The following is an article written by Regina
Hartley, human resources director for UPS Information
Services, and Teri McClure, Chief Legal Officer and Senior
Vice President of Human Resources, Employee Communications and
Labor Relations at UPS.
On Tuesday Nov. 24, 2015, Regina Hartley's TED@UPS talk
will be featured as the Talk of the Day on TED.com. In honor of
this, Teri McClure, Chief Legal Officer and Senior Vice President
of Human Resources, Employee Communications and Labor Relations,
sat down with Regina to dig a little deeper into what it really
means to be a scrapper. *The transcript was edited for length and
clarity. The podcast is an abridged version of the
conversation.
Click here to listen to the podcast of the
interview
McClure: Regina, congratulations on
your TED@UPS talk being selected as the “talk of the day”
by TED on TED.com. That’s an exciting opportunity. Tell me about
where you came up with this idea, and what your thoughts were in
preparing for this talk.
Hartley: A long time ago I noticed that
there was a strong connection in people that I met who I considered
successful leaders, and a lot of them had a background similar to
mine. They were scrappers. They fought their way through difficult
circumstances yet were able to navigate the business world. This
idea has been brewing inside me for quite a long time.
McClure: That’s interesting. What’s your
story? What makes you a scrapper in this context?
Hartley: I grew up poor and I was a
beneficiary of scholarships through education. I didn’t have a lot
but always knew that if I worked hard, I could overcome the
challenges. I had a disabled father, and with that came a lot of
disadvantages that I wanted to navigate around.
McClure: You mentioned that you had worked
with a number of folks who you deemed to have this sort of
background, and were scrappers. What do you think it is about UPS
that attracts scrappers like you?
Hartley: I think it’s in our DNA. If you
think about the history of UPS, our founder Jim Casey was the
consummate scrapper. Jim Casey’s father died when he was young. He
was the oldest of four kids and he had to go to work at 11 years
old. So the culture at UPS is really a testimony to that spirit of
entrepreneurship and accepting everybody – regardless of where they
came from and what value they bring to the table.
McClure: What’s the most valuable lesson
you’ve learned from your scrapper background?
Hartley: It’s making sure you’re willing
to accept new assignments and challenges. You have to embrace
opportunity when it’s in front of you, but you also have to prepare
yourself for opportunity. You can’t just expect things to be handed
to you because you checked a box. You have to dig in, you have to
learn new things, you have to be willing to understand the business
that you support, and put your best foot forward.
McClure: Based on your
talk and my thoughts about it afterwards, it seems that being a
scrapper is about overcoming hardship, failure and adversity. What
kind of lessons can we all learn from these things?
Hartley: Many times, people who fail are
worried that they’re not going to be accepted, and that’s the end
of their career. However, people can learn great lessons from a
person who’s gone through failure. That’s the connection for
adversity because once you’ve experienced adversity, you’re always
looking for a way to navigate around it. Those people tend to come
at problems with a mindset of “I want to find the solution” – not,
“I can’t do this.”
McClure: Why do you think other companies
don’t value that scrapper experience? Why do you think they put the
emphasis on the traditional indices of success – education, that
sort of thing?
Hartley: They think that success can be
groomed and can come from a book or academic knowledge, rather than
life experience. Many circumstances that people face every day are
applicable to the business world, and if you can uncover those
experiences and translate them into how they manage situations and
lead people through difficulty, I think companies would unleash a
lot of power and potential.
McClure: That’s a great perspective
because I know many of the challenges and opportunities we face at
UPS you can’t learn from a book. You have to apply experience and
wisdom to address situations, and that’s sort on a daily basis as
well as from a broader strategic basis. What do you think more
companies should do? How can companies sort of generate the sort of
scrapper mentality?
Hartley: I think it’s important that
companies allow people to bring their whole self to work. They have
to enable people to be who they are and not feel ashamed of their
background. That includes a mix of thought, a mix of experiences,
what countries they’re from and what religions they’re from.
Through that difference, you create this beautiful tapestry that
then enables people and companies to flourish with new ideas.
McClure: That’s a great point. What you’re
saying is that it’s not that we should only look for the scrappers
or only look for the academics, but it’s about embracing the value
that both perspectives or a variety of perspectives bring to the
table.
Hartley: Absolutely.
McClure: One of the comments you made in
your talk was about the worst circumstances leading to growth and
transformation – what scientists call post-traumatic growth. To me,
that was an interesting concept. It appears like some people
can grow from these traumatic incidents, but some people aren’t
able to move beyond them. What does that mean for companies when
they look at their employees and their employees’ comfort zones?
How should we evaluate that sort of ability?
Hartley: First, you need the ingredients
for success. The way that people can transcend difficult
circumstances is by having advocates – somebody who takes a vested
interest in them. For employees to flourish, especially employees
who may have experienced disadvantage, they must feel that they’re
being nurtured and somebody’s looking after them. Whether it’s
formal or informal, people need a person to turn to for help in
understanding the rules.
McClure: That’s interesting. Is that
something that you had as you were going through your challenges –
or is that something you determined later would have been helpful
to you?
Hartley: I was very lucky. I had a lot of
people [helping me] along the way that—some of them I conscripted
into that role and some of them volunteered. It was a constant
refinement of my leadership style, what I learned, and [requires]
people to give you honest feedback. But you have to be open to
accept it and then do something with it.
McClure: Do you think that UPS does a good
job in nurturing our employees?
Hartley: Absolutely. I think that we,
inherently – through our development processes and succession
planning processes – take a holistic approach. We’re not looking at
someone solely based on today’s job. We’re always looking at what
they can contribute based on agility and ability rather than a
checklist of experiences that they’ve previously held.
McClure: It’s important that we continue
to do that because we don’t want to fall into a situation where
we’re only looking at what’s on a sheet of paper or academic
credentials or a resume. We need to look beyond that to the breadth
of a person’s perspective and experiences to make sure we’re
getting the best, brightest and talented to the table. Do you think
we can help people appreciate the value of scrappers – and are
there things that we can do to encourage that even more?
Hartley: I think we have a number of
things already in place. I think about the Business Resource
Groups, the BRGs. There were times when people might have felt
alone because they didn’t come from the same country as everybody
else. Now, in the business unit I work in, we have seven Business
Resource Groups, and they enable people to bring their whole self
to work and talk about their culture and their difficulties in a
nurturing and supportive environment.
McClure: That’s a great thought – and a
great example of what we’re doing and should continue to do. One of
the key points you made is giving people the comfort level of
sharing their experiences and, as you’ve pointed out, bringing
their whole self to work. That’s something that we can all
encourage each other to do on an ongoing basis.
McClure: Regina, when your TED talk goes
live on TED.com and is seen by industry leaders and thought leaders
around the world, what’s the one thing you want them to take from
your talk if nothing else? How can they learn from your experience
specifically and our shared experience here at UPS?
Hartley: I want to challenge them to think
differently about their hiring practices, their promotion practices
and their succession planning practices by valuing all of the
pieces of an individual, whether they’re from a great university or
a state college. We can’t limit, contain and filter the talent
that’s out there.
McClure: That’s a great perspective, and I
think you’ll accomplish that from your thoughts and shared TED
talk. Regina, congratulations again. We are proud of you and happy
that others will see an example of the great talent we have here at
UPS. Congratulations.
Hartley: Thank you, Teri.
To learn more about Regina, read her
bio or watch her TED@UPS talk.
Reprinted with permission of Longitudes, the UPS
blog devoted to the trends shaping the global economy.
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