Getting UNSTUCK at Work, with Lia Garvin

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Dr. Pelè: (00:04)

Hello everyone. This is Dr. Pele, and it is my pleasure today to introduce you to Lia Garvin. Lia Garvin is a leader at Google and she plays various roles. She’s played roles in the operations area, she’s done work with the human capital area in terms of all kinds of things, inclusion, helping people feel like they get the right experiences at their organization. But today, we are excited to talk to you, Lia, about the world of work and the transitions that are happening for so many of us. So as we jump straight into that topic, and also, spoiler alert, you’re writing a book, I want to hear all about that. But before we jump into that topic, could you just lead us straight into what the big problem is? And then from there, we’ll come back out and talk a little bit about how you fit into that world of problems that we have today. What’s the big problem today?

Lia Garvin: (01:00)

Yeah. So thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. As you mentioned, I’ve done a lot of work on diversity and inclusion and on helping teams and organizations operate effectively. I think the biggest challenge I’m seeing is all of these transitions we’ve gone through through the pandemic, moving from what felt like two weeks working from home… And this is to caveat people working from home specifically, that’s the experience that I’ve had and my perspective. Working from home two weeks, then it was two months, then it was six months, then it was a year, then it was 18 months. And I feel like we haven’t really marked each of these transitions. And my hypothesis is that this is fueling some of the discontent that’s fueling the great resignation.

Lia Garvin: (01:46)

So that is my challenge I want to solve, is how to support people in wanting to stay or wanting to come back to work. Because I think we can only sprint a marathon for so long until we say, okay, I got to do something else. This is not for me. So that’s what I want to tackle.

Dr. Pelè: (02:06)

That is a very big problem to try to tackle. I have to say, it’s a powerful concept, this whole the great resignation. Literally, this is happening right before our eyes. And as you said, we’re not really tracking this very well. It’s just occurring. It reminds me of the boiling frog phenomenon, when you put a frog in cold water and you slowly raise the temperature, the frog will not jump out because it doesn’t know that it’s dying. So it’s almost like you’re saying this great resignation is a problem that maybe we’re not really getting a grasp on. Is that true?

Lia Garvin: (02:43)

Exactly. I was reading 4.3 million people left jobs in August alone. That was a couple weeks ago, basically. We’re totally in the midst of it. And what was surprising to me was after people started becoming more vaccinated and after things were opening up, this is when people started leaving more and more. And it showed me, hey, wait a second. As things start to return, if we will, we’ll debunk that today, return to normal or go back, this still kept happening. And I think that was really surprising to a lot of people. To your point, we’re in the midst of it. Are we doing the right things we can do to be preventing it and to be welcoming people back and making our teams and companies feel like destinations?

Dr. Pelè: (03:28)

Lia, tell us a little bit about how you became chosen for this role for the book you’re going to tell us about. What in your life story or your business path brought you to this point where this topic is so important and you’re the person to solve it?

Lia Garvin: (03:45)

Yes. Well, I’m a non-engineer working in tech, which is an interesting experience. Which has given me a unique lens of first, where can I add value in a space that you can feel a lot of imposter syndrome? Or should I be more technical? Or should I have gone this other path? And my roles in tech have been shaped around, like I said, team operations, program management, driving programs and deliverable schedules.

Lia Garvin: (04:14)

What I kept seeing team after team was the things getting in people’s way from being successful, finishing their work, finishing things on time. It wasn’t like they weren’t working hard or they didn’t know what to do. It was the interpersonal stuff. All the people things that were happening under the surface. And I kept bringing them up and saying, hey, wait a second. This thing’s late because these two people didn’t talk to each other or because these people roles and responsibilities aren’t clear. And in my early career, I was told, hey, focus on the work, not the people’s stuff. And I didn’t agree. I did not agree.

Lia Garvin: (04:46)

I think after working deep in product teams for many, many years, I said I need to pivot. I want to take another lens. I want to prove this hypothesis that if you figure out how to create more inclusive environments, how to get people talking to each other, that they will then work better, they will deliver higher quality products. We will all be better off holistically.

Lia Garvin: (05:12)

So it’s funny. I still work on the tech side. I do what I call rogue HR, working within the tech teams, within product teams, because it really establishes some credibility and trust that I understand the unique struggles around product development and product design. But I know that at the surface is that if people aren’t talking to each other, if people feel excluded, that’s going to get in the way of everything else.

Dr. Pelè: (05:37)

What a powerful perspective. It reminds me of another analogy. Boy, I’m full of analogies today. But you just made me think of the goose and the golden egg. Most organizations, as you’ve said, are focused on the golden egg, the outcomes, the sales results, the marketing results, the business results. And they forget that they got to take care of the goose, the people, right? And you’re basically saying that the central theme of your work has been, how can I help people understand the importance of people? And of course, you’ve earned that credibility because you do speak their language, but you want to help them start to speak people. Right?

Lia Garvin: (06:19)

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And gleaning what I’ve learned from all my different experiences in these challenges, actually the foundation of my book that you mentioned, I will show, give people a sneak peek.

Dr. Pelè: (06:31)

Yeah. Unstuck. We’ll talk about that. I want to talk about that very soon.

Lia Garvin: (06:35)

Yeah. It’s the collection of these things that keep happening to us that we don’t realize are really getting in the way of the bigger things, like you say. We’re focusing on one thing when the other thing is really getting in the way from being successful.

Dr. Pelè: (06:50)

Yeah. If I may ask, is there a mindset difficulty? And I’m sure it’s not only engineers or business people or programmers. Is there a mindset block that doesn’t allow people to see all the intangible relationships they have with each other are the business? That’s the whole point. Why is it that we don’t see that?

Lia Garvin: (07:16)

I love that question. I think there’s a perception that focusing on the interpersonal dynamics slows us down, which could not be more of a myth than anything possible. Because when we’re not on the same page, we go the wrong direction. We have to do so much redo work. Or we find out another team is doing the exact same thing as we are a few doors down. I think the mindset myth is really that focusing on people makes us go slower, or it’s not important, or that it’s somewhat secondary to working on… That it doesn’t have anything to do with business results. And I think it’s becoming more and more clear that’s not the case. But when people want to move really fast or when anything else comes up, it can go by the wayside.

Lia Garvin: (08:05)

This is what I saw happen at the start of the pandemic, was a lot of work around diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging was put on the back burner. We felt like we were in survival mode. And I heard many companies tabling things around inclusion thinking, well, we can’t have team socials, so we’ll just wait on doing this. And my mentality is inclusion is about how we work. The other stuff, and I think we’ll talk about this later, is secondary. And so if we’re in survival mode, so to speak, that’s when we have to be including more than ever. And again, it’s that mindset myth that somewhat ensuring people are included is an extra thing that we then only do when we have all the other things covered and a little bit of extra time on our hands.

Dr. Pelè: (08:52)

It reminds me of how the first areas that usually get cut in organizations when things are tough are areas like development of people. When it’s like you think, wait a second. The people are the ones that will get anything else created. Why not keep focusing on getting our people better? Let’s shift a little bit and maybe define clearly how change could happen. And we’ll get to the specifics of how you propose change. But what’s the path from here to there? We know the problem now. How do we get out of it?

Lia Garvin: (09:30)

In terms of this theme of marking transition, I think somewhat back to the mindset shift question is that this is all temporary. I think we need to make peace with that. There is a lot of unknowns. We will continue to be in a period of unknowns. Because even if, let’s say, things go back to a somewhat state of normal, I’m not going to use that word really, but next week. Well, you still have to figure out what does hybrid work look like? Where are people located? People are generally not located all in the same office. They might be all over the world. So you’re still having remote interactions. You’re still having some days, people are in office versus at home. And so I think thinking that we’ll get to some phase that is done is the opposite of the mindset we have to have. And so I think what this roadmap looks like is first accepting we’re going to be in an experimentation mode for the indefinite future.

Lia Garvin: (10:29)

I’ve been researching a lot about gen Z and the workplace and behaviors. And it’s interesting because things like flexibility, purpose, wanting meaning in your work, wanting both work flexibility and location flexibility, wanting an inclusion centered company. These are things that that generation wants. And so what we’re being pushed to right now, it’s like we were pushed faster than we thought we would be, but it was inevitable. And so I think getting on the train of this was already coming, we have to think differently about how we’re working, how we’re thinking about these things like purpose and flexibility and inclusion, and making them a priority. Because people are not going to come back if those aren’t values. And they’re not going to join as the generations get more into entering the workforce either.

Dr. Pelè: (11:21)

You mentioned a very powerful phrase when you said inclusion centered companies. I think there’s a definition out there in the world that puts inclusion almost exclusively in the diversity camp, equity and things like that. But it sounds like you have a wider definition around your use of the word inclusion, which may even be part of your book. But tell us, what do you mean by inclusion?

Lia Garvin: (11:53)

I mean that exactly as you’re saying. It is just the way we work. So when we think about how we run meetings, when we think about how we make decisions, obviously how we hire, but it’s every aspect of how we operate, that it is a core priority. In many companies, making money would be. This is the point of the work.

Lia Garvin: (12:17)

There’s actually three aspects to inclusion that I’ve found to be when these things are true, people feel like they really belong. And first, that’s having access to information and being part of the decision making. You’re hired to a team for a reason, and that’s to be in the know and to be able to contribute. And often, it’s the perspectives of people there are fewer of in the room that we need to hear the most, because they’re going to challenge assumptions.

Lia Garvin: (12:44)

So the second one is being encouraged to take risks. And this is the foundation of psychological safety. It’s recognizing that the cost of mistakes can be higher for people in underrepresented groups, so we need to make it even safer for people and not have hyper scrutiny around mistakes or looking for things to nitpick on. Those are drivers towards imposter syndrome that we have full control over not contributing to.

Lia Garvin: (13:08)

And then the third thing that I see that really fosters a sense of inclusion is recognizing all kinds of work. Not letting a team or a company fall into this A team, B team situation where there’s the glamorous work that everybody knows about, and cleanup, quality, and customer servicey work sometimes is behind the scenes testing different kinds of work. It’s celebrating all of it, again, because we’re all here for a reason. And that’s the way that I propose organizations to think about inclusion, is thinking about those three foundational pillars. And then we can have the pizza party and the free t-shirts, after that’s done.

Dr. Pelè: (13:47)

Well, I have to say, that was a masterclass right there. For me, that’s worth it. I’m done. I got it. That’s powerful stuff. I really like your focus on recognition, and not just recognition of the people that appear to be the in crowd, as you said, but spread out the recognition and make it a culture, almost, for all of us so that we all can feel included. I think that’s powerful. Now let’s get into the nuts and bolts of possibly your solution, your perspective, as reflected in your book, which is titled Unstuck. Tell us about your book.

Lia Garvin: (14:25)

So my book, Unstuck, is about reframing our thinking around the patterns and people that hold you back. Sometimes that’s our colleagues, sometimes that’s ourselves. And it’s about how I have overcome common challenges in the workplace using this mindset and perspective shift of looking at a challenge through another perspective. That’s what I’m suggesting we do around transitions and around this great resignation, is thinking about how else can we look at this? And not thinking, oh, people will come back once we return to normal, or using even the word return. It’s thinking, how else can we tackle this?

Lia Garvin: (15:02)

And so in the book specifically, I’m looking at challenges like giving/receiving feedback, decision making, comparison, sharing a lot of personal examples of things I’ve struggled with. Maybe it didn’t go as well the first time around. So it’s a fun take on that, but also offering a lot of solutions on how to move forward and how to make these things easier for ourselves.

Lia Garvin: (15:25)

I think as we approach this inclusive team environment like we’ve been talking about, a place I often start with is just working norms. If you say, let’s look at this next phase of a transition, let’s say it’s the first month as we tackle hybrid work, just call that its own phase. We say we’re going to experiment with learning. How do we want to make decisions in this first few weeks where we’re getting settled? How do we want to include people in meetings? Do we want to introduce a meeting facilitator that’s looking out for when people in the room are contributing versus people on a video conference? People moving forward, trying to get their word in edgewise versus coming off and on mute and raising hand. There’s all these cues. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Pelè: (16:12)

I’m here.

Lia Garvin: (16:14)

Yeah. I got something to say. Or they’re leaning forward. There’s little things people do that we don’t always notice that can bring people and invite them in the conversation. And I think, again, there’s marking, let’s intentionally establish some phases, and then talk about meeting norms. And talk about decision making operating norms, really. That would be the biggest suggestion I would have for teams, is to not think it’s one and done. We’re going to see a lot change over the next six, 12 months as people settle in. I know I’m based in the Bay Area. People were commuting three, four hours a day to get to some of these jobs, and they’re not doing that anymore. What does that mean? It’s just a whole new world.

Dr. Pelè: (17:03)

Lia, what I like about your approach is that you’re talking about a paradigm shift here. You’re not saying let’s take a little step over here. You’re saying, let’s just review everything and reframe this whole thing. If you go back to the history of paradigms recently, the iPhone changed everything. Or even Tesla changed everything in certain ways. And so you’re saying let’s look at drastic new paradigms. Just before we go past the topic of your book, would you mind holding it up again so that people who are watching… So it’s Unstuck. And what’s the byline again? It’s 12 common challenges women face… Complete that for me.

Lia Garvin: (17:44)

Yeah. It’s reframe your thinking to free yourself from the patterns and people that hold you back. And it explores 12 common challenges women face in the workplace.

Dr. Pelè: (17:54)

Awesome. Awesome. So I highly recommend, and I’m going to go check it out because I think you say it’s coming out in March.

Lia Garvin: (18:00)

Yeah. It’s coming out March 2022, and available right now on Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble for pre-order. And you can learn more on my website as well.

Dr. Pelè: (18:10)

Awesome. Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about the solutions you’ve experienced. Do you have any stories or fun anecdotes that you’ve actually been a part of where you helped people go from A, which is everything’s bad, we’re not feeling included, we can’t handle this transition to, wow, there’s hope, there’s light at the end of the tunnel? Do you have any stories you can share?

Lia Garvin: (18:34)

Yeah. My work centers around talking to people and listening to them. And so last year, I was working with a team that managers got a lot of intel from team members that they felt like they could not participate in meetings. There was large team meetings where a lot of animated voices, I think 30 or 40 people trying to make decisions around priorities. It was really hard, especially for new team members. And so I started by running a series of focus groups this team to talk to first pairing people across that don’t typically work together. So I ran 10 focus groups that were about four or five people who don’t typically work together. Different levels, some were managers, some were non-managers, to get people talking about what their experiences were. And that act alone actually unlocked so much new information for each other, and more shared empathy on what each other was going through. A lot of managers felt like some of these meetings were working great because you know people were duking it out and getting to decisions.

Dr. Pelè: (19:39)

Because they were included. Yeah.

Lia Garvin: (19:39)

And new team members felt like, oh my God, this is horrible. I don’t even want to go to these. And so first, it was about sharing perspectives. And then meanwhile, I was capturing key themes and takeaways, and I summarized all my findings and then hosted a workshop with the managers on the team to say, “Hey, here’s the real stuff we heard. What do we want to do about it?” And we identified two or three small things. I think a lot of times, teams, when they want to make this paradigm shift that I’m suggesting, think they have to change a million things at once, and then it’s too overwhelming and we don’t stick with it. It’s like, okay, actually, let’s just do nothing because the other stuff was too hard.

Lia Garvin: (20:20)

And so what I was suggesting is teams take two or three things to start with. You have a backlog, you keep chipping away at it, and change those things. This one team introduced having a meeting facilitator that looked out for what we were talking about, where someone’s raising their hand or unmuting, inviting them into the conversation. And then collectively as a group, asking people to use more physical cues that they were paying attention and listening. Sometimes in these big meetings, 90% of the people’s video’s off, and you feel like you’re talking into a void and that can really make you uncomfortable to contribute. And so as a team, they collectively said, “We’re going to be making eye contact with the camera, showing our hands, knowing that we’re not looking at our phone over here.” And that that level of engagement created a huge positive change across the team.

Lia Garvin: (21:10)

And then when surveyed again about six months later, the managers found that it was just a transformational difference on the team. That people felt like, wow, I can really participate. I know people are listening to my ideas. I know how to contribute. It was incredible. I was so excited to see that just a few shifts. I’ll tell you, I wanted them to change 10 or 15 things at first.

Dr. Pelè: (21:35)

But you got the good ones in there, right?

Lia Garvin: (21:38)

Yeah. We stuck with the smaller things and it made a huge impact.

Dr. Pelè: (21:43)

That’s really exciting to hear. In fact, in our world, the WorkProud world, we did a study that showed that this concept of people feeling proud of what they do and of the company they work for can affect their sense of engagement. And so as you said earlier, if you can recognize people, include people, all of a sudden you help them feel pride in their work and of being part of that team. Can you give us your perspective, or further perspective, on things like engagement and happiness and all of these cultural things that everybody knows is important, but nobody knows where to start?

Lia Garvin: (22:22)

Yeah, exactly. Well, why I love this concept you’re talking about is because this is what people are finding in analyzing why people are leaving. That people are wanting purpose and meaning, and that’s what really fuels long-term happiness. I think it’s covered in Adam Grant’s new book, think again about fleeting happiness versus happiness that really sticks. When it’s really about what matters to us, not just that we got a like on a post, but something that’s deeply meaningful, we have that feeling of happiness for a longer time.

Lia Garvin: (22:59)

And so that’s what you were talking about we need to have in the workplace, people feeling proud, people feeling engaged, people feeling like they have a sense of meaning makes them want to stay. And honestly, I would say that really is the key to bringing people back into the workforce and to slowing down this great resignation, is helping people connect with why what they’re doing matters to the organization. And how to connect what they love to do to their work.

Lia Garvin: (23:28)

And so like I was saying, for a long time, I didn’t know how to connect my passion for people dynamics, organizational culture, to program management. It felt like two different things. It felt like, okay, I’ll work on the schedule and then I’ll talk to the people later and see how they’re doing with it. And then I shifted it and I said, okay, I have to bring my passion into how I work. And that fueled the engagement. And so to what you were talking about, I think the key there is for managers and teams to help people excavate, what are the things that really matter to them? And support them in tying those to their job in the ways that it’s possible. I think there’s a lot more possible than we realize.

Dr. Pelè: (24:09)

Wow. You’ve just defined something, I don’t know if you realize it, but you defined what I call profitable happiness, which is to bring the things you’re passionate about into the things that produce profit. So it’s not about follow your passion or abandon everything and go follow some passion. No. It’s about saying, okay, I’m passionate about this. How can I bring it along in the things that make me happy? And if we help people do that… You see my guitar over there? See my guitar right here? It’s not going anywhere. I do this with my work. I’m professing what I’m passionate about. And it really does make a difference, doesn’t it, for individuals to find that passion and connect it, as you’ve done, to their work, right?

Lia Garvin: (24:53)

Yeah. Exactly. And then you find you get the highest output out of people because they’re feeling in a flow state. And you can maintain this flow state for an indefinite amount of time. And you might even be willing to do that three hour commute for it because you feel so engaged. You’re thinking of ideas and you’re excited, as opposed to thinking, oh my God, why am I on the freeway? You get a complete shift in people when you tap into that engagement. So yeah, I really love the concept of profitable happiness, because like you say, we’re trained to think work is work and happiness is something else. And it’s just not the case.

Dr. Pelè: (25:31)

Or work is this and there’s this thing called balance, work life. But it’s like, really?

Lia Garvin: (25:37)

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Pelè: (25:40)

Lia, I can’t wait to read your book. I’m going to go pre-order it. I really wish you the best in this endeavor. I’m a student of the things you’re talking about and I’m a follower of your wisdom. So thank you so much for being here. How can people find you, connect with you, learn more, and get your book?

Lia Garvin: (25:58)

Yes. Well, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn @liagarvin. Or check out my website at liagarvin.com. I think that’s the easiest way to get in touch, to see what I’m working on, to pre-order the book, get in touch about workshops, things like that. Or again, LinkedIn’s a great place.

Dr. Pelè: (26:16)

I think if you give me the link to your Amazon page where people can pre-order it, I’ll have that in the show notes as well.

Lia Garvin: (26:22)

Absolutely. Yes, definitely

Dr. Pelè: (26:23)

Awesome. Lia, thank you so much for just an awesome, cool conversation. I wish you the very best. Thanks for being here.

Lia Garvin: (26:31)

Thank you so much. It was really fun.

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

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