvie Milverton
So this is a nice episode where we’re gonna get to talk a lot about like international mobility and you know, international careers, which is something, you know, we all have in common. And we were speaking before, you know, Laurent your background.

You can tell us in a minute how you decided to start this firm, but that, you know, you were in France and you moved to Dublin and I mean the, also you’ve been on this journey. So, Laurent, why don’t you start by just telling us your story, like how you from not an HR and recruitment background, how it ended up that you, you know, founded this firm.

Laurent Girard-Claudo
Oh yes, thank you very much for welcoming us today. I’d say it’s a pleasure to chat. We’ve spoken already and I think, yeah, we’re gonna have a good time together. So just like a few years ago, last millennium, it was 1999 and the company I was working for offer me to move to Dublin.

It was, I was working in cash management in Paris, it was all good in Paris, I was very happy and no way I would leave the country. Like know the, so many things to do, the weather. Like I loved France and I never really thought about moving abroad, so the opportunity arose and I said, why not? You know what?

I just go spend a few months and become bilingual in English which I’m still waiting for 25 years later. And do it. We will see. And that was. I don’t know the best for the worst decision of my life, but it completely changed my life because I didn’t expect that. But I love the country so much, the people, the business side of Ireland as well, that I have, I stayed over for all these years and I have absolutely no plan to go back.

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah. Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. And I can, yeah, definitely relate from all my, you know, international travels. But What about you, Émilie, how did you end up from France into Dublin as well?

Émilie Narcy
When I was very young, I had recruitment experience in France. But I was wondering, I was a bit lost, I think, in my life. I didn’t know really. What was next? I felt that I had done so much and I was only 25 and everything happened. I was quite sad. And one of my friends said, well, you do speak English.

So, move abroad, you’re not happy. Do something. So, I put my CV online and approach people. This guy called me to become an international recruitment consultant. So, I started in 2008 with Laurent in Dublin. He gave me the opportunity to open then at the office in Barcelona as he was growing the structure internationally.

Then I left Approach People actually a couple of years later, and I joined an international firm in Spain that gave me the possibility to move to the US. So, I lived in America for about a year, and then they sent me to Asia and I lived in Asia for two years and a half across Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China.

I came back to Spain and I thought I missed Dublin so bad that was the place where I was meant to be. So, I came back and I joined Laurent again now to continue growth in Approach People.

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah. Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. I love these like international career stories and so maybe we’ll, like during the time we talk, we can sort of take two perspectives, like one from the company perspective, like how you see like companies evolving and what they’re looking for.

And then also just like I think personally. You know, what it means to like have these like international missions and international relocations. You know, even though I’m half French, you know, I grew up in America, you can, I’m American maybe in my mindset and so yeah, just like with a richness I can totally relate of like where your kind of in one place and you live your life and you feel at home in a new place that maybe isn’t fully your one.

So, Laurent maybe you can like share this, like what are client, like what are companies looking for? You’re working mostly with French companies who are placing people internationally or how are you seeing like this impact of like English and Internationality and you know, what companies need and why they look for you?

Laurent Girard-Claudo
Yeah, it’s, it’s funny because when we arrived here, there was a huge need for French speakers in Ireland. That was the how it started. We saw like all these big American companies coming to Ireland to settle their headquarters for Europe and they were looking for staff. And there is not enough people in Ireland to fulfill the positions.

So that’s where we said, look, there’s maybe an opportunity for us. I never worked in recruitment before, but I saw a need that we will apply our knowledge of American companies and Ireland and the business. Two, the candidates would be coming from France with their own way of speaking, of presenting their CVs and of like the, their own, like some words, some companies, some are very famous in this country, but not at all in another.

So, this is where we were the link between the two countries, and this is, it was the DNA of approach people recruitment, because that’s what we did after, over the years between different countries. Because we opened first in Dublin and then we opened a company in France and then one in Switzerland.

And then we develop like that. We are now in Dubai, in Spain, in Germany, and always focusing on these needs for companies to find people from everywhere in Europe with languages, with experience. Sometimes some people they couldn’t find in their own country. So, we have absolutely no problem to locate anybody in Europe.

For any companies, in any, for any department, wherever they are. It could be in France, it could be in Germany, it could be anywhere. And this is, we realized the need and was, it’s a growing need of people with skills and languages and ready to relocate. And this is where we decided to focus.

Sylvie Milverton
And what is the deal, like, why do you find that companies like particularly looking for people like to relocate. cause on the one hand you could think, I mean, I guess one could be the, the language need. Like I suppose if you’re working in France, you need people in Dublin that speak French.

But is this something like, like an openness? cause you would maybe think like it’s like expensive and that wouldn’t you try to find like the people locally, like, are they specifically looking like, oh, we want international people, or it’s literally like a skills shortage and you have to find them from somewhere else?

Laurent Girard-Claudo
Oh, that’s absolutely both of them like sometimes it’s just a shortage of people who, we work in Switzerland and the market is kind of, there’s no employment there, so they’re looking for maybe staff with the experience from abroad and the languages again.

Plus, the fact maybe, some people with a different view, some people with different background that will complement the team they have. And at the same time, yes, companies will look for people because of where they come from like we see like here, like the French, they have a set of mind that is very looked for in Ireland, like we are light for what, what we can do at work.

So sometimes it’s just the question of bringing new skills, new languages, new way of working to another company.

Émilie Narcy
They don’t always expatriate either. They relocate. So, when we talk about expatriation, there is the real expect image where you go and with your family and there is a house and there is a car, and there is all of that.

But there is also, the relocation of people that want to experience a new adventure with a local contract with immersing themself in really the local culture the candidates are looking for that too as well. So, it’s expatriation, but it’s relocation as well. And then there is international recruitment where company actually want to go abroad, for the local market.

So, they don’t want to relocate a French person to discover the Spanish market. They want Spanish people that will understand the French culture, that will be able to make the link and help them to grow their business abroad.

And that is not only with languages, that’s with culture fit that with the sense of what you get when you work in a country that only if you travel. If you leave abroad, you can understand. Truly from the inside.

Sylvie Milverton
Mm-hmm. And how do you find like that a company can, well prepare for one of these cases? like if you like, maybe can think of an example, you know, like a client and they come to you with a case.

I mean, it’s one thing to say like, listen, we want to expand in this market and we want people, or as you’re giving the example of like an Irish company that wants like the French mindset, because I feel like it’s one of the thing, and you know, I don’t know, I’m not in your business where you could have an imagination of how it is and then in the reality is not really how it is. So, what, how do you work with a company so that they like, define correctly what they’re looking for?

Émilie Narcy
Well in recruitment the first thing is to ask question and to understand the why. What are you trying to achieve? What are you looking for in terms of skills, in terms of cultural fit?

What are you trying to, and for many, many, many decades, we always talk about stereotypes and they still have a hard way to sneak in into recruitment processes, you know? The French, we do have a reputation, the good one, and the stereotypes that people carry over the years that are true or not true, actually.

So, they have those characteristic of kind of qualities, or effect that they want to have on their business, and that’s how we guide them. They have preconceived image of what it is to work with a German person, what it is to work with a French person. And we need it to explain if it’s true or if it’s not true, and explain vice versa to the candidates.

Why we’re expert now is because we can explain to a German candidate what it is to work with a Spanish company or French company, and is it going to suit them? Is it really wanting? It is one thing. Being able to do it is another one. So, we help them because we lived through that ourself.

Our consultant, they’re all native, they all worked in different countries. We did it as well, what it is. So, it’s asking question and trying to discover if it’s just a stereotype or if the what is behind this need.

Sylvie Milverton
Mm-hmm. And how else, you know, what are some of the like success stories like Laurent that you can fit?

Like what’s your ideal situation of, you know, this is the kind of company and this is the way that they’ve like, framed, framed the problem of where the internationality. Like make sense, you know what I mean? Like what’s like to avoid these stereotypes, like an example of a company like doing something and you think like, okay, this is the, the good way to think about filling positions like with international recruitment as opposed to falling in like a trap of saying, okay, I can just solve this with a magic wand because I have this imagination of what it would be like, you know?

Laurent Girard-Claudo
It’s funny because I remember, this person I spoke with, she was American and we organized a meeting and I thought like, I would be welcome, kind of. But no, it was just a meeting with her in front of the reception desk and say, how we going? So, she said, no, no, that’s it. Like, I don’t have time for you.

I only have five minutes. Okay. Right. So that’s a bit short, but okay there, but first, just to let you know, I don’t really like French people. And I hate recruitment agencies. Okay. I was a bit, I was not very experienced, but I love this situation but that’s okay, that’s now my time to shine and to show this lady that us French people are not that bad and agencies are not that useless.

We, we are here for a reason and it finally lasted two hours and I visited all the offices. I cannot really name of the company, but that’s a huge one. And we worked with them since. And it’s mad because they really developed. And the feeling they have for agencies and friendship I’m sure changed there because the now like we work together.

But it, it just, the idea of what we brought was why didn’t she like us? she said, yeah, because you always think like you will stay forever and you don’t, and agencies, you always say like, you have the base candidates, you are specialist of this and that, and no you are not. And say, look. I can tell you that we speak French to the French, so we will know exactly what they’re looking for, and I can commit that they will stay for a long period of time.

And I can promise you as well, like we specialize in the French market. So, I will know exactly what you are looking for in terms of like degrees and experience. And I’m not going to tell you lies. And that’s what worked the building trust with the customers and the candidates to, to really look at them in the eye and say, look, if I tell you something, it’s because I’m sure I can do it.

Not trying to sell them false promises. And that’s what worked, that’s what created a development kind of a solid relationship. And that’s why we call as well, Approach People recruitment because we really try to go and create a link with our partners and basically, especially in the world we live in.

But we realize what is very important is the human touch, the human community, the fact that we can appreciate each other. And then it becomes a pleasure to work if you just in front of your computer, dealing with figures, numbers, and virtual reality. And no, that’s not the same. I don’t think like that.

How we really enjoy ourselves. But if we meet people, if we interact, if we help each other, this is where happiness stands and this is why we are happy to work, since the last 25 years.

Sylvie Milverton
Right? Yeah. Like it’s more fun, more fun than cash than cash management. And do you have to do more work like in terms of integrating new candidates?

So, if you’re thinking like these international, like either as expat or relocation or however it’s gonna be, is it harder? Like to get the company like ready to receive the person? or harder to get the candidate, like ready to go? or it’s just you have to do work with both of them to like ensure success?

Émilie Narcy
Well, it’s with both of them, really you have to prepare the personal context of the candidate and anticipate what they will go through, what happens, the blues maybe that happens after three months that you haven’t seen in your family where it is how to avoid falling into traps.

And the same with the company receiving. They usually, especially at the beginning, they usually take a lot of care. When it’s someone from a different nationality or a different project that take a lot of care. It’s very special. For them. So, they’re really open to understand what they need, how can they approach them?

And they call us back as well to say, what do you think I should do in that situation? I want to make sure this person feels okay. Is she going to be open to me, et cetera, et cetera. So, it’s really with both.

Sylvie Milverton
And how, what advice do you give to candidates? Because I even know, like from my own experience, I’ve lived like of course in lots of countries and you think you’re ready, like you do the research on like where you’re gonna live and the culture and you read about it and the weather and the whole thing.

And sometimes, yeah, at the beginning you’re like quite excited, but it’s hard. Like you’re far, you’re working in an environment that’s different. And again, I say this from my own experience of being somebody, like I love international things. I speak a lot of languages. I get so much energy from like being on an adventure, but it can still be tiring.

Like working a whole day in a language isn’t your own comfortable language with just office norms with just way of, you know, like my way of working as American. So, I would never be so rude as that lady that you meant. But I do also sort of get it where you’re like, listen guy, I got five minutes, like da da da da, da.

And you know, and then you work in other countries and things are more, you know, long and slow. So yeah. Just going back, like how do you prepare candidates for just like the inevitable. Just emotional stress of these things.

Laurent Girard-Claudo
So, you know, we always tell people to get hobby, as you said, get, don’t just go because you feel like it’s suddenly like, no, you, you prepare yourself.

Like read what’s online and save some money before going as well because you don’t want to be in some kind of financial precarity if you arrive in a new place. You want to enjoy the life a little bit and maybe, yeah, a bit of saving before you go and then after get prepared. But once you’re there, the big advice is really meet the locals.

That’s really the big difference because we see that we help companies as well from to set up a business in France, and that’s what we tell them as well. If you send people from America, from wherever you are based to the country, for them to feel like happy and to stay and to really feel involved, try as much as possible to meet people, not the same nationality as you because it’s too easy.

Because you are kind of like you never like really in like you are one step in, one step out. But meet people who are local, speak their language, get their habits, even like, try to find a stupid expression that they use on a daily basis and really mix with them.

And that’s how things work if you can as well get a car or make, get from, of stability when you arrive in a new country because else you never feel right where you belong. And you might always think that, okay, one day I will live anyway, so why would I invest in that in this?

So, we, that’s what we say to people as soon as possible mix and get involved in the local community with the locals and that this is our like a, you’ll find some, some happiness. And that’s the real sense of discovery and adventure is when you forget where you come from and really when you adapt to a new environment.

Sylvie Milverton
And then how do you recommend, like, sometimes obviously people are gonna go for like one spouse’s job, often the husband, but it can also be the wife, of course. And what do you like recommend in terms of like how the spouse can integrate? cause that can also create, you know, stress and tension.

Laurent Girard-Claudo
In for example, the easiest thing is you go to the pub. You go on your own and say like, it’s not, it could be weird in some countries to go to the pub by yourself and say, look, I don’t know anybody.

How would people see me here? It’s just, you won’t stay here. Like you won’t stay alone for a long time. People come, could be anybody, could be any kind of person will join and talk to you, and as soon as they know that you are Franco French. They will be so happy and they will try to speak to you and say, look, by the way we’re going there afterward, if you want to join us, if you, so that’s the way, like just push doors or open doors, go, even in the street, like you speak to people like to know what they’re going like, or sometimes they just open a map.

You know, and people will come and try to help you and guide you or go to a park and read a book, and make sure, like when you read your books, like to look around at other people. And that’s the way naturally, as soon as even on by yourself, even without taking a big effort, just show up to a new place and you’ll see like naturally people will come to you.

Sylvie Milverton
Mm-hmm. Actually that’s good. Yeah. Good advice for anyone. You know, I’m interested, you know, you call your company Approach People and like all of your discussion is really like around like the human experience and you and your company, how you’re, you know, it’s a lot about asking and talking and how to meet people and I’m just like, my big question, you know, you’ve been in recruitment for 25 years, like, what about technology?

Like how are you seeing. I guess it’s two questions. One is how do you use technology in your company? And also, you know, we’ve all seen, you know, you apply for jobs. I have postdocs, my company, and I received like 200 CVs. Like it feels like technology is like. You know, losing the human product. I’m just interested in how you’re using it, how you’ve seen it change, and what’s your opinion about everything happening now?

Laurent Girard-Claudo
It’s funny because you were talking about the day we started the company; it was the last millennium. And by saying that it’s really, it’s mad our much, in 25 years, the world changed in a technological point of view. Considering like before there was not even anywebsite, you know, like it was really the beginning, like to connect to the internet.

We had to disconnect our phone line to connect and remember this noise of the modem connecting and then to check our emails like, so it was a different way, to work. And we have to meet people face to face. We had to go and meet the clients like to take our little map to go and find the person.

Like you go to the train station to get a ticket. So, it was so different in terms of finding a job you had to physically buy the newspapers and check what was there like for you to apply to, or to go to some bureau, employment bureau? To apply or meet people, meet advisors.

Well, 25 years later, that’s a different world. We don’t need to leave the comfort of our desk to travel the world at the speed of light. We can meet people from any background, any us. We can meet candidates like this anywhere in the world. Same with clients. We don’t need to have a local presence anymore really.

And so, in terms of physical. Like meetings, they tend to disappear. But we create, like thanks to this the high-quality videos that we are sharing right now, for example that’s perfect. It’s like we can replace, and by working all these years as well, we develop some way to assess the motivation of people even if we don’t meet them.

All the, the desire of clients. And the other aspect is that the database we are using is so efficient. There’s no more faxes or CV or printing documents. Like, no, everything happens like just kind of at the, we just have to click some documents, some the computer can do research for us. And it’s just amazing.

The technology changed completely the world. But in the recruitment sector, it can transform everything as well for candidates and for agencies and for clients as well. We communicate so fast, we organize things so quickly. It just became a pleasure to do business with technology.

Émilie Narcy
And they don’t contradict each other either because the technology equipment we’re not so human.

Where everything is virtual. We actually do talk to more people now with technology that we did when we were in person. My first experience when I arrived as Approach People, and again, it was the, it was a long time ago, so it was the beginning of Skype, not even Zoom or Teams or all of that, was the beginning of Skype.

So, talking to people across the world was on over the phone and my biggest fear was how will I connect with my candidate over the phone without seeing them, without feeling their energy in person. And then you have to rely on techniques and actually focus on the person. And how do you interview people to create disconnection?

Over the phone to do that. And now technology has actually helped because we can see people, we can read people. There is so many nonverbal communications that happens when we see each other in video and on the phone, and learning how to do that, we became better and we could talk to much more people. Thanks to technology, we can reach many more people across the globe than when we didn’t have it.

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah, that makes sense. And actually, it’s interesting, cause I get almost frustrated by the technology cause it’s like so easy to apply for a job and just click, click, click. And you see like the tool like generates the CV and the letter for the person and you think a robot is applying.

But the way I dealt with this frustration, and I’ll be interested in your feedback, is it forced me to be like really, really specific about what I was looking for. Like not just the kind of person, but what were like that. Outcomes like when I post a job or when I’m looking even for a consulting assignment for someone to join us, like be super specific.

And in that way, even with like the flood of AI and all these like generated things, I’ve actually been able to, well find the person. So, it’s like the technology kind of forced me to do the work that probably you should do anyway.

Émilie Narcy
Yeah. Well, it’s all about human connection. Recruitment is connecting to people, whether you’re an employer and a candidate, a recruitment agency with your client and your candidate, it’s all about that.

So, AI and technology is going to help automatize a few things, but we think that we have a better future if we actually connect on the essence. And that’s why there is a future for recruitment agency because everything goes so fast that an employer doesn’t have the time to screen all of that.

But you do need to talk to people that unexpectedly will create something and you can feel that. We talk about taking off your bias when you interview people, making it safer and non-discriminatory. And it is true. And then you have this spark that happens in a CV that was not the perfect one.

Only the human eye will feel that. And then you have to dig deep. So, the human connection and the recruitment agency, the good ones, that’s what we’ll focus on. People, the people that you meet, understand your client. We insist very often, we refuse to work with client that say, oh, here is a job description.

Send me candidates. That’s, that is not how we can work. We want to feel the person that is going to work with you. It’s important. So, I want to understand how you are, what feels important, what is in your language, what is in your requirement? Why is that important to you? Because something will happen there that then we will be able to identify in candidates and make the match happen.

Sylvie Milverton
That’s really nice. Yeah, and maybe just like looking forward, Laurent, I’d be interested in your take. You know, like now if we think of just like stepping like way back from the candidates, sort of the macro, economic and sociopolitical moment that we are in, that I think, you know, maybe we could summarize well a lot of different words, but I think uncertainty is one that feels fairly.

Maybe it could be universally agreed. Like, how are you just, you know, you who are talking to companies, like, how are you feeling it, are they still wanting to hire? Are they feeling like, let’s wait, like we don’t know, are they, like, how are you, how is the market? And what are companies telling you now

Laurent Girard-Claudo
That’s something interesting because we talk to our staff and some of them say, oh, it’s so hard at the moment. Like, you know, like so much uncertainty. Like we are in trouble times and yeah, okay. What do you compare it to? before it was so different. It was easier. Was it really easier when was the last time you told me, oh, it’s so easy to work here today, or like, it’s so that, that’s funny because people always think that they are in the worse situation that they were before, but when in the past they were not saying, wow, I’m enjoying my job, so making so much money as like, I wake up, I do nothing.

And so No, no, no, no, no. It’s always been difficult and of course like when you listen to the news, it’s scary. Like even this morning, they were saying, and even yesterday night, so like sometimes it’s not even for weeks now, it’s like every few hours you have some more bad news. How do you adapt to that?

And I say in a way. When you look at it, because now it’s been a couple of years, we’ve been through so many crises. It started with nine eleven. So, we thought like, wow, that’s going to be the end of the business and be followed by the sub subprime crisis once say, okay, that’s it. Finished. And after that we have COVID.

Okay. We’ve never come back from that. And you see, and now we look at what’s happening and over the last couple of years as well, like there’ll be so many bad news, so many things that are scary. But in the end. Like the people are resilient. The business is still going. So, if we come, if we look at the bad news and say, look, absolutely no hope, no way.

And now we look at the old bad news and say, oh no, finally we went through that and it was fine. Like we survived and we developed and we learned and that’s a bit the same today to say, look, we need to adapt. And if we look at the good news, the good side of it, of course some companies are letting people go, but there’s so many others.

Hiring so many new jobs being created. So many shifts as well. Like we saw, for example, the automotive sector was struggling a little bit, and then suddenly the green sector, like the, we were hiring plenty of engineers, so there was a shift from one sector to the other. Same with luxury products. For example.

We saw that people selling in shops were kind of like looking for a job and then hotels were hiring. So, there was a possible shift from one set of the skills to the other in another department or company or sector. So, there’s always opportunities and that’s really what we say, what we are saying again yesterday.

Are we opportunists? Yes. Is it a bad thing? No. You know, so like opportunity could be good. Opportunism sounds a bit weird, but I think we need to adapt to what’s coming. And there’s always beautiful things to look at.

Sylvie Milverton
Amazing. I love that. I love that summary. And yeah, I agree with you that, yeah, from moments of stress come opportunity and I am, yeah, moved and really happy to hear you’re just like total optimism.

And here, if we go back to stereotypes and everything, I totally get why as a French person, you feel at home and happy in Ireland close to France where we’ve been living with like for la crise 50 years. Like, une crise après l’autre. Which one is it? Yes, but it is amazing, yeah, to keep smiling and keep seeing the opportunity. And from all of these, like, uncertainties come, you know, new industries and yeah, new development,

Émilie Narcy
Everybody can get there.

I feel that within every day, and you get inspired every day. You can train your brain to think this way to actually look at it, the human is super resilient and if you get the methodology to think, to look at what can happen, you can train that. I think French people are very resilient and they are doing it more and more.

We’ll be surprised again.

Sylvie Milverton
I think so, the Croissant will take over the world. Amazing. Well thank you so much and thank you. So nice to talk to you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow-on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

Drop us an email at hello@lynxeducate.com. And if you’re looking for support on your talent development strategy, head over to lynxeducate.com to learn more about our career mobility solution. That’s LYNX educate.com.

Diana Enache
Let’s normalize this. It’s okay to not be toxically positive all the time. It’s okay to have a human experience and have down days or, you know, low affect days.

Sylvie Milverton
Hi, I’m Sylvie Milverton, CEO of Lynx Educate. This is Talent is Everywhere. We are here to talk about how to keep talent and how to develop talent in order to build a strong business. We’ll interview leaders to hear their best experiences of how they invested in people. So welcome. Today we have Diana Enache, who is a career and mindset coach in Romania.

Um, thank you for joining us. Uh, Deanna uh, works with clients internationally and also founded a community to support coaches in Bucharest. And before being a coach, she also worked in tech companies like DocuSign, Oracle Trade Shift, and then made the move, um, to coaching. And she focuses mostly on high millennial, uh, performers in tech.

So, welcome, Deanna, why don’t you, uh, tell us a little bit more, um, about your coaching practice.

Diana Enache
Wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me, Sylvie. Um, I was really looking forward to our conversation today, and just to give you a, a little bit of background and information about what I do and who I help as I’m, as you said, a career and mindset coach, and I help millennial high achievers who work in tech and struggle with perfectionism.

To get rid of self-sabotage so that they obtain meaningful career changes for them. Some examples of these career changes to make things more concrete are career pivots. Career transitions or promotions from a specialist role to their first leadership role. And when we say career pivots and career transition, there’s a difference between these two concepts.

Career pivots are, um, for example, someone moving to another role that has something in common to what they use to do or what they’re doing now. Uh, and a concrete example of that would be moving from an account manager position to an account executive position in sales, or moving from a customer service specialist role to a customer success manager role.

Those are examples of career pivots or moving to another industry, but on a similar role that they have now. Career transitions, on the other hand, are taking on a radically different role. And here I can give my own example. Moving from finance. I used to be a finance specialist some years back to learning and development training and then becoming a solopreneur coach.

So those are, those are the flavors, uh, or the career changes that I help for our clients to obtain.

Sylvie Milverton
Oh, that’s really, um, interesting. And I love how, like, specific you are, um, yeah, like about the kind of coaching you do and like what the different things mean. I think often like coaching can feel like, I don’t know, like one, uh, sort of generic or, you know, for those of us that aren’t directly in it, you know, it can feel kind of vague.

So, I love how specific, and so you did make this change. So, what inspired you to make the transition? Right, from working in tech, working in finance to actually becoming a coach.

Diana Enache
Mm-hmm. Yes. I used to work in finance for a number of years in various tech companies, uh, like multinational corporations, medium, huge sized companies and in 2020, that’s when I reflected on my own journey and was not feeling so satisfied, fulfilled, and it felt like I had an impact in my work in finance anymore, and I, with coaching and therapy at the time, I dug in deeply and I figured that, oh, actually I want to help people develop. I want to help them grow professionally, especially professionally, but also as a person in their profession.

And so, I made the conscious choice and conscious move to this training and L and D role full-time. And after that, the next kind of natural step, I guess for me was to research coaching schools and get specialized in this tool. ’cause coaching and training and mentoring, all of these are instruments, are tools that help people develop in one way or another.

And I. After I finished coaching school, I was like, oh, for sure this is what I wanna do. Um, I felt so connected to this going deeper with the one-to-one clients. Um, and I added it to my portfolio of skills and then in 2023, October of 2023, I moved from an employee role to a solopreneur. Started my own journey, combining coaching with training and facilitation.

So that’s where I am today. And I do work with people on career changes, and I do work with people on their mindsets because I used to be in similar positions myself. I used to be a perfectionist, not anymore. Thankfully, and I, I had these experiences of making career pivots and making career transitions in my own professional experience so far.

So, I, I know what pains and, and struggles it can come with mentally and practically as well. And that’s, um, that’s how I got to where I’m today helping people make those changes.

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah, I can so relate. There’s so much in what you just said that, uh, I can relate to like one, like as one is like making a transition like I worked in finance for a long time in big companies and then I decided to launch a startup, which like in retrospect, I think I was so naive about, you know, what a huge change that would be and how much like support I would need. But on the other hand, like realizing like, okay, this is my passion and I am going to follow it.

And you know, it’s hard, but I think I’m like, you know, doing a good job even though it’s like an uphill climb. And then the other thing I can relate to and what you said, just as like the entrepreneur thinking of the different support and I also, you articulate it really well. I never thought about it so well, but you know, like I’ve had a series of coaches over the past few years and sometimes it was like, you know, finding, getting centered.

Sometimes I wanted a coach that was much more about like high performance. It’s like, how can I. Super Excel. And then I’ve had different moments now is one of them where I’ve also added therapy to it. So sometimes it’s been more of that. So you’re right. And it’s like at a different moment, you know, you don’t always, you know, need the same kind of support.

And then when I was much younger, I had career coaches that were helping me figure out like a transition, what did I wanna do? So, yeah, it’s interesting, um, you know, how you frame it. And so, when people, like when clients come to you, what are you? I mean, I guess you’ve talked about, you know, the sort of things you support people in, but sort of we’ll go through, you know, the process you take, but like, what would be a situation, um, where you get a new client, uh, like where are they in their career that they’re gonna reach out?

Diana Enache
Yeah. Um, and just to your previous point before it gets into this one, I totally agree with different aspects or different phases in our lives needing different sorts of support. I myself work with a business mentor. I work with a business coach. I work in therapy still on different, you know, avenues and different aspects of my life.

I go to different specialists depending on what my need is at the moment, and I definitely recommend that to other people who are listening to us as well. And I’ll, in terms of process, and I’ll give you some concrete examples because I like that specificity and, and making things concrete. The way I work with clients and clients that come to work with me are usually people who have had some years of experience in their career.

Eight years, 10 years, sometimes maybe even more, and are at a crossroads, professionally speaking. And what we do when we work together, and I’ll give you this example of one of the programs that I have. It’s called made, MADE. M stands for mindset. A stands for alternatives. D stands for decision, and E stands for execution and evaluation. Why? because we work on mindset, moving them from fixed to growth mindset or from perfectionism to inner supporter.

From thoughts like, I’m not good enough. I don’t know if I am able to make this change. I can’t, I, I need to know everything from the start, from day one. Uh, those are all kind of self-sabotaging thoughts and we work to, to change them, to reframe them into, I, I haven’t done this, right. One of the examples is, I haven’t done this.

Okay. That’s the fixed mindset type of thought. We move from, I haven’t done this to, I haven’t done it yet. It means that we have space for curiosity, space for, okay, I haven’t done this thing, but I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to put in the effort. I’m willing to test it out and see how it goes and gain confidence along the way in, in the cases of the clients that I’ve worked with and in my own experience, confidence comes with experience with taking action.

So those are some examples of changing the way clients think. When it comes to mindset, also gaining self-awareness, learning about their values, learning about their strengths, and about their professional mission. That’s the mindset work that we do. Then we move on to alternatives and we analyze the options they have.

Some people come to coaching with multiple alternatives, don’t know what to choose, and that might keep them stuck, and I’ll give you a concrete example of that later on. So, we look at alternatives, we look at the criteria that they want to have in their next role, in their new career direction and map out to those options.

And then the next step, decision making, we make the decision. They make the decision, of course. And once that decision is made, they take action to implement that decision. And as they take action to implement that decision, they also evaluate where they are. Say someone moves their role changes, their role moves from one role to another, and they don’t stop at, “okay, I moved, I changed”.

They also look at, is this the right move for me? Am I in the right place? Do I like what I’m doing? Am I interested in it? You know, how are they settling in that new role? So those are the pillars of the process

Sylvie Milverton
And is it like, do they write all this down? Like do you have them like, come up? Is this like a deliverable, like here’s my paragraph about each thing?

Diana Enache
Not necessarily. Um, if someone wants to do that, and I’ve had clients who, um, like to journal or like to write things down and they do that for themselves. Some other clients just talk. So definitely we have the spoken piece, uh, in the coaching sessions and I help them decide on specific or tailored action at the end of the session.

And what we do from one session to the next is we do check-ins. I ask them at the beginning of the next session how their actions went and if there’s a need for adjustment, if it went well, and celebrating with them, if it didn’t. Let’s see, maybe why it didn’t work and was that the right move or the right action for you?

So, kind of like adjusting all the time and progressing ’cause my motto in coaching is coaching for progress. I want to help people see their progress, not so to move away from perfection, from doing everything a hundred percent from like from the get go, from the first time we do something to incremental changes and steps and progress.

So. some people write, some people don’t. Some people reflect; some people go into action faster. Some people go into action after like super concrete action. I mean here after two or three sessions; it depends on the person. Not everyone’s the same. So, when it comes to some concrete examples, ’cause you asked about that earlier, one of them that I can share with you is of Anne, and that’s not her real name.

I’m just like making things as specific as I can. Um, that came to coaching with feeling down kind of in her current role, feeling unhappy with low confidence, with a fear of networking at the time, and fear of attending industry events. She was quite isolated when we started working together. Working from home quite a lot of the time.

She was in this negative thought loop when we started and couldn’t see possibilities for herself professionally speaking. She started out wanting to have more balance in her professional life and her role. Then her goal became to change roles and go from this admin, more admin role that she had into a more strategic role in the same department, in the same, uh, type of role, but in a different company.

She wanted to change roles and move to a different company, and the result of us working together was first off that she increased self-confidence ’cause she started to take action and she saw that she could and change her negative patterns of thinking. That was another big thing. Because again, when she started out, she was feeling drained.

She discovered this idea that she could start a personal project, and she did, and that personal project gave her the energy that she needed to then go and apply to different roles and work on the criteria of those strategic roles that she wanted to have. So, taking, taking that specific action, and that’s what she did.

Then applied, went to interviews and got to that strategic role. Moved away from the admin side and now her role is more dynamic. She’s leading that department in that company and she moved industries. So that’s kind of a career pivot example right there. Um, so that’s one specific case. Another case.

And this one probably maps more on the MADE program, um, description or the structure that I told you is of another client that came to coaching and he wanted to make a change but didn’t really know what to choose. He had multiple options available to him and was kind of an analysis paralysis at the time.

So, what we did is we worked on analyzing the options that he had and then making the decision, choosing one of these options based on well thought out criteria. And then he took action to sign up to a course ’cause he needed to get a specific skillset in order to make that career change. And he’s now, ’cause we’re touching base, um, um, quite, uh, often he’s now in this course getting his learning in and learning about these specific skills that he needs to apply. He’s now applying these skills in his current role. He has a full-time job, but he, he has the space to do that in his role. And the longer-term plan is for him to move from employee to solopreneur once he’s done with the course, once he gains that experience, firsthand experience.

So, it’s. Working on mindset, working on these options, making the decision, taking action, and like evaluating, where am I? Do I like it? Yes. Is this for me? And then building on that experience, moving from the employee, um, status, let’s say to a solopreneur entrepreneur status. I wanted to say that those are two examples of people who decided to make a move outside eventually, right?

Make a move outside of the company. But that’s not the only those, or those are not the only scenarios, uh, that I had clients and I’ve worked with. There were clients that I’ve worked with that came to coaching not feeling, again, happy or motivated in their role, and initially wanting to leave the company, wanting to leave thatrole, but we figured along the process that the problem actually was a communication problem with their leader.

And once we coached around the topic of communication with their leader, they addressed whatever they needed to address with their leader. Things started to change. They started to get along better and then the client didn’t wanna leave the company or that role anymore, and their goal changed from leaving the company to how do I develop more in this role that I have?

Sylvie Milverton
And when I hear these cases, like what’s interesting, like sometimes I think we feel like coaching, it’s like this, like massive change. But a lot of these are like, first of all, the answer, all the people already had the answer. Like, whatever they needed to do, it was like already in them. And that, you know, maybe the first example you did, maybe that was pretty big in terms of like changing mindset or finding like a self-confidence, you know, that she didn’t have.

But for example, the second and so like when you tell like client and you tell me that story, like it’s actually really obvious what the person’s gonna do. And so, to realize that coaching, it doesn’t have to be this massive thing, it’s more just like having the space so that you can see clearly, you know, this is the path.

Like I’m in a job and I would like to be a solopreneur and I’m just missing this one, two things. Like just do the two things but you don’t see it. So obviously until you can like lay it out with someone to figure it out.

Diana Enache
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I’ve seen it over and over again with clients. They say usually when we start a process, they tend to say at the end of sessions that, “oh my God, this was so helpful.

’cause I got to verbalize all the things that I’m thinking”. Before the time that we started working together, maybe they were like in this mental loop and thinking, and thinking and not talking about what they were thinking or if they were, they were talking about it to family or friends, and it’s a different sort of relationship.

When we talk about to a-Talk about these things to a friend, and when we talk about these things with a specialist and just this has a value, a big value of talking and laying things out and getting clarity once you hear yourself talk. And it happened to me as well as a client and coaching. So, I can definitely vouch for that.

Sylvie Milverton
And also, I think that these decisions, especially around career and everything, it can feel like super high risk and super like high stakes, which in a sense it is. I mean, as you’re thinking like how you’re building your career and what decisions and it can kind of feel like you know of course you close the door and you open a new one.

Um, but I can see how like making the coaching, you realize like, it, you know, it isn’t so overwhelming, especially the examples you give about somebody who’s like not happy in their job. And I can just imagine, I mean, I’ve been in that situation, you know, years ago where you’re like, gosh, I just feel stuck and what am I gonna do?

But gosh, finding a whole job and my CV and who am I gonna talk to and what do I wanna do? And you’re like. Uh, you know, and so just to at least lay it out like what is the actual root cause of my problem and how can I solve it right? Does make it more manageable.

Diana Enache
Exactly. Bits and pieces and moving progress. Right? Making progress.

Sylvie Milverton
Um, I wanna tell you something else about mindset. ’cause I find this too. So I’m like a very, um, you know, like finance analytical person. And lately I’ve gotten into all sorts of like mindset and woo woo kind of ideas. But let say I’m not like, sort of made that way. But I do see the difference, like if I wake up and I will say also that I’m somebody, I am quite like high performer, perfectionist.

And I would tend to sort of have like. I dunno, negative thoughts, like I seem like happy and smiley, but I’m like very easily, like down on myself, let’s say. And I have seen the difference, like if I wake up in the morning and it’s kind of like a negative grump, it does make like a harder day, um, than kind of having like a quote, unquote, good mindset, but what are some, like, how do you do that? Like how do you not, you know, I mean, is it literally like wake up every day and look in the mirror and say like, “Sylvie, you are amazing. You’re gonna conquer the world”. Or how do you solve that? Like even so, like I have confidence, right? But I can definitely be like not in this positive way for myself. Right? What would you recommend?

Diana Enache
Yeah. And, okay, so let’s normalize this. It’s okay to not be toxically positive all the time. It’s okay to have a human experience and have down days or, you know, low affect days, even negative thoughts. It’s the thing with working on your mindset and moving from a fixed to a growth mindset is rather to catch when you think those thoughts and to shift those thoughts, not to believe, automatically.

Believe those negative thoughts you have about yourself, about your situation, about other people. Um, and here we can talk endlessly, probably about saboteurs and there’s a flavor of them from perfectionist to, um, victim to procrastinator, to judge to, um, avoid her. Yeah.

So those are just a few of them. Or hypervigilant. Um, hyper achiever. I am that type of person in the hyper achieving space. I need to work on my hyper achieving or people pleasing. Those are various flavors of these internal saboteurs that can affect our day to day. It’s a matter of catching them, and again, as I said, not believing, automatically believing these parts or these voices and having the resources and having the exercise, I would even say.

To change, to question those thoughts to is this really true? Is it a hundred percent true? How is it helping me? How is it hindering me? How or what is a better thought that I can have? That leads me to where I wanna get in my day-to-day.

And that’s, those are just three questions that someone can ask when they catch those thoughts on the spot. And it definitely shifts perspectives. It’s, it definitely shifts. ’cause we don’t want those like affirmation type thoughts or cookie cutter type thoughts. I am, no, everyone needs to create their own version of whatever works for them.

That’s the beauty of what we do in coaching. We tailor, right? So that’s the process with all those steps, but it’s not rigid and we tailor, or at least I do when I work with clients, what those alternative thoughts could be at something that’s believable for the client, not something that’s super blown out of proportion or exaggerated.

And then what we end up doing is we move from negative thinking to non-negative thinking and constructive thinking rather than positive thinking no matter what.

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah. Oh, I really like that. Right. ’cause yeah, for me it does, doesn’t sound natural to like always have positive thinking. Right? It’s almost like embrace, okay, we’re gonna have doubts, we’re gonna be scared, we’re gonna Yeah.

Have negative thoughts. And it’s crazy. I wonder if some of us who are sort of like high achieving, and I don’t, if perfectionist is the word, but anyway, our kind of people, if it’s even more easy to have negative thoughts like that from the outside people are looking at you thinking like, oh, you’ve got it all together and you’ve got all these degrees and you’re running a startup and you have a lovely life.

And you know, and inside you’re just like, oh my gosh, it’s a lot. Right?

Diana Enache
I can definitely relate.

Sylvie Milverton
Maybe it’s more common and yeah. Than I, than I realized. And I guess, you know, you also mentioned to me before, like this whole trap of the fixed mindset, like, you know, people who are talented and have good jobs. You know, that can also like get you into some traps, right? Where you feel like, oh, everything should just be easy and should be going my way. The fact that I’m struggling a bit means like something isn’t, isn’t right.

Diana Enache
Exactly. And for me and in my now I can talk from personal experience. I know that something that played a part in me having fixed thoughts when I used to have them and perfectionistic thoughts was the school system.

Because it rewards and it labels and it rewards this perfection, this, you know, 10/10. And like for us in Romania, the highest mark was a 10, 10, 1 to 10, the 10 was the highest one. And comparing with other kids and what, you know, what was their mark, what was their grade on the test or whatever. Um, so those, you know, social things have an impact on our upbringing and have an impact on our way of thinking.

But definitely we have the power. We have the resources to change them. We have the resources to turn them around and as adults to make conscious choices, to challenge and think differently, and act differently, not just think differently. Uh, and then moving from that fixed mindset space into a growth mind, a possibility type of space of I can learn this even if it’s hard.

And also rewarding progress, rewarding effort rather than rewarding. Oh, things like, or, or putting labels on things like, oh, “you’re so smart”. “You are so savvy, you are so whatever”. Great at this. Rather than saying that, saying, I put in so much effort into this paper. I put in the work and this project, and this workshop and this process with this client.

I can see my progress along the way. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I can see my progress along the way. And it’s even like a daily, it could be a daily practice of seeing your progress along the way. And another element that could help here with this growth mindset and uh, openness to learning would be to look at what we are satisfied with or grateful for?

From small to big things. Of course, it depends on the person and the range. For me, for example, I tend to look at the bigger things. And be grateful for those. When I progress on something, on a project, on a workshop, on a process with someone, or I finish it. But I’ve taught myself to look at the smaller things because those I tend to ignore on a day to day.

And I know knowing that so having that awareness about myself, I’ve taught myself to look at the smaller things at a, at the level of a day. At the level of, you know, the first part of the day or the second part of the day or evening time, looking back on the day. And that, for me at least, and from my perfectionist type of uh, thinking has been really helpful to help me shift and change.

Sylvie Milverton
Mm-hmm. And I’m wondering, have you seen, I mean, ’cause you’re dealing, looking at clients I guess, like since the pandemic and now have, have you seen that shift in. I don’t know the things people are worried about. Like, I mean, if we look, you know, just like step back, like everything that happened with AI, the economy, big layoffs in the tech sector, uh, you know, and right now I just feel like world politics.

I mean, it’s hard. I suppose if you look hard enough, you can find some, you know, shining light. But let’s just say like generally if you open the newspaper, it’s like a lot of stressful news. I dunno. Have you noticed like in the past year, like people stress or worried about different things than before.

Diana Enache
Definitely layoffs. Layoffs has been one of them, as you said as well. ’cause it’s a reality. It’s happening in the market, globally. Um, that was one worry. And then another one was, is AI gonna take my job? That’s another one. I actually, I had a client that I worked with that had this fear when we, uh, kind of began, began working together and it changed throughout the process into, oh, AI is a tool.

I can use it in my day-to-day to improve on certain things, processes. Whatever communication. Depends on what they were using it for. So yeah, moving from the fear of, it’s gonna replace me? it’s gonna take my job too? How do I include it in my day to day? ’cause it’s really part of change. Change at work.

And if we think historically there’s been so much change in the world and. Again, yeah. Some, uh, positions, some jobs that have been made obsolete and some jobs that have been created with the advent of technology and not just technology. And definitely there will be stages in time where people are gonna be worried about different things.

Right now, the things that I’m seeing are layoffs and AI taking my job and here again, if I go back to the skills that we can build to deal with these types of changes are definitely mindset related, so fixed to growth mindset and adaptability, resilience.

In today’s world, we need to have these two skills quite a lot because things move fast and change fast and of course, a plan when we think things are getting iffy and we start fearing our position, let’s say in a company to adapt and learn. These new skills that will get us to a secure, in a secure space for us, like mentally secure and practically secure in the job market as well.

Um, so yeah, here I would even think about people and, and looking at the processes and the clients that I have and the work that I do of getting people in, making career changes, looking at their transferable skills as well. What is it that they’re already doing, that they’ve done that they can use in a slightly different role or in a very different role, and learn to communicate with examples those skills that can transfer from one role to another, from one industry to another even.

Sylvie Milverton
Right. And explain it. Yeah. Explain it in a good way as opposed to saying, I’m looking for a job where I can like, well apply my skills to an environment. Like what skills and how. Yeah, exactly. And that, definitely having that on the CV or having that on your LinkedIn profile and preparing some examples before going to an interview of how, what are the skills, how do I apply them and how can I take them further?

Sylvie Milverton
Right. Oh, I’ve learned so many things from you and I feel like one good takeaway, I mean one is like the skills we have in our job, but also thinking about mindset and thinking about building resilience as two skills to like work on, um, as opposed to it being like something innate in us that we just have to sort of, uh, you know, be that way. So, I, I like that. Uh, yeah, I like that thought of thinking that I can, you know, build the skill of a growth mindset and build the skill of resilience, I think is smart. Um, and so when you have clients, I guess, you know, how do you work with them? It can be one session or several sessions, or how long do they usually?

Diana Enache
Usually we work in programs which are three months or six months programs. Uh, rarely do I do one-off sessions. Uh, usually and with the topics that I cover, that we cover in coaching, one session wouldn’t do too much for a person who wants to change careers.

So then of course they would need more time. They, if they wanna get a promotion, it might be that they only need three months’ worth of work. If they wanna do a career transition to a different, really different role, really different industry than a six-month process would definitely be more suitable because they get to experience all the mindset alternatives, decision and execution parts.

Sylvie Milverton
Amazing. And if people wanna find you, where can they, how can they reach out or where do they get your information?

Diana Enache
I’d be happy to connect with anyone and everyone who’s listening to this podcast, and they can find me on LinkedIn by searching Diana Enache and Coach, or on my website, www.deannaanke.com.

Those are the two places that I’m quite. LinkedIn is my number one platform and then my website as well is where they can see things about my programs, the structure, the way we work together, see, uh, reviews from other clients that I’ve worked with in the past. ’cause I know that’s an important piece to see what others have obtained. Of course, by working with me.

Sylvie Milverton
Amazing. Um, well, we will link to your, uh, website in the show notes so that people can easily reach out. And this was, uh, a lovely session. Um, amazing to meet you, and I love your, uh, coaching approach and yeah, I learned so much. Thanks for joining us.

Diana Enache
Thank you so much for having me, Sylvie. It was a pleasure to chat to you today and yeah, let’s, uh, keep in touch and keep things moving into a growth mindset perspective.

Sylvie Milverton
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

Drop us an email at hello@lynxeducate.com. And if you’re looking for support on your talent development strategy, head over to lynxeducate.com to learn more about our career mobility solution. That’s LYNX educate.com.

Transcript

Denise Sin Blima
De même qu’on suggère souvent au coach d’avoir ce qu’on appelle nettoyer ses lunettes, c’est à dire d’avoir fait aussi un travail sur soi. Tu vois, quand tu accompagne les autres, c’est quand même important que tu travail sur toi.

Sylvie Milverton
Hi, I’m Sylvie Milverton, CEO of Lynx Educate. This is Talent is Everywhere. We are here to talk about how to keep talent and how to develop talent in order to build a strong business. We’ll interview leaders to hear their best experiences of how they invested in people.

Bonjour, aujourd’hui notre invité c’est Denise Sin Blima, qui est coach certifié MCC. Par le ICF qui est le international coaching Federation de France et aussi superviseur et également elle est responsable pédagogique, coaching d’une école de coaching qui s’appelle activision coaching Institute.

Ah, Good afternoon.

Denise Sin Blima
Merci Sylvie, très heureuse d’être avec toi aujourd’hui

Sylvie Milverton
Et cette semaine de la international coaching week. Et donc ça tombe très bien. Notre intervention. Et notre discussion et

Denise Sin Blima
ben, voilà. Je suis ravie, effectivement d’être d’intervenir dans le cadre de cette coaching week qui a lieu tous les ans. Donc cette année, du huit au au 12 mai, avec beaucoup des vêtements organisés de façon internationale par justement ICF international coaching fédération

Sylvie Milverton
Super. Et donc, en fait, peut être, on commence par le début qui est peut être un peu évident pour tout le monde, tout le monde, mais pas forcément évident.

On parle beaucoup du. Coaching, tout le monde peut se dire coach, on parle de il y a plein de mots et plein de choses, mais quand même, il y a le ICF, c’est quelque chose, une fédération de coaching. Donc toi, comment tu comprends? Qu’est ce qui est le coaching et un coach? Et quel est ton métier à expliquer quelle est quelle est cette différence?

Denise Sin Blima
Ok, écoute, alors déjà peut être ce que tu fais référence à ICF. Donc ce qui est important, c’est toi, c’est on est quand même dans quelque chose qui est assez jeune ICF. C’était 30 ans cette année. Donc c’est quand même un grand événement et y en même temps, 30 ans dans un métier, ce n’est pas très ancien.

Donc ICF, c’est la plus ancienne et la plus grande fédération de coach dans le monde qui rassemble à peu près 60 zéro coaches dans le monde dans 140 pays à peu près. Et donc ce métier est un métier assez jeune. Qui souvent est, est ce qu’on appelle autor réguler. C’est à dire que finalement, comme tu le disais, tout le monde peut se dire coach.

Et donc il est important de pouvoir se référer, notamment quand es clients à des coachs qui sont vraiment formés, qui sont adhérents à des fédérations. Pour garantir une déontologie, un professionnalisme. Donc quand on parle du coaching, on a tendance en fait ilf définis ça de façon assez large pour ISF, si tu veux, c’est une, c’est un processus qui a lieu entre un coach, donc et son client pour atteindre des objectifs qui seront définis au moment de la première rencontre et dont le but est souvent de maximiser le potentiel de la personne.

Toi et quand tu disais les différences, on a souvent tendance à dire qu’il y a une différence entre le conseil et le coaching, c’est que le conseil on donne en fait des solutions. On fait des recommandations à son client alors qu’en coaching, en fait, on l’aide à trouver ses propres solutions et.

Sylvie Milverton
Est ce que c’est souvent axé plutôt sur le développement.

Personnel ou professionnel, ou ça peut aussi, on peut être coaché sur une situation ou sur un problème stratégique ou c’est plutôt le développement de la personne.

Denise Sin Blima
Alors en fait, c’est un peu, c’est un peu tout ça, c’est à dire qu’il y a du coaching professionnel. Donc qui intervient dans le cadre des organisations des entreprises.

Et là on va être sur des sujets. Ce sont souvent des managers qui sont accompagnés, mais pas seulement on peut accompagner des équipes. On peut accompagner tout type de collaborateurs sur des thématiques qui peuvent être très spécifiques, justement toi. C’est des objectifs que c’est. Si sa séance et on va travailler sur, par exemple, une difficulté à prendre la parole en public, une difficulté en fait à gérer des conflits quand on est manager, une prise de poste de chef de projet ou de manager.

Et puis tu y a aussi des coachs qui interviennent sur des sujets plus on va dire, coaching de vie. Difficulté relationnelle dans un couple avec des enfants avec les mêmes mécaniques. Si tu veux que le coaching, c’est à dire faire trouver leurs ressources et leurs solutions. Aux personnes. Et là, l’écueil à éviter, c’est de ne pas tomber dans la psychothérapie parce que c’est un autre métier.

Et le coach ne travaille pas sur le passé et se réparer ou soigné, mais véritablement sur partir d’une situation qui pose problème et d’aller vers le futur pour essayer de trouver des options.

Sylvie Milverton
Et par ça, c’est intéressant. Et donc, par exemple, la différence avec la psychologie au psychothérapie, ce serait par exemple, pour le cas, de prendre la parole en public.

Et quelle serait la différence. Donc, au lieu de chercher pourquoi on a peur, ce serait plus de pratiquer comment faire. C’est ça.

Denise Sin Blima
Alors super question. Merci Sylvie. Parce qu’en fait tout sujet, on pourrait se dire ce traiter dans différents espaces. Tu vois prise de parole en public quand on va le traiter en coaching, ça va être en fait identifier ces blocages en fait toi et comprendre en fait comment les dépasser.

Aujourd’hui, de façon à tester d’autres façons de faire moi. Par exemple, j’ai coaché une personne qui avait vraiment mais hyper peur de prendre la parole en public à tel point qu’elle en était presque malade, en fait la veille, parce qu’en fait, quand j’ai travaillé avec elle en disant mais qu’est ce qui se passe?

Qu’est ce que tu dis? Comment ça se passe chez toi? Mais en fait, moi. Tellement peur que si je dise une bêtise, on va me trouver incompétent. J’ai l’impression que les gens qui sont là, ils sont, je les vois comme des monstres qui vont me manger. Évidemment si elle les voient comme des monstres qui vont me manger, on ne va pas prendre la part qu’on a travaillé sur mais t’es sûr les gens dans une scène, ils sont là pour te manger.

Non, pas vraiment. Ils vont vraiment. Et donc on a un petit peu, tu vois détricoter le film qu’elle se faisait. Si on va du côté psychologue, en fait, on va plutôt regarder ce qui a pu se passer de dramatisant comme événement dans le passé qui fait qu’aujourd’hui la personne est bloquée. Et donc on va essayer de réparer les traumas passés.

Voilà, c’est souvent la frontière que l’on fait entre ces ces deux espaces

Sylvie Milverton
et c’est possible d’être coaché et trouvé. Par exemple, dans cet exemple, on arrive à prendre la parole, même si on a laissé, on va dire les monstres ou les peurs ou le traumatisme du passé, alors ça dépend.

Denise Sin Blima
Il n’y a pas de solution unique.

Il n’y pas pas de situation unique qui peut se faire que la personne en fait, en travaillant en coaching, découvre qu’il y a quelque chose du passé qui la gêne suffisamment pour qu’elle décide d’aller faire un travail en plus ou en parallèle avec un psychologue. Et du coup, il nous arrive d’accompagner en coaching sur des problématiques souvent ou à professionnelles opérationnelles, des gens qui vont aussi travailler en psychothérapie et sujet de façon plus profonde.

Mais ce n’est pas une obligation, ça va dépendre.

Sylvie Milverton
C’est intéressant. Et je crois que quand je pense à mon cas à moi maintenant, je suis fondatrice d’une boîte en tout est nouveau pour moi et j’apprends plein de choses. Et c’est vrai que des fois je fais appel à des coachs pour et sur des sujets assez précis, comment faire des levées de fond?

Comment gérer une équipe, comment gérer le stress de celui là? Et puis, à part j’ai une psychologue ou je gère d’autres sujets qui. Il y a un lien, bien sûr, parce que je suis la même personne mais peut être, ce n’est pas les mêmes, ce n’est pas les mêmes sujets n’a pas la même façon de travailler. C’est ça.

Ce n’est pas le même ou ça peut être le même sujet, mais on

Denise Sin Blima
ne va pas travailler les mêmes leviers. En fait,

Sylvie Milverton
voilà et comment est ce que tout ça? Donc on a parlé aussi de supervision, qui est encore un troisième, un troisième chantier. Donc, quelle est cette différence encore? Alors

Denise Sin Blima
là la supervision. On rentre dans un autre cadre qui est qu’en fait la supervision, on travaille sur son identité professionnelle, son positionnement quand on est un professionnel qui accompagne en.

Des individus, des équipes ou des organisations, c’est à dire que clairement la supervision s’adresse en fait à des psychologues, à des coachs, à des travailleurs médico sociaux, pour travailler justement sur ce qui se passe pour eux. Dans la relation d’accompagnement si tu veux, quand tu accompagne des personnes, des fois tu prends aussi sur toi des choses qui sont très émotionnelles, des difficultés que sont rencontrées par les personnes.

Tu vois pas plus de travailleurs médico sociaux qui sont confrontés à la souffrance des patients qu’ils accompagnent à la mort, à des choses comme ça. Il leur faut des espaces pour se. Un peut se nettoyer, prendre du recul sur tout ça parce que sinon ils prennent tout sur eux. Ils arrivent chez eux. Ils sont toi complètement débordés par tout ce cas.

Et du coup, ça s’adresse aussi au coach. C’est l’espace ou tu vas venir dire bah, voilà dans mon, en tant que coach avec mon client, il y a un truc qui se passe. Façon compliquée. Pour moi, ça me met en colère. Il m’a raconté des choses. Ça m’a touché. J’ai eu l’impression de revivre quelque chose qui me concernait ou est ce qu’on va poser ça.

Eh bien justement avec un superviseur pour pouvoir se nettoyer, se réal, aligner et revenir en fait auprès de son client un petit peu ouvert et et complètement le neutre par rapport à tout ce qui vit. Tu vois?

Sylvie Milverton
Et est ce que tous les coachs tu penses suivent une supervision comme ça, parce que je peux imaginer que souvent on s’oublie soi, même en fait ça tous, non?

On oublie de se de sur

Denise Sin Blima
alors ça aussi. C’est assez pertinent parce qu’en fait, si tu veux tout, tout coach professionnel qui le fait, qui fait ce métier avec une avec une exigence et un professionnalisme se doit d’être supervisé, je ne dirais pas que c’est une. Obligation qui est inscrite effectivement dans les codes de déontologie, mais c’est une forte invitation recommandation, de même qu’on suggère souvent au coach d’avoir ce qu’on appelle nettoyer ses lunettes, c’est à dire d’avoir fait aussi un travail sur soi.

Tu vois quand accompagne les autres, il est quand même important que tu es travaillé sur toi. Malheureusement, il y a des coachs qui ne sont pas supervisés et ça, c’est vraiment une vraie problématique. Heureusement dans les entreprises de plus en plus, on est conscients de la nécessité de faire travailler des coachs qui ont une pratique professionnelle.

Et moi, je vois, tu vois, ça fait exer ce métier depuis 20 ans, j’ai vu les choses évoluer. Et la connaissance de ce métier aussi évolué. Et par exemple, nos premiers prescripteurs, c’est les ressources humaines. Souvent, je vois dans les appels d’offres des gens qui disent est ce que vous êtes supervisé, voire même parfois qui demande des attestations, des superviseurs.

Donc, je pense que le milieu est assez conscient mais client de la nécessité que les coachs soient accompagnées eux mêmes

Sylvie Milverton
et parlant des RH. Je suppose qu’il y a beaucoup de RH qui écoutent ce podcast et qui s’intéresse beaucoup à ce sujet. Donc je suppose qu’il y a une peut être dans le métier de RH.

Il y a déjà cette partie. Cette partie de coaching est ce qu’il y en a beaucoup qui sont formés aussi en tant que coach ou c’est peut être une. Évolution de carrière qu’on trouve souvent chez les chez les

Denise Sin Blima
alors il y a différentes étapes. On va dire moi ce que j’observe. Donc tu as cité que j’étais responsable pédagogique d’une école de coaching.

Donc, dans les personnes que nous formons, il y a une forte proportion de. Personnes des ressources humaines, pas que, bien sûr, heureusement, et des personnes, des ressources humaines qui se forment, et d’ailleurs, on a fait des programmes spécifiques dans certaines boîtes pour former des RH et des dr. RH se forment souvent pour enrichir leur palais RH parce qu’effectivement eux mêmes ont accompagné des collaborateurs et des équipes tout le temps.

Tu vois donc cette posture qui est de pas toujours donner la solution. Mais d’inviter la personne à se connecter à ses propres ressources est intéressante pour eux. Et puis parmi eux, il y en a un certain nombre qui soient adorent et finissent par dire, mais moi, c’est ce métier que je veux faire, soit en deuxième partie de carrière, deviennent également coach.

Toi. Donc on a effectivement parmi les gens qui sont coach aujourd’hui, un certain nombre d’entre eux qui ont une première carrière dans les ressources

Sylvie Milverton
humaines.

Denise Sin Blima
Et

Sylvie Milverton
je suppose que vous travaillez de très proche avec les garage. Donc, quelles sont, je ne sais pas, des exemples qui arrivent en entreprise ou on est ou on est, on est chercher pour accompagner des collaborateurs qui sont peut être différents ou des moments ou un coach est pertinent.

Denise Sin Blima
Alors là, tu veux dire, quand les drr RH prennent des demandes à des coachings pour des collaborateurs, pas forcément pour eux en fait, pour des collaborateurs. Alors des sujets, comme je t’avais déjà indiqué moi, ce que je convois, c’est que de plus en plus, si dieu, c’est assez rigolo l’évolution de ce métier et d’ailleurs ceux qui sont coach et peut être qui entend ce podcast.

Et c’est certains qui sont peut être assez seniors pour s’en rappeler, il y a. Un certain nombre d’années, on va dire plus de 10 ans. C’était pas bon signe d’être coaché parce qu’en fait, on associée le coaching, la personne qui est ée à un problème. Donc si on lui donne un coaching, c’est vraiment pour dernière ressource.

Dernière option. Si ça ne marche pas, en gros, il va prendre la porte. Donc les gens le disaient pas trop. Et puis, heureusement, en fait, on est beaucoup plus maintenant dans le fait l’effet booster du coaching et de plus en plus, les services RH formation utilisent le coaching pour justement booster. En fait une prise de poste, par exemple, tu as pour aider des gens à réussir dans des nouveaux projets, des nouveaux défis et ça devient presque.

Et j’ai des clients, des entreprises ou les gens se bagar presque pour être coaché. Tu vois, c’est à dire ça devient un peu un signe de distinction de reconnaissance de l’entreprise. C’est à la voiture de fonctions est à le coaching. Avec

Sylvie Milverton
quoi? C’est intéressant, je me demande pourquoi ce changement peut être oui.

Maintenant on voit peut être, on voit des athlètes ou on voit, je ne sais pas dans la presse, les gens qui sont high performing et donc peut être, c’est ça qu’on cherche.

Denise Sin Blima
Alors je pense aussi que si tu veux puisqu’on revient à ICF, puisque moi c’est quand même ma fédération. ICF a fait beaucoup d’enquêtes qui sont mandatés régulièrement par price, Waterhouse Cooper et qui, en fait, a demande aux entreprises comment vous utilisez le coaching, à quel est le roi, à quoi ça vous sert et etc.

Et donc, de plus en plus, on a quand même des indicateurs, des marqueurs qui montrent qu’en fait le coaching, ça marche. C’est un booster pour les personnes. C’est un booster de performance. Il y a ça. Et puis aussi, tu parlais tout à l’heure de développement, la jeune génération en fait et très avide de ce que l’entreprise fait pour son développement.

Attend de l’entreprise que l’entreprise les développe. Et donc le coaching est un des outils qui le permet, tu vois la formation et aussi le

Sylvie Milverton
coaching. Qu’est ce que vous pensez? Parce que souvent on pense du coaching, vraiment pour des gens seigneurs ou prises de poste ou pour des des managers, mais comment est ce que ça peut marcher aussi pour les.

Oui, les personnes plus en début de carrière ou qui sont même pas comment on dit c en français, individual contribu qui essayent de chercher autre chose. Comment est ce que le coaching peut marcher pour eux? En

Denise Sin Blima
fait, si tu veux le coaching, ça marche pour tout le monde. Ce qui se passe surtout c’est comment ça?

Il faut définir un objectif. Un objectif, c’est à dire qu’est ce que tu veux améliorer? Ce sur quoi tu veux progresser. Donc à toi un cas, ça qui arrive dans une fonction ou qui arrive dans une entreprise, ça peut être aussi lui permettre assez rapidement de trouver sa place. C’est de comprendre effectivement quelle est sa place et quelle est sa contribution possible.

Ça peut être aussi lui permettre de faire un changement culturel. Tu sais, des fois quand tu arrives dans une boîte, tu as quitter une ancienne boîte qui fonctionnait d’une certaine façon. Tu arrives dans une autre entreprise. Ce n’est pas les mêmes codes. Tu as besoin à la fois de faire un peu, on va dire le deuil de l’ancienne et puis de repartir dans un nouveau poste.

Les équipes aussi toi, on parle de personnes, mais on parle aussi. On peut accompagner des équipes et notamment des équipes nouvelles qui se créent. Ou tout le monde doit trouver sa place. Tout le monde doit adhérer à la même mission. Comment en fait, on va travailler ensemble. Tout ça peut être accéléré par un travail de coaching.

Il faut savoir qu’un travail de coaching, ça peut être quelques semaines maximum, quelques mois. C’est quand même des processus qui vont assez vite. Tu

Sylvie Milverton
vois? D’accord. Et donc ce n’est pas, c’est quelque chose d’assez concret. Donc comment est ce que ça marche? Par exemple, le coaching en est en groupe en équipe.

Disons que c’est quelque chose de six semaines, ce sont des sessions. Tout le monde est ensemble. Si c’est cinq, six personnes, ils sont autour d’une table. Il y a des. Il y a des comment est ce que ça se passe,

Denise Sin Blima
alors ça va dépendre des pratiques des uns et des autres, mais en fait autour d’une table ou pas d’une table, mais en tout cas ensemble, ça c’est important.

Le manager et ses collaborateurs avec un coach avec aussi des objectifs qui ont défini qu’est ce qu’on veut atteindre en fait et derrière, alors ça dépend des coachs. Mais il y a toujours une base déjà de questionnement si tu veux et d’aller chercher, évidemment les valeurs, ce qui rassemble les gens.

Que chacun puisse s’exprimer et puis qu’il puisse arriver en fait à définir des choses qui sont communes. Tu vois des valeurs communes, des munitions communes se mettre d’accord sur des fonctionnements. Souvent, si tu veux le coach à la fois, il facilite, il fait il porte aussi un regard extérieur. Nous, souvent, les coachs, on propose aux personnes de les observer dans leur fonctionnement.

Et d’ailleurs de leur faire des feedback sur ce qu’on observe pour que derrière ils puissent prendre conscience de la façon dont ça se passait. Un mot importance. Tu veux dans le référentiel qui est le nôtre? Il y a huit compétences dans le référentiel DC. C’est susciter des prises de conscience. C’est à dire que l’essentiel, c’est de à quel moment on va aider les gens à prendre conscience de ce qui se passe.

Parce que quand tu as pris conscience, tu peux. Imaginez d’autres façons de faire tant que tu n’es pas conscient de ce qui se passe, tu reproduit en permanence quelque chose que tu faisais. Si tu prends conscience de ce que tu fais et de l’impact que ça qui n’est pas celui que tu veux, alors tu peux décider de faire autrement.

Sylvie Milverton
Et donc c’est en fait en parle en fait, c’est beaucoup de, c’est de parler ensemble, c’est de s’exprimer, écouter l’autre et comprendre quel est l’objectif. Alors il

Denise Sin Blima
y a beaucoup d’ effectivement de reformulation de questionnements. Il y a aussi des utilisations d’outils métaphoriques. Tu vois, tu peux travailler à base de photos aussi à base d’activité, faire faire en fait faire réaliser à une équipe toi une tour en papier pour voir comment ils fonctionnent et les amener en fait à regarder.

Mais qu’est ce que qu’est ce qui a marché? Parce que vous avez fait de quoi vous êtes fier, de quoi vous êtes pas fier. Qu’est-ce que en quoi ça ressemble à ce que vous faites d’habitude? Toi. Et donc moi, j’ai des quand je fais des activités comme ça avec les équipes, il y a des équipes qui me disent en fait, on se rend compte qu’on a fait comme d’habitude en ça.

On n’a pas pris le temps de se poser. On n’a pas pris le temps de réfléchir. On est parti directement dans l’action. Et d’ailleurs, c’est pour ça que finalement on n’est pas très content du résultat. En fait, ce qu’il faudrait vraiment qu’on arrive à faire, c’est se poser, ok, ils prennent conscience de ça.

Alors vous allez faire ça. Comment concrètement? Comment vous allez faire. Et puis comme on les accompagne sur la durée, la fois prochaine, on regarde ce ce qui s’est passé vraiment est ce qu’ils ont réussi. Qu’est ce qu’a marché qu’est ce qui n’a pas marché? Qu’est ce qu’il faut modifier toi? C’est un processus comme ça qui se met en place parce que le changement ne suffit pas d’avoir pris conscience les bonnes habitudes, il faut aussi les ancrer dans le temps, tu vois en

Sylvie Milverton
temps.

Et donc pour revenir à lcf. Et donc je suppose qu’il y est tout, un pas une méthodologie ou un tour de ressources que les que les coachs peuvent. Utilisé aux sources pour alors

Denise Sin Blima
en fait, si tu veux quand tu es pour ICF, il y a donc une déontologie. Il y a un référentiel de huit compétences parce que si tu veux, comme c’est un métier comme dans tout métier, un référentiel de compétence qui permet à la fois de former les gens.

Et puis ensuite de les évaluer, de savoir si, effectivement, ils sont leur parti qui est conformes au référentiel. Donc, dans les compétences, tu as effectivement à l’écoute active. Tu as suscité des prises de conscience à la présence à créé un climat de confiance et de sécurité, etc. Ça c’était, on va dire, la colonne vertébrale, le squelette.

Après, dans les écoles de formation, il y a différentes, on va dire obédience, différentes écoles. Et donc, à partir de ce référentiel, chacun en fait, ajoute des outils qui sont issus de l’analyse systémique, de la sociologie des organisations de l’analyse transactionnelle de la pnl. En fait, on vient aussi de s’inspirer.

Tu vois? D’autres, comment dirais je d’autres disciplines qui permettent de travailler sur l’accompagnement. Et ça, c’est un peu propre à chaque école,

Sylvie Milverton
tu vois? Et si quelqu’un cherche un coach, quel est ton ton avis? D’interviewer deux ou trois et chercher leur façon de faire. Quel est

Denise Sin Blima
oui? Alors tout à fait moi déjà, j’ai une recommandation forcément, je vais prêcher pour ma paroisse, c’est d’aller ici, cf.

En fait que ça soit donc au niveau monde et après, dans chacun des pays, a met à disposition du public un annuaire de coach en fait qui sont adhérents à ICF et qui sont formés. En fait, puisque pour adhérer à ISF, il faut être formé au coaching. Si t’es pas formé au coaching, tu ne peux pas adhérer tu toi, tu dois donner ton diplôme, etc.

Donc c’est déjà regardé un peu toi au niveau des profils de ses coachs et oui, d’aller en rencontrer deux ou trois parce que au delà de la bonne formation et du parcours du background aussi de la personne, parce qu’en fait, certains ont été managers avant, d’autres ont été deviennent du monde du théâtre du monde, du jeu, du juridique.

Ça peut dépendre, tu vois? Et puis il y a aussi le fitte. Quand même c’est un métier. Enfin, toi, c’est un contact, c’est de l’ interpersonnelle. C’est un peu comme ram si ou un médecin en rencontre un ou deux, puis tu te dis bas, celui là, il me correspond. Je me sens bien avec lui

Sylvie Milverton
et si et si quelqu’un voudrait devenir coach, quel serait ta recommandation?

Denise Sin Blima
Là toujours pareil. C’est d’abord parce que là aussi, il y a beaucoup de coach et des gens qui se discutent. Il y a aussi beaucoup d’écoles qui font beaucoup de choses plus ou moins professionnelles. On va dire, et surtout plus ou moins longue. Tu vois, des fois tu vois des coachs, des formations devenir coach en trois jours.

Ça, je ne devient pas coach en trois jours. C’est une formation longue quand même le coaching de plusieurs mois, c’est pareil. Moi, je recommande toi. Quand j’étais présidente, forcément dit sa France, les gens me demandaient. Je disais bah. Regardez déjà, les écoles sont référencés par ecf prenaient quand même une école qui est référencée par ecf de préférence ou en tout cas par une instance professionnelle avec un label de qualité.

Tu vois en France, on a Callie, on a des choses comme ça qui, quand même, permettent de s’assurer de la qualité du

Sylvie Milverton
prestataire. Et ça, c’est bien. Et puis pour toi, quel est le? Je ne sais pas pourquoi tu as choisi ce métier et quel est là depuis quelque beaucoup d’années que tu l’as fait? Je pense que c’est très satisfaisant pour beaucoup de raisons, mais peut être, tu peux nous raconter un peu ta vision et qu’est ce que c’était ton expérience personnelle d’avoir vécu ça?

Denise Sin Blima
Alors oui, merci. En fait, comme beaucoup de coaches, moi, j’ai eu une première vie professionnelle à la plupart d’entre nous. En fait, on a d’abord été. Manager dans une entreprise ou pas manager, mais en tout cas, on a vécu dans une entreprise. C’était mon cas. Moi, j’étais directrice commerciale et marketing dans une start up informatique.

Et donc rapidement, je manage des équipes et en fait rapidement ce qui m’a intéressé. C’est l’aspect humain que j’ai découvert en fait, un peu comme ça. Moi, j’étais dans une start up, il n’y avait pas d RH. Et donc on se débrouillait un peu les uns les autres. Et puis quand j’ai eu envie de changer de métier au bout de 10 ans, si tu veux, j’ai eu envie de changer de métier.

Comme beaucoup, j’ai. Était alors on n’appelait pas ça. Coaching, mais j’ai été accompagné dans un bilan de compétence. Tu vois un genre de choses et j’ai découvert que tiens accompagné des personnes à savoir ce qu’ils voulaient atteindre des objectifs. C’était un métier, ça m’a plu, mais c’est pas tout de suite ce que j’ai voulu faire et j’ai commencé à faire du conseil.

J’ai rencontré des coachs, parler avec des coachs et je me suis, mais ce métier est formidable. Puis après, je me suis formé et je continue à trouver que ce métier est formidable parce que si tu veux, quand on est, quelqu’un a tout d’un coup débloqué quelque chose qu’il a bloqué pendant tant de temps et à partir vers autre chose et justement se connecter à sa pleine puissance.

C’est hyper gratifiant, au moins un peu l’impression d’avoir servi à quelque chose.

Sylvie Milverton
Ah, c’est super énormément. Je sais que les coachs qui m’ont qui m’accompagne et qui m’ont accompagné maintenant dans ce nouveau métier, vraiment ça? Oui, je pense l’impact et comment ça m’a aidé vraiment. On est reconnaissant et bon pour terminer, peut être, tu peux nous parler un peu de la international coaching week.

Qu’est ce qui va se passer et ou est ce que les personnes peuvent chercher les événements.

Denise Sin Blima
Alors écoute, parce que, comme il y en a dans tous les pays, en France, il y en a dans toutes les régions. Donc il y a beaucoup de choses. Ce qui est sûr, c’est qu’il en allant sur les sites, en fait soit des chapitres locaux, en fait, à toi, au pays, soit du site international, on va trouver tout le programme.

Donc, il y a des démonstrations qui sont proposées. Il y a des flash coaching. On appelle flash coaching en fait la possibilité de se faire er pendant une vingtaine de minutes sur un sujet pour découvrir ce que c’est que le coaching tu vas avant s’embarquer dans du coaching. Donc beaucoup de choses qui sont faites justement pour faire connaître le coaching et le rendre accessible.

Et j’ai même, en fait, je connais même des entreprises. Qui le font en interne, en fait, qui ont des coachs et qui en fait en profitent pour faire des événements autour du coaching. Donc les sites, c’est coach, fédération, point org pour le site international ou coach, c’est pas coach, c’est ce que moi c’est coaching fédération, point org ou coaching fédération point FR pour trouver toute la programmation autour de la coaching week.

Sylvie Milverton
Super. Merci beaucoup. On va mettre les liens dans les show notes et merci beaucoup. On a pris beaucoup de choses et on est inspiré et merci beaucoup pour la podcast et

Denise Sin Blima
merci Sylvie pour cette invitation.

Sylvie Milverton
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

Drop us an email at hello@lynxeducate.com. And if you’re looking for support on your talent development strategy, head over to Lynxeducate.com to learn more about our career mobility solution. That’s LYNX educate.com.

Transcript

Max Armbruster
I think finally, now that we have, everybody has a tool which is free. You know, ChatGPT is free, Gemini’s free, that can generate perfect resumes every time. Now, that might be the death of it. Finally.

Sylvie Milverton
Hi, I’m Sylvie Milverton, CEO of Lynx Educate. This is Talent is Everywhere. We are here to talk about how to keep talent and how to develop talent in order to build a strong business. We’ll interview leaders to hear their best experiences of how they invested in people.  So, my guest today is Max Armbruster, who is the CEO and founder of Talkpush, and is also French American just like me. So, we have this very nice thing in common. Max has been building a software for 15 years and building his company Talkpush for ten years. And I think what’s interesting is that he was a recruiter before starting software so he comes to this problem of recruitment and HR from a practitioner’s point of view, perhaps rather than from a technologist point of view, though he has a very cool technology, which we’ll see. Talkpush is a platform for recruitment automation and so today we’re gonna talk about how to spot and retain, hidden talent so why don’t we start with that question. Why do you think, Max, that traditional hiring criteria often fail to identify the right talent?

Max Armbruster
Thank you, Sylvie, enchanté. Merci de m’accueillir dans ton podcast. And, I was just thinking like French American. It’s a wonderful thing to be. But it’s also, it’s also a little bit bittersweet in the sense that. Truly, nobody really likes Americans and nobody really likes French people, so we’re, we’re at this weird.

Sylvie Milverton
Right, right. It depends, it depends where you go where, where you find friends and where you find enemies.

Max Armbruster
Yeah, so I used to think that I could switch from one to the other, to, to adapt to the crowd. But it turns out that there’s actually a lot of people who don’t like both. So.

Sylvie Milverton
And so really, actually, I’m also, I was born in Canada, so in fact, sometimes when I get in that awkward situation, I pull out the third nationality and it’s safe.

Max Armbruster
That’s nice. Yeah. Everybody likes Canadian, so you’re safe there. Yeah. So, your question was Yeah. The, the broken bit about, about recruitment. Well, you know, what we’re trying to solve is, is when you’re young and you’re applying for a lot of jobs. I, I don’t know if you’ve ever been unemployed. Me, I was unemployed like for a short amount of time, 20 plus years ago. And, I, I would, I would send like, you know, dozens of resumes every day, and sometimes I would look at a job description, I’d get really excited, and I thought to myself, as, you know, as a 22-year-old, I thought, well, I know I can nail this. I know I can do this, but I don’t have it on my resume. But if they only gave me a chance. You know, I know I could get this job and I know I could do a good job and, and, you know, nine times outta 10, I never even got a call back, an email or anything other than thank you for being in our database. So, yeah, I think, I think I, I’ve been trying to solve that problem in a way ever since, which is, you know, you should let talent talk to you and, and give, give them a chance, to shine during the application process, even if they don’t look good on paper. But practically, it’s hard to do.

Sylvie Milverton
Right? And a lot of people, you know, whether it’s like, don’t look good on paper or don’t exactly match ’cause they don’t exactly know what the job is. And so in fact, sort of organize your paper so that the person looking for you. You know, who knows what to pull up on your resume, you know, is a challenge. You can’t, it’s like we can’t read everybody’s mind.

Max Armbruster
Yeah. Yeah. And then that’s where the, the old cover letter used to come in. Right. Now if, if you ask for somebody to write a cover letter in 2025, I mean, the odds that this cover letter will be written by the human and not by ChatGPT are very low. It’s, it’s so easy to generate these documents at scale and I guess, you know, I’m a little bit in my, I, in my AI bubble. Maybe it hasn’t hit everybody yet, but I’m sure within a couple of years, cover letters will be completely a thing of the past because, and everyone will be able to write something absolutely perfect for every, every job. So, so that creates another problem. So now, so now how do you really know, you know, how do you really know what someone’s motivation is?

Sylvie Milverton
Yes. And I think the other thing that’s so interesting about AI, and I see this, you know, I’m not right now looking for a job. Obviously, but you see on LinkedIn so many people looking for jobs and it’s like with AI, on the one hand, it’s like reduced a lot of the friction, but we almost need it to like increase some of the good friction, like the idea that you post a job and you get 500 applicants, like all automated. To your point ChatGPT wrote the cover letter, the resume, you know, it’s all just looking for keyword. It’s you know, overwhelming to the person hiring and also back to the person applying. How do you stand out and how do you show like who you really are? Like it’s too easy to apply for jobs.

Max Armbruster
In, in a world where resumes and cover letters can be done, very cheaply and very perfectly by everyone, they’re obviously not a good screening method anymore. People have been saying, you know, the resumes are on the way out for a long time. And, you know. I think finally now that we have, everybody has a tool which is free. You know, ChatGPT is free, Gemini’s free, that can generate perfect resumes every time. Now, that might be the death of it finally, which is, there’s no more barriers to, you know, I used to make the, the joke or I don’t know if it’s a joke. I used to make the comment that. Well, unless you’re hiring somebody to write resumes, unless the job is actually to write resumes, why are you asking that for that document is the, unless you’re specifically hiring somebody to write resumes. But, but you know, actually now everyone can write resumes perfectly well, so even if you are writing, so that job wouldn’t exist. And, and, I, I, I work in this space, so. I know everybody’s trying to solve the problem. Some people are doing it by kind of going back in time and saying, we have to meet everybody face to face, you know, in sort of a, in a room with no access to any phones where we can look at them in the eyes and and interview them. And of course the technologists are trying to go in a different direction and, you know, we’re trying to find out a, a way we can, we can ramp up on the technology side so that we can use technology to screen candidates, and where we’re getting genuine answers. And, but it’s, it’s, it’s complicated,

Sylvie Milverton
Right? Yeah. So any pilots, I mean, yeah, we can see the specific example, but maybe like more broadly, like how, what do you. What is, in your opinion, you are building, this company, you know, the role of technology to enable an efficient hiring approach. Like if in, you know, for those of us, like a little bit, you know, related but outside, you know, beyond like words search in resumes, beyond looking at like what school, beyond, you know, those things and as you say, you know, young people who haven’t had all that experience. So how, what is your view of like the right. Or your conviction about the role of technology and enabling this approach.

Max Armbruster
So somebody who would be coming in from outside of this industry might say, I wanna hire the best person every time. And that statement is wrong, unless it’s, it is, you know, very well qualified. Because if it’s the best person as in went to the best university, went to the best school, worked for my competitor, that you know, that that may work at some level. But, but generally speaking, that’s not the best hire. The best hire is not the best person on paper. The best hire is the person who’s gonna perform well at that job for a long period of time. And so retention is really a key element. What is gonna be correlated with retention for your company? It might be, oh, actually we have, we have a pretty flexible work schedule and good benefits. So we’re gonna attract single moms and they’re gonna, single moms tend to stay with us longer and they’re happier. For example, you know, it might be a demographic like that, or it might be, you know, we. You know, it might be a, a, a psychograph, a, a psychographic, dimension where a certain, a certain mindset, a certain way of thinking matches well with the culture in that company. And, you know, it might be a, it might be a bro culture, it might be a girl culture, it might be, it might be a Chinese culture. And, and so. You know, we’ve been taught in talent acquisition that we should equalize, normalize, and eliminate, eliminate all bias. But sometimes I think that’s a little bit missing the point that, you know, companies are trying to build a culture where people are gonna feel at home and, and they’re gonna stay a long time. So I’m, I’m not advocating for screening through, you know, demographics, but I’m saying that. You know, a lot of the thinking for talent acquisition needs to shift from who’s a perfect fit on the job description to who’s gonna stay in this job a long time and, and perform well. And that’s, that’s the harder problem to solve. And you know, that that can only be done by, by digging into the, the candidate’s motivation and maybe a little bit their personal history.

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah. And also it’s almost like that the company, you know, you figure out what are your values and what are the kinds of people who are gonna fit well here and so that the best person, you know, entre guillemets, maybe isn’t the one that went to the fanciest school, but is the one who matches with like the way we do things here, and the one who matches well with the tasks that are required to complete, to complete this work, which mostly is a process that one doesn’t imagine can be well enabled by technology. But now, you know, with AI, you know, there’s lots of things. So I don’t know if we should try our little demo here where, Sam can check out if I’m gonna be good for a job. What do you think?

Max Armbruster
Yeah. Thank you for, thank you for being open to the suggestion, Sylvie, I, I would love for you to, to, to have a chat with Sam. Sam as I, I was telling you before the call is this, this AI who, which can interview candidates and, all that we feed Sam is the job description and in, in your case, I, I didn’t put the resume, I just put your phone number and your email and for the job description, we, I went, we went with the Formula One driver. I and which Sylvie, I I’ve met you in person. You’re, you’re the right size for a Formula One driver.

Sylvie Milverton
Small.

Max Armbruster
But I, I don’t know. Is that, is that a job where you think you could perform basically well?

Sylvie Milverton
That’s fine.

Max Armbruster
I don’t know if it.

Sylvie Milverton
I learned to drive in the, in the, late eighties, early nineties on a stick shift car. So maybe that has some skills. Let’s see. 

Max Armbruster
Right. So you got the right height, you know, stick shift I think, I think you’re a shoe in, yeah, my, I, I would love for you to, if you don’t mind, be interviewed in French ’cause we. I’ve done this demo many times in English, but we’ve released this product now in multiple languages. And, you know, I, I, you know, since, since as a fellow Franco American, I’d love for you to, to try it out in French, if that’s okay?

Sylvie Milverton
Yeah, let’s try. Let’s see how my car vocabulary is in French. It’ll be, it’ll be a good test.

Max Armbruster
Okay. So when you’re ready, I’ll trigger the call and then I’ll mute myself, while, while you talk on speaker phone. And hopefully, your mic will, will, will pick it up.

Sylvie Milverton
Great. All right. I’m ready.

Max Armbruster
Great. Yeah, it should take about five minutes and here we go

(Interview with Sam the AI recruiter)

Sylvie Milverton
Okay, that was good. I don’t know if I’m gonna be excellent for being a Formula One driver, but that is pretty good of the way it, you know, ask good questions and you can definitely get a sense of the person and their background.

Max Armbruster
Wow. Thanks. Thanks for playing along. Yeah, thank you for, for the feedback as well. And, it’s probably not gonna be used for Formula One drivers, but the, it’s just, at least we, we got the concept and, and,I think you, you, you know, you get a couple of minutes on the phone with somebody and naturally you have an instinctive understanding of who they are. And when I say instinctive, maybe another word is biased. So, you know, treasure’s grounds, nonetheless, if, if you give somebody a chance between, do you wanna listen to somebody for a couple of minutes or do you wanna look at their resume? To make a decision on who they wanna work with. I think for a younger person or for, you know, an entry level job, a lot of people will choose. I, I’d rather listen to them for a couple minutes. It’ll gimme a better, better sense for it.

Sylvie Milverton
And actually to get some real life stories about that. This reminds me, so I work with a, a, a assistant and she’s in the Philippines and I found her through, you know, one of these platforms that have, you know, hundreds, thousands of people on it. And we have an amazing working relationship, but the way I did it is very much like this, though, not really tech enabled. I had a really detailed job description of what I needed and then I had the people who I chose who looked like they could match, book a really quick call with me, 15 minutes, and that’s all it took to get the sense of like. Are they organized with their camera? Is their computer good? Do they, you know, come on time? Do we have a nice vibe? Has the level of English like, is this gonna work? And really quickly, so maybe it’s biased, but the bias was like. Do I want to work with you every day, which I think hiring is biased in some way ’cause you know, you’re inviting them into your life.

Max Armbruster
Yeah. Someone’s likability and compatibility is not something that you can outsource very well. it’s every, every individual manager, you know, has, has a certain inclination. So, I think the role of AI there is. Give me an unbiased, clean, fair assessment on these 2000 candidates, and tell me who has the right motivation and who’s got the right, the right profile. And, and I’ll take it from there. And, and at least I know that I’m starting off with a truly fair talent pool where I didn’t, I didn’t select based on. You know, a resume scoring, which may not be so relevant for the job that I’m hiring for. And, and I didn’t apply my, my human bias or, or my HR team’s bias to the screening by, by taking away people if they come from the wrong country or they’re, they’re in the wrong demographic profile. ’cause you know, there’s, there’s a lot of focus in EU about we’re both only on, on nous sommes tous les deux dans l’UE, et il y a beaucoup de législation à ce sujet. A lot of focus on the EU AI Act, which is saying that it has to be transparent, it has to be fair, et cetera, et cetera, and, and well documented but yeah, it, it’s, it’s for me, it’s, it’s very strange because the AI does what it’s told. If you tell the AI I’m looking for somebody who has experience in sales, it’s gonna ask that, you know, it’s not gonna ask that. And, and, you know by the way is gonna, is gonna score you higher if you’re a guy or if you’re, you know, 30 years old or something like that. Like, it doesn’t make sense because the AI just follows the instructions. In the case of what I’m doing, there have been ais in the past where they do a correlation analysis and they, they try to come up with a regression analysis. They try to come up with correlating factors. And so, you know, there’s been some bad press in the past about an AI favoring certain segments of the population based on their profile. But this is not how AI is built today. You know, today is built very purposely. Like, do this, get me this information, rank people that way. And it, it’s not gonna be looking for correlation where it doesn’t need to look for correlation. So it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna purposely eliminate candidates because they’re in the wrong demographic. You know what I mean? 

Sylvie Milverton
Right. And also I feel like it’s like a much more open, I mean, listen, we’re all biased in a way, and biased in a good way. Back to the culture like. Who did I hire as my assistant? Well, again, it had to match with like the way we work our culture, the things that are important to me, the measures of success. And like there’s a big world out there of lots of people and you know, not everyone is gonna match with that. And I can completely see how. You know, Sam, the AI recruiter could, you know, I didn’t have to make so many calls so I could just do it myself, but I could imagine that if I was hiring for a whole call center, hundred of people that I could, you know, train it to say, I’m looking for people with this sort of empathy who are organized in this sort of way, who organize their time in this, who have this sort of vibe when they come to work. You know, what are the, what are the values that we’re trying to, you know, show and what is the way that we work and. To somehow at scale have to do that. And again, I think in a five or 10 minute call you can find that plus some other things, you know, written. And whether it’s a resume or maybe more like a test task, like how can you check, does the person have the ability to do this or can they learn quickly? It seems fair.

Max Armbruster
Yeah. Yeah, and building this, this, this tool that you experienced just now it, it just took a couple of days from one of our product managers. It wasn’t even built by an engineer. So it’s very easy to build these things now with prompts and, and to tweak ’em in a certain way. So. You could, you could tweak it to be much more inquisitive, you know don’t cons. For example, I could tell the AI, don’t consider that the answer has been provided to you unless there’s a real world example to to, to support the facts. To support the statement. So, you know, the AI would know, okay, I’m not gonna move pass this question until I’ve tried two or three times to get the facts. Or, or on the other hand, you know, be, be effusive in your compliments to the candidate. Tell them how wonderful they are, if you wanna do something which is a little bit more salesy and like, you gotta come and work here and we love you kind of vibe, you, you can do it that way. So there’s all, all kinds of tweaking you can do. Well, but what’s nice about it is that you know.   . You can be you as an employer at scale and you can, you can, you can interview, you know, kind of going, tying it back to my problem when I was 22 years old, I could, I could get 10 interviews a day in a world where this, this AI became democratized and I’m sure I would’ve gotten a job a little bit sooner. If that happened.

Sylvie Milverton
Right. And it’s so interesting ’cause it’s like before AI, you know, the only tool we had was to figure like, how do you do this initial screening? It’s like, well look where you went to school or what you did. And you know, before I, now I have an MBA and I work in a business startup and I was a CFO, but before that I started studying French literature actually. And I have a master’s in French literature and my undergrad was in religious studies and humanities. And it was actually really hard. To get like, quote unquote a business job. But I mean, like my brain and my intelligence was no different, but the signal of my CV was like, oh, you’re somebody who wants to be a college professor. But I did not wanna be a college professor. And I think actually I would’ve been not a, a very bad college professor because I don’t love teaching and I don’t love managing students, and I don’t love a university. No, none of that. And so it’s interesting, like now we have so many more tools to be able to say like, what are your skills? What are your dreams? What are your interests? Instead of just saying like, did you go to this school and did you study this one thing? Which up until pretty recently was the only way that you could, you know, figure these things out.

Max Armbruster
I, I agree. I and, you know, I, I was just thinking about your, your background and then you went to do the MBA. I also have an MBA by the way, but, but ironically I have this rule in Talkpush where if anybody’s got a, if we get any candidates with an MBA, we don’t even consider them.

Sylvie Milverton
And so what are some other, just, do you have any like specific examples like where you’ve seen. Like some unconventional hires or like even at scale?

Max Armbruster
Well, the, you know, the, the two best hires I did in talk push on the, on the business side, on the engineer side for engineers, I still, still did pretty traditional hiring where, you know, we would, we would do a technical assessment and so on. But the two best hires I did on the business side, both were come coming from completely different industries. And they were, you know. One, one of them was, was running a gym. Another one was doing online education in, in Venezuela. And, you know, no software experience, no technology experience, nothing. I mean, on, on paper. They wouldn’t even have gotten an interview, but because when they applied, we, we collected their, their audio, we asked them open-ended question and, and so on. You know, we, we ended up hiring them because I, I, I. You know, they, they, they clearly stood out from the rest. And, and what’s great about hiring somebody from outside your industry who doesn’t have the credentials is not only you expose, you know, you have a much broader talent pool to choose from, but they’re more likely to stay just because they’re learning so much. You know, if, if they’re coming in and they’ve never worked in technology, if they’ve never worked in your environment, you know they’re gonna think. If, if they really are interested to move in that direction, then they’re gonna be so grateful for the opportunity that you’ve given them. And, you know, I, and, so yeah.

Sylvie Milverton
And I’ve had, I’ve had a similar, yeah, I’ve had a similar, a similar experience sometimes like, you know, where, where you least expect it. Yeah. And I go back to the same thing, like none all of these AI tools and all the way, it’s like, first you have to know. What are you looking for? And then when you realize what you’re looking for, and often what you’re looking for isn’t a school or a credential, it’s like, what is the output? I have a company, I, I need to hire someone because I have a problem I need to solve, and I need these tasks to get done, or someone to think through this or trying to achieve this outcome. So it’s like, that’s what I’m looking for, you know? And then what are the ways to find it? yeah, no, this may make total sense.

Max Armbruster
You know, I alternate on this problem of like, should you hire for culture or should you hire for skills? And it does feel more fair to hire for skills, but at the same time, in 2025, skills are becoming cheaper. You know, it’s easier to become an expert in 2025 because we all have access to these great mlm’s. And so I could pretend I’m an SEO expert, even though I know nothing about it. I could pretend I’m an anything expert at this point. If, and if I’m curious enough and hardworking enough, I could become that expert with enough help around me. So, so, I think in 2025, you have more than ever you have to hire for sort of the, the culture match and is this somebody who’s gonna love working here for a long time?and the skills are secondary. Like, we’ll, we’ll get to the skills eventually because you know, everybody can, can pick them up along the way. And, that, you know, a statement like that I didn’t think I would’ve made a few years ago because. Obviously skills seem like the more rational, rational Cartesian way of hiring. But, but, but these days, I, you know, kind the world is kind of being flipped. I think. I, yeah. I just saw the, the CEO of Replit this week who was announcing that he’s not gonna advise anybody to study engineering and coding anymore because, you know, everything can be coded by AI at this point. So, and, and he’s, he’s a guy who’s spent his whole life. You know, teaching people how to code. So it’s, it’s a very new and, yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it is a new one. New one.

Sylvie Milverton
I had a, a similar feeling the other day. I was, I’m building still, I’m building a very complicated Excel model, which I’ve spent like a lifetime developing this skill, and as I was doing it, I just had this feeling like I am still the Excel queen, and yet this is a skill, but in the next five years is probably gonna evaporate from a utility. But anyway, well, the same way that I know how to drive a stick shift car and I learned to type on a manual typewriter and I can rewind a VCR tape, I guess so will be the way, the way of the Excel clean. But it’s good. This is an amazing chat. Maybe you can just tell us if people wanna find you or find out more about Talkpush. Where, where can they look?

Max Armbruster
Wow. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Talkpush.com. And if you want to create your own Sam to do your own interviews. In English or in any other language, you can go to talk to Sam.AI and it, you can spin your, your own instance and you can start interviewing candidates free of charge. You get, you get your first a hundred minutes for free, so you can, you can play with a concept. It takes five minutes to activate and, you know, just, just a place to have fun and, and, and see what the AI can do.

Sylvie Milverton
Amazing. We’re gonna, we’re gonna check it out. Well, thanks Max. This was a, a great pleasure.

Sylvie Milverton
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow-on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

Drop us an email at hello@lynxseducate.com. And if you’re looking for support on your talent development strategy, head over to lynxeducate.com to learn more about our career mobility solution. That’s LYNX educate.com.

Transcript

Brandon Carson
AI is not just technology; it is wholesale transformation. That’s what it’s bringing to the workplace and also to our lives.

Sylvie Milverton
Hi, I’m Sylvie Milverton, CEO of Lynx Educate. This is Talent is Everywhere. We are here to talk about how to keep talent and how to develop talent in order to build a strong business. We’ll interview leaders to hear their best experiences of how they invested in people.

So today we have a special guest, Brandon Carson, who is currently the Chief Learning Officer at Docebo. And before that, VP of Learning at Starbucks and Walmart, and then learning leader at Delta, Home Depot and a few others, also mentioned you’re the founder of L&D Cares, which is a lovely nonprofit dedicated to offering no cost, you know, coaching and mentoring to talent development professionals. So, thank you, Brandon for joining us.

Brandon Carson
It is my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Really excited to talk to you today.

Sylvie Milverton
Uh, great. And so today I’m like actually super excited about our conversation. Um, we’re prepping for this. I really talk about why the CLO Chief Learning Officer role needs to change, why you feel it needs to change, uh, due to the impact of AI.

And I thought we could anchor the conversation around a publication that you recently authored with Marcus Bernhard called the AI Driven Workforce, the CEO’s roadmap. It’s a competitive advantage, um, and you go through, you know, six actions to prepare for the new era of work. And I love like a practical podcast.

So maybe we’ll, you know, dig into some of those specific things. Um, people can, uh, use. Um, you open the article with some big numbers like PWC forecasting, the AI will add 16 trillion to the global economy, which is like more than 10% by 2030. You know, CEOs from World Economic Forum talking about 39% of workforce skills will be, you know, outdated in the next really, you know, few years.

So just pausing from your perspective, you know, how, what do you feel like when you hear those numbers and how does, how right away did that inspire your thinking?

Brandon Carson
Yeah, we’ve been actually having this conversation because it’s a great question. Silly. We’ve been having this conversation for a few years now about this surge of transformation that’s been happening.

I mean, we’ve had. A couple of decades of the technology tsunami that’s been overwhelming us just coming at us so, so quickly. We’ve also had a global health crisis a few years ago that we all remember as the pandemic. And so, we’ve had all of these rapid accelerated changes and transformations, uh, in that, that impact work and how work gets done.

In transformation is itself hard work, and it usually brings around a paradigm shift. And so, we’ve been going through this journey of the digital transformation, and then all of a sudden, we experience a surge in acceleration around artificial intelligence. And so, the three huge conflating forces that came together to enable this, right?

It was just the ability of computing to have the power. It does the, the move to the cloud that we did over the last several decades and, and our, um, access to big data to train all of these AI models on all of this has come together to send us even more exponentially into massive transformation, if you will.

And so, the paradox of that is that not only are is this is AI becoming a general-purpose technology, it will become one, um, that’s going to reshape how work is done. And so, what we’re talking about in this article and the article that just came out is the introductory article.

There will be a series of articles based on each of the six actions that we’re saying business executives should take to future ready their workforce and drive their competitive advantage for their business as AI reshapes work. So, there’ll be a seven series, seven article series that eventually comes out. The first article’s out now.

And what we’re really talking about in this first article is setting the stage for, okay, we’re in this transformation. Every company now is on a path of maturity as it applies to artificial intelligence, automation and intelligence in the workflow. Uh, all of these things that are conflating to really drive the reshaping or re-architecting of work that I was talking about.

And the current paradox that the workforce is undergoing is that every half year skills are changing. And even, even as they change for that period of time, which is about six months, a lot of those skills are still necessary and useful. So, this paradox of change puts skills in flux and how we train the workforce historically as we front load them with learning, and then we expect them to take that front load of learning into action in the workplace.

And with so much change happening and going on, that’s just really not sustainable anymore. So, what we’re saying in this article is, look, here are six actions that we recommend you take to make sure not only are you rewiring your workforce, but you’re rewiring your business as well and we think these are really important actions to take to, uh, prepare for the age of AI and ensure that you are ready as the new era of work changes.

Sylvie Milverton
And, uh, you also speak about, um, AI as a workplace transformation rather than simply a technological one. And I suppose, I mean, it makes sense if we’re talking about like how work gets done, but you know, more concrete, like what, what is the difference with the technological change of AI? That, that it’s more than just new skills and new tools, but it’s like so fundamental, um, that it’s like the biggest like transformation that we’ll all go through.

Brandon Carson
Here’s the thing. Yes. This is not technology. AI is not just technology. It is wholesale transformation. That’s what it’s bringing to the workplace and also to our lives. If you think about it, we’ve always undergone transformation, though. I mean, it’s not new to humans. The acceleration and exponential advancement of this one is unique.

In that, if you think about it, it took the telephone over 80 years to become ubiquitous. It took the internet about 40 years for us to wire almost the entire globe on the internet. We sold a million palm pilots in six months, but guess what? We sold a million iPhones in 24 hours. And then, as we all know, when ChatGPT was released, we got to a hundred million users in just three months.

And so, you’ve seen this, uh, rapid acceleration of general-purpose technology, and, and humans usually accelerate their, um, connection to general purpose technologies when it does actually improve their life or impact, impact their life positively.

And so, what we’re seeing with this transformation is, um, it’s completely rearchitecting how we think about work, and a lot of that’s not necessarily just driven by the acceleration of AI over the last several years. A lot of it is also driven by going through the recent pandemic and rethinking what we want from work and what we want work to mean to us, and we have that opportunity in this short window of time.

To make those declarations and you see we’re having those conversations. Uh, between employer and employee on those basic fundamentals of work, we hear about return to office and do we wanna, how do we want to conduct work? So, yes, this is a transformation. It’s not just driven by AI, but AI is definitely the accelerant in it and it’s uncomfortable to be in transformation at times.

We must rethink patterns and we have to learn new things and we have a fire hose of those things coming at us, and it just shows the challenges that we face when it comes to the new paradigm shift, right? Of work and everything it means. So, this, this. Exposes. A lot of the vulnerabilities too, in our systems and in our infrastructures in today’s corporate learning functions aren’t really built for radical change and the AI economy.

Tells us that and is showing us that the most important workforce skill is to keep learning new skills. And so, this will more than likely be the single largest job transformation in human history. And we can see that, um, as long as the accelerants are there, as long as LLMs don’t get too commoditized or as long as we can keep building.

Exponentially on what AI means for us, what intelligence in the workplace means for us, then this will impact all jobs and more than likely impact nuances within jobs, the tasks that we do versus the tasks that we have in intelligence do and to augment us as we go through our, our day-to-day work. So yes, I would say this is a transformation, but it isn’t necessarily unlike.

Past transformations we’ve had in the 18 hundreds during the first industrial revolution. You know, we brought machines forward, for example, in construction to help us in building buildings and commercial construction and doing it faster, and it took a lot of those unique, specific craftsmen like skills.

Away from people and they had to learn new skills. And we’ve done that throughout human history. So, the, the challenge for us will be how do we go on this journey in a way that makes the most sense for both. The business and the workforce and our quality of life and those kinds of things, and that’s one reason we talk about this, this as transformation rather than just another technology being integrated into the workplace.

Sylvie Milverton
And I guess, yeah. I love that you say that because I feel like there’s such cliches. I mean, part of it is true, like the speed of transformation, like unprecedented speed of change, which if you watch a video from, you know, 1980, they say to 1990, they say now, and it’s true, like when we look at the uptake, as you said, like of ChatGPT, certain things are going faster, but certain transformations like this is just like at, you know, as technology evolves, we, you know, need to learn new things, which shows, given that this one is going fast, you know how important it is for learning leaders. Um, and I’m wondering why do you bring up this idea of the difference between like AI literacy and AI fluency? Um, why was that important to like, think about that difference and, you know, getting it, it, um, integrated into an organization?

Brandon Carson
Yeah, it’s really, I mean, it’s a really good question, Sylvie, the, here, here’s the bottom line. We are, you know, working really it assertively, if you want the word I’m looking for. CEOs and executives are assertively integrating intelligence into the workplace because they’re seeking two things from their massive investments that they’re making in automation and intelligence in the workplace.

And they’re going to seek a return on that as quickly as they can. And so, there’s, if you ask any CEO, they’re really focused on productivity and efficiency in the work now to get to gain those returns from the investment they’re making. And what we’re saying is, let’s take the workforce. On this journey as well, so that we can build the, the literacy, the AI literacy if you will, so that the maximum optimization and return can be had on what, you know, what the strategies are that are being formulated, uh, to, to use this, um, investment, if you will, in the right ways that the companies are making.

So, companies are investing heavily. And that is not at parody though with their investment in skilling the workforce. And so, what we have to do is make sure that the tension between those two, you know, doesn’t, uh, doesn’t result in that lack of return, if you will, because although you think about, oh, we’re gonna bring a lot of automation and, and intelligence into the, into the workplace.

The actual workforce still needs to be kind of that, what we call that human in the loop, right? We have humans in the loop here who will need to work with it and maximize its potential. And we do know though that the difference isn’t the technology, it’s the foundation of AI literacy that will enable the innovation that comes out of all of this intelligence and automation bringing into the, or coming into the work workplace.

So, but if you really look at it, only 4% of companies that are investing in intelligence in the workplace and, and automated systems and AI in the workplace. Only 4% of them are developing AI capabilities that themselves are generating business value. So, if you look at gen AI, as those tools become increasingly accessible to the workforce, the greatest threat isn’t, you know, malicious actors operating, you know, on their own.

That is a threat, but the but the bigger threat is a workforce. That early adopts or gets creative with this, this, um, with these tools and without adequate knowledge or guardrails, starts using it. And we’ve seen that in, in some early examples. There’s a law firm that, you know, we’ve all heard about the several lawyers used ChatGPT.

In creating some of it, some of their arguments that they actually submitted into court, and it was discovered that they had used ChatGPT on all of that, which, you know, as we know, AI in its current state, especially gen AI in its current state, can still hallucinate or not everything is, is accurate and it was actually citing cases that didn’t exist in those types of things.

So, every company needs to take their workforce on the journey from AI literacy to AI fluency. And they also need governance built around, uh, their AI systems that they bring into the, into the workplace. So, what we’re saying is a robust foundation for success in integrating AI into the workplace requires you to also develop core competencies and clear oversight structures for your, for your workplace and your workforce. And that AI literacy will equip employees with the essential knowledge to interact safely with AI.

Sylvie Milverton
Mm-hmm. And then, yeah, and then that thinking of L&D as like the, you know, ideal function in a company like playing a critical role. Um, you know, in driving all these things. Because as you say, the first step, it’s like using it in your own job, but then thinking even, you know, about business, um, development strategy.

And another thing I like in your article. It’s also like how can learn the chief learning officer or the learning function like be this aligning, you know, you have one like align training solutions with business development strategy, consolidate scattered initiatives under strategic alignment and governance.

Like do you see this difference? like that, now the learning officer can have a different role in somehow bringing this together and I mean different, even like if I think great resignation and other recent times when like HR and learning is so critical to, to business success. Like how do you see this sort of alignment and consolidation role now?

Brandon Carson
Yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity for the executives at companies to really look across their enterprise and take a broader kind of click up view, if you will, of how they need to become a learning company overall because like I said earlier, the, the key skill in this era is to keep learning new skills.

And so how do you take your HR and learning function from a somewhat transactional, uh, activity based, cost center model, operating model to one that really focuses on the broader view of driving competitive advantage in the workforce. And so, I, and, and you know, those, and that can sound a little jargony in some respect, but what it says is that the.

It’s no longer really about job task training and a lot of learning organizations are set up to drive job task training, uh, which will be democratized and federated more when you have an agentic system that will be integrated into the work to augment performance support in that moment of need. That’s, that’s really will.

That, that really is what will be a powerful driver of productivity and efficiency and innovation in a lot of respects, uh, in the workforce as they’re doing their work. We’ve talked about embedding, learning into the flow of the work for years. The problem with that is HR in L&D have always looked at.

That as an overlay to the existing work structures of both physical and digital work structures. And what we’ve done is we’ve gone into these work structures regardless of whether or not the work structures were really designed appropriately. We’ve just placed an overlay, we call it performance support or you know, whatever names we have for it, but it could be a deficient work system already.

But we have just provided an overlay onto that to provide performance support, job aids, you know, these kinds of things. Or literally shoulder to shoulder, standing there showing people how to do things right? And we’ve called that embedding, learning into the flow of the work. The opportunity we have in front of us though is to more deeply embed learning into the actual work construct itself.

And to help redesign how the work gets done and to have L&D and HR, uh, in that conversation as primary architects of redesigning those work structures for, because what we wanna do, and John Hagel talks about this a lot, a lot of our work constructs are structures, both physical and digital to a large degree.

Are still based on the manufacturing age operating model of kind of, you know, building widgets and like workers are building widgets and they’re doing repeated tasks over and over. Well, automation and intelligence take that away from the humans. So, we have a great opportunity here to move out of supporting a, uh, an outdated and outmoded way of working and way of training people in the work to building in the intelligence into the work systems that motivate the workforce to learn while they’re working and to provide them the augmented support they need. And, and we’ll see a lot of this manifest itself when we get agentic systems integrated into the flow of the work. And that’ll be a first catalyst, if you will, for, for evolving how we align our training solutions with the business outcomes that we need to drive value.

And I really think, and we talk about this in the article, we really do think that, um, this is going to get down to competitive advantage for businesses because businesses with a future ready workforce that are, you know, getting that motivation to learn and are getting that augmented support in the work and are being paired with agents in doing their work and separating tasks and letting humans focus more on the innovative and creative components that will go to competitive advantage because the businesses that do that first will take products to market faster, for example, will build solutions that customers benefit from faster.

And, and that adoption, that rapid adoption speed is going to really, uh, you know, differentiate uh, companies from each other. And so, what we’re saying is similar to back in the day when we had, you know, when Covid was occurring and we realized, oh, our global supply chains. Are very vulnerable to things like pandemics. And, you know, we noticed most of our, all of a sudden, we learned most of our prescriptions, our medicine was, you know, originating from supply chains in China. And when everything shuts down, it’s really hard to get the supply chain moving again. And so, then there was a, an effort to build resilience into supply chains and to rethink supply chains.

And a lot of that work, although it takes a while to do, it, takes several years to do these kinds of things. That work is going to build a moat around a lot of companies so that they can kind of future proof themselves, if you will. You can’t predict disasters at every level, right? But you can, you can do things to help arm yourself for, um, you know, unknown consequences that may happen. What we, we know this is coming and we know this is going to re-architect how work gets done, so let’s rethink the role of the learning leader. Let’s rethink the role of HR in L&D across the enterprise. Realize that they don’t need a seat at the table as my friend Mark Ramos likes to say, they are the table and so, let’s bring them into the right level of discussions as we re-architect work, and then we can build in that augmented support into those actual work constructs and work environments. And so that’s what we’re talking about. When we say it’s really important to align training solutions with the business development strategy, right, and even to consolidate, um, you know how we look at training across the enterprise and there are some companies who are doing this now, the rethinking their HR in L&D functions and elevating them to really drive more of the employee experience. And a part of that is also how work is, uh, designed and rolled out to the workforce.

Sylvie Milverton
Mm-hmm. And I love that. Yeah. That idea. Not a seat at the table, but you know, they are the, the table and this whole idea of like AI is, you know, enhancing performance support, augmented performance support. Like I can really relate, you know, like here I am, like CEO of a startup. Like I’ve never done this job before. Okay. I’m getting good at it. But then I, every day, every day I do the things that I’ve never done before that I don’t really know how to do or that I need help with.

Um, and little by little I’m like, you know, using different AI tools to help me and it just. Actually, a joy to have, you know, assistance to do just certain tasks or to think through like, what is the outcome I want of this thing? Or what’s this technical thing I have to do? Or how could I even approach this problem? Or, you know, without having to like, you know, call someone or look on LinkedIn or who else do I know and organize a call. And it’s definitely made me be able to learn things faster. So, I definitely see the vision you have of like, you know how you can use these tools and, you know, kind of create that environment where people know where to go and that we’re, you know, putting a structure around, you know, that kind of, um, that kind of support.

Uh, it’s actually like super exciting. And I’m wondering, you know, we’re talking about like the change role, the CLL, so like what about you? Like, okay, you’re now working on a, a tech provider, so it’s, you know, different maybe than working in some of the, um, you know, Walmart or Starbucks, but still, like, what are you like doing differently now in your job than you did five years ago? Um, you know, even just maybe in the past few months, like how are, how has this impacted your day to day?

Brandon Carson
Yeah, I love that. Uh. Question what? I started my career in Silicon Valley and as the internet was rising, right, and the internet was becoming what it became, and it, it was another one of those inflection points candidly, uh, where we knew everything about work was going to change. We were looking at, I mean, it was like the Wild West in some regard. I was in Silicon Valley during this time. It was very heady. Times. And, but we knew that the change was going to bring about, you know, transformational, uh, shifts, if you will. And, and look what’s happened in the last, you know. Almost 30 years with that. Right.

And it’s, it’s pretty wild. And I was involved in tech back in the, you know, back in those days in Silicon Valley and worked for tech companies primarily because that’s, you know, that’s who was hiring me at the time because there was so much growth going on. And then I went more into just the larger corporate world for, um. You know, the after that and spent a lot of time navigating the complexities and complications of work in some of the world’s largest companies. Right. As it as it was evolving, you know, and, and we have to understand too, the impacts of these changes over the last 20 to 30 years. It’s not like, oh, some change happens and then everything is fine, and then you go along for a while until another change coming comes candidly It’s like this change has been consistent and concurrent, and so it’s, it’s really, it’s really challenging when you have, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these larger corporations have had real challenges in updating their infrastructure and gaining the right investment areas and taking risks where, you know, in some regard, I remember back in the day, we were thinking, well, will the internet really be good for training?

I, you know, the bandwidth problem? You know, so sometimes you have to take risks and sometimes they don’t work out and then, but a lot of times they do. Right? And then you have that, uh, competitive advantage that we talk a lot about. So, it. It’s, uh, I navigated that complexity and those complications, but I really had a desire to get back into tech, especially Ed Tech, which is, there’s so much going on in this space right now, which is mapping the future, and, and then work with companies to help them on the journey to transformation that candidly, every company is going is on this journey. They have different levels of maturity on the journey. They have different levels of needs, and obviously all contexts are different. So, in this role, I get to work with our customers in our potential customers on helping them define what their unique journey is to, drive the transformation that’s occurring in the work. And it’s interesting having been in this career for 20 plus years, almost 25 years now, I’ll say, like I said earlier, this is the toughest time to be in this practice, but it’s also one of the most magical times because there’s just so much promise that can be, uh, brought by a lot of this technology that’s happening and the transformation it’s bringing.

Because if you think about it, people who look back on this time, 50 years from now, a hundred years from now, they’re going to look at us and go, wow, that was pretty wild that humans did that kinda work for so long. And then automation took a lot of that toil and trouble away from them so that they could focus on solving the bigger challenges, you know, climate change and cancer and all of these things that humanity really needs to solve. And so, I’m excited about it, getting back into this space where I can, uh, work with multiple clients, lots of our clients, on helping them through their journey. Uh to their, their transformation. And it was fine when I was the CLO or the learning leader at these other companies working through our own context but I’m really excited now about how we are building. We’re constructing what we call AF first learning platform and helping our companies, our customers, redefine what it means to be a learning company in today’s age.

Sylvie Milverton
Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. And um, yeah, it is. I find it the same thing. It’s like super exciting and inspiring to work on these problems. Um, yeah. Now in this critical time, yeah, it’ll be interesting what our, what our kids think later, um, what we had built. Um, and so what, what are your favorite, like one or two, like AI tools, uh, or different hacks that you use in your day-to-day? You who are very techie and walk around with multiple iPads and phones and other in your day to day?

Brandon Carson
And sadly enough, I have like three phones. I have the RayBan Smart glasses. I just go, to love because you can just be looking at something and ask it what it is. I mean, I love this sort of overlay onto my physical world of this technology that supports me in the moment, but it doesn’t kind of overload you, you know, and that candidly, this, I’m addicted to my phone and so I’m trying to wean myself off of that a bit. Um, but the tools are really great. When you think about what’s available to you, I do a lot of time, a lot. I spend a lot of my time writing. I create content, um, creating presentations, for example, or sharing information. Like we’re doing here. And it’s kind of funny on that article I was talking about that we submitted, we submitted it to the, uh, editor and it’s kind of funny, one of the comments that came back said, well, I wanna, I wanna change these two lines because it just sounds like AI wrote it.

I laughed when I got that edit back because I’m like, AI didn’t write any of this article, but like what impact is AI having on us when some of us think that, oh, that sounds like AI wrote it. Right? And so, I. It’s, it’s, we’re in an interesting time right now where, where we’re integrating a lot of tools into how we work now and exploring and discovering and figuring things out. Um, but these AI assistants are lovely because you can brainstorm with them and you can have conversation with them. And now that they’re, they have memory, they can remember who you are, they get to know you in your context. And then you think about when the when the age agentic systems really come forward to help us with multiple tasks and doing things, and they get to know us individually, that’s going to have a significant impact on leadership development and how we, how we build leadership capability across organizations and stuff like that. It really is going to be the manifestation of hyper individualized care and attention and learning and conversation and back and forth. So, I’m using those, you know, the Gen AI assistant, Claude’s one of my favorites. Um, but I, I have yet to do too much writing with them, I’m asking them basic questions, but if I go into writing mode, I’m still kind of old school where I just bring up my word processor.

Sylvie Milverton
I think writing requires like some level of soul, but I don’t know. I haven’t yet felt it from AI one until I started using, I use perplexity a lot, especially I keep, I have done a lot of Excel. Um, I dunno. What are the different metrics for knowing like when your startup has fully succeeded. My one will be when I am hired someone to do the Excels instead of me. Um, but so I use perplexity to figure out all these really complicated formulas that I don’t remember or ever knew how to do it. It’s super helps. Um, and another one I like is called fixer.ai, where it like manages my inbox for me. It really helps organizes and drafts and, I mean, I still write the mails obviously, but it kind of keeps me, keeps me organized. Um, so those, those are a few.

Brandon Carson
I love that one too. And if you think about it, if we were to probably list the biggest scourge of the last 30, 40 years, right? In the workplace, it might be email because I can remember Sylvie life before email in the workplace, and I remember the first time I saw it when my boss. Showed it to me. She’s like, you’ve gotta look at this thing and this is fantastic. It’s called CC mail. We can literally email people and, and work. And I’m like, and it was amazing. We were like, wow. But now look at the load that it, we spend on average 37% of our workdays in email and 50% of our work is our workday is spent in meetings and email when you think about it, right? And so has that given us what we really need and if AI and if agent systems can help us with that. Hallelujah. I’m all over that.

Sylvie Milverton
Right, exactly. I guess it’s better than when we used to write a, what? A, a mimeograph. Mimeograph thing that you’d have to mail. Mail around. Um, now Brendon, this has been such a pleasure and you have so many smart ideas and I love reading your article. So, if other people wanna find it, where do you recommend that they go? We’ll also link in the show notes, of course.

Brandon Carson
Yeah, right now it’s being published. Like I said, it’s a seven-part series. The first part is out. Now it’s being published by ATD Association for Talent Development in their ATD Talent Development Leader blog. And so, you’ll link to it, but if you just go to td.org and uh, you can search for the AI powered workforce, a CEO’s roadmap to competitive advantage. Not an easy title, but the AI powered workforce, a CEO’s roadmap to Competitive Advantage. You’ll find the article there and obviously it’s free for everyone to look at, and we’ll have subsequent posts for the six actions we recommend, uh, on a three-week cadence. So, bookmark it and you’ll get to see when the, uh. Articles all come out.

Sylvie Milverton
Amazing. Well, thank you so much.

Brandon Carson
Thank you. It’s great talking to you.

Sylvie Milverton
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talent Is Everywhere. Make sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, and give us a follow-on LinkedIn to continue the conversation on all things career mobility and talent development. Is there a topic you’d love for us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d recommend?

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