April 12, 2023 • 33 mins
Join Eveline Oehrlich and Dan Schawbel to learn why upskilling is essential. Discover the importance of reskilling and get valuable tips on how ongoing training can help you stay ahead of the game!
Dan Schawbel is a New York Times bestselling author and the Managing Partner of Workplace Intelligence, an award-winning thought leadership and research agency focused on the world of work. Dan is the bestselling author of three career books: Back to Human, Promote Yourself, and Me 2.0. Through his companies, he’s conducted dozens of research studies and worked with major brands including Amazon, Deloitte, American Express, GE, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Virgin, IBM, Coca Cola, and Oracle. Schawbel is also the host of the 5 Questions podcast, where he interviews world-class humans like Matthew McConaughey, Richard Branson, Condoleezza Rice, Reed Hastings, Chelsea Handler, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Enjoy the Humans of DevOps Podcast? We’re incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Want access to more DevOps-focused content and learning? When you join SKILup IT Learning you gain the tools, resources and knowledge to help your organization adapt and respond to the challenges of today.
Have questions, feedback or just want to chat about the podcast? Send us an email at podcast@devopsinstitute.com
Dan Schawbel is a New York Times bestselling author and the Managing Partner of Workplace Intelligence, an award-winning thought leadership and research agency focused on the world of work. Dan is the bestselling author of three career books: Back to Human, Promote Yourself, and Me 2.0. Through his companies, he’s conducted dozens of research studies and worked with major brands including Amazon, Deloitte, American Express, GE, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Virgin, IBM, Coca Cola, and Oracle. Schawbel is also the host of the 5 Questions podcast, where he interviews world-class humans like Matthew McConaughey, Richard Branson, Condoleezza Rice, Reed Hastings, Chelsea Handler, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Enjoy the Humans of DevOps Podcast? We’re incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Want access to more DevOps-focused content and learning? When you join SKILup IT Learning you gain the tools, resources and knowledge to help your organization adapt and respond to the challenges of today.
Have questions, feedback or just want to chat about the podcast? Send us an email at podcast@devopsinstitute.com
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Episode Transcript
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Narrator (00:02):
You're listening to the Humans of DevOps Podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing thehumans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning,or the SKIL framework.
Dan Schawbel (00:16):
During COVID, there was a 300% or more
increase in digital scales. Why?Because with people working
remote, you needed those digitalskills in order to continue to
work. With these new ways ofworking, it impacts what skills
are more or less important andthings are changing really fast.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to the Humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Eveline Oehrlich, Chief ResearchOfficer at DevOps Institute. Our
podcast title today is "Tipsfrom an Expert: Essential
Reasons for Upskilling.Upskilling, reskilling,
continuous learning, training,are really really hot topics and
(00:54):
we at DevOps Institute have donesome significant work in this
topic area for the last fiveyears. And while I am knee deep,
or actually I should say neckdeep in the research for the
upcoming 2023 upskilling itreport. I am thrilled to have
with me an expert, thenChevelle. Hey, Dan, how are you?
Dan Schawbel (01:16):
So happy to be here with you.
Eveline Oehrlich (01:18):
Excited, I'm thrilled looking at your bio.
I'm really honored to be withyou on this podcast because I
know you talk to a lot of famouspeople. So let me give our
listeners a little bit of areview or an overview who Dan
is. So he is a New York BestTimes bestselling author and the
(01:39):
managing partner of WorkplaceIntelligence, which is an award
winning thought leadership andresearch agency focused on the
world of work. He is the BestSelling Author of Speaker Your
Books Back to Human, PromoteYourself, and Me to That Oh, I
love that title. Through hiscompany. Dan has led over 60
(02:01):
research studies with majorbrands including Amazon, Oracle
to Lloyd, American Express, andWe Work. He is also hosting
himself a podcast he calls itit's The Five Questions Podcast,
where he interviews world classhumans like Natalie Portman,
Richard Branson, CondoleezzaRice, Reed Hastings, again,
(02:23):
thank you so much for being withus. His Workplace Intelligence
Weekly, LinkedIn Newsletter isone of the most read in his
industry, with over 380,000subscribers. And over 180,000
students have taken his LinkedInlearning course on leadership,
management and hybrid working,then, I just suggested to both
(02:45):
of my daughters to take one ofyour courses in LinkedIn. So
hopefully, they will follow myadvice. Again, welcome for being
with us today.
Dan Schawbel (02:56):
So happy to be here, and what a really
important relevant topic.
Eveline Oehrlich (03:02):
So let's drive, dive into it right away.
And just to share with you, Dan,our listeners are folks in IT,
such as DevOps folks,developers, IT operations, site
reliability engineers, security,folks, technologists, and
practice practitioners. But wealso have leaders. And we might
(03:23):
have in sometimes do get some Clevel folks on our call on our
podcast. And I think we alsosometimes get folks outside of
business, in it in the otherareas of an organization. And
just again, our recent, as Imentioned earlier, upskilling. I
team Sherway. So showed us avariety of challenges around
(03:46):
skill gaps, which continue. Andwe found that the biggest skill
gaps actually using the roles ofthe developer in IT operations,
and in a leadership, and again,for those who are listening in
look for the upcoming report.But then I would love to hear
your thoughts on the skill gaptopic, we read it everywhere.
(04:06):
Are we ever going to see abetter balance between what
skilled individuals we have? Andwhat do we need?
Dan Schawbel (04:14):
I think the top three biggest workplace trends
right now are the skills gap andlabor shortage. Both of them are
intertwined course because ifyou can't find people with the
right skills, you can't filljobs, and therefore it stunts
the corporate growth while beingin remote slash hybrid work,
right? And everything is veryintertwined. So for instance,
(04:36):
during COVID, there was a 300%or more increase in digital
skills. Why? Because with peopleworking remote, you needed those
digital skills in order tocontinue to work right. So I
think that with these new waysof working it impacts what
skills are more or lessimportant and things are
changing really fast. Over theyears. I've looked at kind of
the skills gaps, what skills aremore in demand less in demand
(04:59):
from a heart and soul upskillstandpoint, which we're going to
be talking about, but one of thethings that's really been
interesting recently, even withkind of the economic downturn is
there's still 11 millionunfilled jobs just in America.
So we still have the skills gap,despite, you know, over 100,000,
you know, tech workers beinglaid off. And if you go into
those numbers, which is reallyinteresting, about 60% of tech
(05:21):
workers don't even work in thetech industry. So it's very
interesting economic climate.And regardless of, you know, all
the layoffs that are happening,there are still positions that
companies, you know, can stillcan't fail, because they can't
find the available talent withthese skills. And one of the
ways that companies areaugmenting this and filling
(05:41):
these gaps is not even by hiringhumans, sometimes it's by using
automation, right. And so Ithink, whether it's today or in
the future, more and more everysingle year, jobs are being
augmented by artificialintelligence, right, like look
at chat GPT, like more and morepeople are using that were using
chat GPT, along with human voiceto better create content now in
(06:05):
a more efficient way. And sothink about these new AI
technologies, we'll talk moreabout this as well, are kind of
offsetting some of the skillsgap and augmenting positions.
And therefore, potentially, whenwe talk about skills, we're
talking about a revolutionarychange, whether you're an hourly
worker or a salaried worker,these new technologies are going
to reshape how you work and liveand do your job. So I think that
(06:28):
that is something that, youknow, we have to take seriously,
because if a company can't findhumans to fill roles, then
they're starting to look totechnology. And over the past
three years during thosepandemic conditions, with that
labor shortage that continuestill today, the investment in
this type of technology,multiplied more so than that, I
(06:49):
think what what's reallyfascinating about the skills gap
is that companies are nowrelying more on certifications,
you know, even though they'restill relying on degrees and
degrees are important, you know,because they need to expand
their talent pool in order torecruit their jaw. A lot of
these companies are dropping thefour year degree requirements.
And that's been a trend for thepast maybe five or so years. So
(07:11):
we call it the unorthodox hire.And then the other thing, the
biggest companies are doing thisl&d pledge, which I've been
following. And you know, one ofour clients is Deloitte. And
they just did a, a while beingpledged for 1.4 billion. Another
client is Amazon 1.2 billion acenters 200 million, at&t was
(07:32):
actually the first to do thisfrom my records at 1 billion.
And so there's been a hugeinvestment in this space,
because it's not just looking atthe skills of today. But the
skills of tomorrow, which aredriven by advancements in
technology, and new markets thatthese organizations need to get
to. And because it's easier tokind of rescale and retrain and
(07:54):
upscale people who are currentworkers, rather than pay more
money to hire external workers,which also takes more time
hiring internally takes ashorter amount of time. And one
of the best examples duringCOVID, which I thought was
fascinating and brilliant wasfrom Verizon. So what they did
was because of COVID, a lot ofthe retail stores shut down. And
(08:15):
therefore all those sales repswithin those retail stores could
have been unemployed. But whatthey did was they retrain them
to be call center employees,because they were getting way
more of an uptick from the callcenter. So basically, they see a
ton of money by week, retrainingand rescaling their current
workforce for jobs that weremore in demand. At that time, of
(08:36):
course, things have kind ofshifted back a bit with people,
you know, going back and beingsales reps, but at the time
again, you know, it's a shift inlabor. And the other thing too,
what I saw, which I thought wasreally interesting is
industries, sharing talent,meaning like a, a clothing
retail store that wasn't doingwell and had too many employees,
basically helping and partneringwith, you know, a pharmacy to
(08:58):
bring those skills and thattalent over to them because they
needed that work, again, noncompetitive, but kind of this
new thing that I had never seenbefore. And then the reason why
these persist is really, becausethere is also a disconnect
between our education system andthe needs of organizations. So
(09:19):
you know, it's very hard foreducation to kind of stay
relevant and pump out, you know,students that have the right
skills at the right time, it'shard to change that curriculum
fast enough to keep up witheverything that's going on. So a
lot of people graduate, and theyalmost become kind of irrelevant
in that market after graduation.So they're paying all this
(09:39):
money, and then they'redeveloping skills that might not
be as relevant. So more of theneed is coming on companies,
companies, in my opinion, tobecoming the post secondary
universities. So again, likewith that investment, like I
said, you know, over a billiondollars of many of these
companies, they're taking on alot of the slack, a lot of
teachers who have left theeducation system are now
(10:00):
becoming curriculum designers atcompanies. So that's a huge
shift to right burn. They'reburned out in the school system.
And they're like, Well, I stillwant to make money make a
living. And then the demand forfor more l&d within companies is
shooting up. So they're movinginto organizations to be part of
l&d. And then from our study, wejust did a study of 1500 hourly
(10:23):
workers and 1500 salariedworkers in the US with Amazon.
And what we found was that 78%of employees are concerned, they
lack the skills they need, and71% they lack education to
advance in their careers. And sothis is this is an ongoing
problem that is not going to besolved this year or next. But
it's something that we have toall wrap our heads around.
Eveline Oehrlich (10:45):
And the great news is that we see from our
research that sea level andleaders in organizations, and
you mentioned quite a few ofthem are seeing this finally,
and I want to say a hallelujah,right? Because that's really
most important to that. You'vehighlighted quite a few things
here, which fantastic, I wouldlove to dive in deeper. But I
(11:08):
have another question, which issomething I want to ask you. So
we do this research around thesedifferent skill domains, human
technical leadership skills,process and framework skills.
And as you mentioned automation,because that's a big part of
what we do in it, and I've beenin it forever, I know nothing
else. But in terms of thesedifferent domains, we are seeing
(11:30):
a little bit of a shift fromyear to year, sometimes
automation becomes moreimportant than process than
human. I think in the COVIDyears, human skills were really,
really important. This year, theranking is process skills,
technical skills, then humanskills. But we also found this
(11:51):
year that leadership skill andthe domain was for the first
time the fourth highest musthave skill domain. And we'll
elaborate more on that in thereport. We also know from our
community, and from the workI've done as an industry analyst
that there are a variety ofskill gaps at the leadership
level. So having said that,skill gaps, leadership and
(12:14):
leadership skills, what's yourreaction to this finding?
Dan Schawbel (12:19):
So I've studied most in demand skills from hard
and soft kill perspective, sinceI believe 2013, when I did a
study with American Express on,you know, the most in demand and
hardest to fill positions whenit comes to jobs, and then
skills etc. And what I found is,it's typically, you know, you
know, and more recently,actually, management skills,
(12:40):
leadership skills, communicationskills, customer service, and
sales skills. So, and again,these all kind of blend into
each other in a sense, right. Solike, clearly, like, if you're
not a good communicator, it'spretty hard to be a good
salesperson as, as one example,customer service again,
community. So communicationreally cuts across everything.
So is, is typically ranked veryhigh. I do think that a lot of
(13:04):
leaders over the past threeyears were kind of burned out, a
lot of people were in, there's abig talk with executives that
I'm speaking with a lot of,especially managers, middle
managers, kind of set up tofail, they didn't really have
the necessary training and andthat's led to a lot of the
issues we have. And for thefrontline employees, that's why
a lot of my courses really focuson frontline managers, because
(13:25):
they're underserved, from aleadership development and
management perspective, because,you know, it's not like they
went to school and learned howto manage a hybrid or remote
workforce, right? Or we're hadto, you know, you know, almost
act like a therapist in theworkplace, because people are
dealing with all these wellbeing mental health type
behavioral problems. So there'sall these things that managers
(13:48):
didn't really have to thinkabout before that are now at the
forefront, right. Like, I alwaysthink that everything we always
have taken for granted in theworkforce, kind of the human
skills, if you think of Maslow'shierarchy of needs, is now at
the forefront, right? Likesafety and security, like when
we didn't really talk about thatin the past, maybe in
warehouses, maybe in other othertypes of areas where workforce
(14:09):
injuries are usually higher, butin general, we took it for
granted, especially knowledgeworkers, and now this is most of
what we think about, you know,if we go back to the office, do
they have, you know, thenecessary protocols, etc. So,
these type of conversation havekind of risen. The way I think
about hard and soft skills are,you know, soft skills are
somewhat consistent. So whetherit leadership's one or
(14:31):
communications one, you know,they're all kind of intersected
and they're all very you wealways need them, there's always
going to be demand for them andthose are things that are
consistent, whereas like hardskills, for instance, you know,
over the past year, you know,software development, SQL, you
know, finance, Python, Java havebeen, you know, some of the
biggest skills you know, thatare, you know, where you know
(14:55):
they're hiring the most for,but, you know, this could change
year over year based on newsTechnology is based on, you
know, irrelevant softwareprograms, all these different
things, right. And I'm not goingto talk like, I'm the expert at
programming languages, but Iwill say that, you know, it's,
you're more likely to seechanges in hard skills over
time. And in the speed at whichthose are going to change, it's
(15:17):
going to be more rapid than softskills that again, are, you
know, there's a lot of overlap.And these are things that in
order to kind of be a human insociety personally or
professionally, they'reimportant, right, like
leadership skills, like that'sstill important in your personal
life in a way, right. And so Ithink that and communication
skills, so I think that yeah,hard skills a little bit more
(15:38):
volatile communication skills alittle bit more consistent. And
then the top five of the softskills are have been pretty
consistent over the years, butorder has changed, but still,
it's top five is top five, like,these are the ones you clearly
have to focus on. And then interms of upscaling, you know,
when it comes to these type ofskills, you know, peer led
(15:58):
learning, coaching, mentoring,again, you know, a lot of
managers are kind of set up tofail. So the rise of, you know,
coaching kind of programs hasbeen huge, there's a lot more
companies that are kind oftackling that right now, because
they see that gap. But for alllevels, like oh, it's almost
like the coaching for executivesis now something that, you know,
(16:20):
managers and middle managershave to have to get as well. And
so I think that leadership isvery situational as well, as
well as all the soft skills. Soin order to develop them, you
need to, you know, be indifferent situations and
practice them and tweak tobecome a better leader.
Eveline Oehrlich (16:37):
So a lot more active than passive learning. I
think what I want to hear yousay, is that correct?
Dan Schawbel (16:44):
And I think it's on the individual, I think it's
on the manager, I think it's onmentors, and I think it's on the
C suite. And I think, you know,I think it's across the board.
It's not just, it's theindividuals responsibility, but
it's the culture, it's yes, allthese facets to make that into
that individual a better leader,it's not just them, like,
(17:05):
because you could be a greatleader, but an organization that
doesn't respect your leadershipqualities or promote you or
support you, and then you'regonna fail anyways. So I do
think that the organizationplays a big role.
Narrator (17:18):
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(17:41):
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Eveline Oehrlich (17:46):
I mean, I've been if I think back of my
career, I have been in a verylarge technology company in it
at the time coming out of theUniversity with a Master's and
really I had that activelearning by being a leader being
coached by another leader, thatwas really quite, quite
fantastic. And that's many, manyyears ago. And I don't want to
(18:08):
say what year because it willdate me, and we'll just
continue. Thank you. Those weregreat ideas. Now. We also found,
we every year, we ask, Where arefolks relative to the upskilling
programs, and you mentioned thatthere is a significant amount of
investment. We see companieslike Deloitte, for example, or
(18:29):
ServiceNow, those are somecompanies in our space have done
or Infosys is another one, theyhave implemented great programs
to upskill and rescale. But wealso see that there is a
challenge for manyorganizations, and this is
within our research, they'restuck somewhere in their
assessment state. They'reassessing their programs, and
(18:49):
they're not getting them overthe hump to actually get them
out. Right. And so in this, thiseconomic condition we're in and
it is a challenge, right? Whatdo you see relative to the
economic conditions in terms ofthe budgets and the plans for
upskilling program development?Will the efforts continue? Will
(19:11):
they sustain? Will they slowdown? What's your crystal ball?
Say, when you look into that,then,
Dan Schawbel (19:17):
You know, a lot of it depends on competing for
talent and where the gaps are.So a company that has more
unfilled positions that's, youknow, struggling right now
that's, you know, trying tocompete in their market, they're
more likely to make those typeof investments and acquisitions.
But other companies maybe not somuch, and then depends on
(19:38):
company size, in terms of interms of the investment as well.
So that's always a variable. ButI do think that especially young
people are demanding more of, oflearning development
opportunities and careeradvancement, you know, as they
always have, right, but I thinkwell, one of the things we asked
in the Amazon study was, youknow, how does this impact your
(20:00):
willingness to stay within anorganization relief right and
74% of millennials and Gen z's,are likely to quit this year due
to a lack of skill developmentopportunities. So clearly, like,
you know, younger people, andwe've seen this over time, too,
the younger you are, the morelikely you are to demand more
learning and development, youknow, initiatives and programs
(20:22):
or curriculum, right, becauseyou're just starting out in your
career, you're just thirsty tolearn as much as you can.
Whereas, typically, again, youknow, this, you know, this is
not for everyone. But you know,if you're, when you're much
older in the workforce, you'reprobably you're probably more
settled and your job, you'remaybe a leader, you know, you
(20:43):
know, so you might not be doingthe day to day work. So that's
just how it's been. And in termsof offerings that we looked at,
basically found that theseemployees, not just Gen Z and
millennials, but all employeessay that they really benefit or
they could really benefit fromthese Allen l&d programs that
their company's currentlyoffering. But they don't have
(21:05):
access to those programs likethey wish they did. And so some
of those programs include freeor partial coverage of tuition,
training programs in other areasof the business, because there's
been a huge push for theadaptable workforce and moving
horizontally, not justvertically within an
organization, and thennetworking opportunities. So
(21:25):
just about about half ofemployees have access to all
three of those. So, you know,employees recognize that this is
beneficial. They don't have asmuch access to it, maybe it's
because of seeing lack ofseniority, which kind of goes
against the whole thing ofeverything I just told you,
right? Because if, you know, bythe time you have seniority, you
(21:46):
might not want them as much,right? So I think that there's a
disconnect there. And it justshows you there is a lack of
preparation in college. And wehad studied that for years and
years and years, we interviewedpeople as young as 16 years old
to kind of look at that, andtheir careers prospects and how
they saw the world. So I dothink that I do think that that
(22:08):
there, there's a gap in learningbetween college and employer.
And I think there's a gapbetween employer and employee,
especially entry level employ interms of the skills they need
and the access to thecurriculum. And the the need for
this is going to continue toincrease, I think is going to
get to the government level,because it's, it's kind of that
(22:29):
dire. So I do think thatgovernments will have to make an
investment in their population,so that they have those skills,
because again, like what we'regoing to eventually face year
over year is more technologypermeating our lives, and
therefore the eliminationpartially or fully of jobs, and
therefore, the need to upskilland retrain the population, not
(22:50):
just employers retraining theirtheir employees is going to be huge.
Eveline Oehrlich (22:56):
You know, something I wanted to add at
this point is we have a lot ofambassadors, we have over 200
Ambassadors, I think today whoare volunteers who help us on
content and training and doingall kinds of things. And some of
them actually are engaged incoaching and taking the
knowledge over to universitiesand schools and things like
(23:16):
that. It's quite honorable tosee those folks. I just wanted
to point that out. But the thepoints you made, relative to how
folks are maybe not necessarilyhaving access and so on is kind
of a lead into my next question.We found that in many cases,
when we asked about upskilling,programs that are service taker
(23:40):
said, There is no time of coursein it, that's always the top
issues are we need to solve aproblem, we need to get the code
out we need whatever, right?Close that cybersecurity hole
which just opened up, whatever.But there was also no budget and
there's no leadership approval,which are, unfortunately, still
the top issues for the folkswe've surveyed, as I said, and
(24:03):
we've seen a significantpercentage of people also say
that they invest their own timeand money into upskilling. And
rescaling. So you've alluded tothose already. But I want your
advice for our listeners, thosewho are in the spots where they
say, I don't have budget, myleadership does not approve, I
really don't have time, and Ireally don't want to invest my
(24:25):
own money. What should thesefolks do? Any advice?
Dan Schawbel (24:29):
You know, you got to find that this is where it
gets tough, right? Because I wastrying to think of advice for
employees, but my real advice isfor employers. And the reality
is you have to make time youhave to do the budget. You have
to do the mentoring, you have toyou know, have the company
invest in maybe a portal, youknow, that has a curriculum for
them to take just somethingwhere they can get those skills.
(24:51):
And so my advice is mostly forthe employers because if an
employee doesn't you know, isnot able to have time they you
know, not everyone wants tosacrifice their way And, and
obviously, the demands of theirjob are really high, then the
employers have to give and buildin skill development as part of
their work day. And instead ofhaving the employee pay for it,
(25:13):
because again, once the economychanges, again, part of what the
organizations compete on is notjust compensation or health care
or flexibility, but alsolearning and development
opportunities, especially forthe younger generations. So I do
think that organizations need tofocus on creating a culture of
learning, I call it like aculture of shared learning where
(25:35):
people are organically mentoringand supporting each other, and
then have have the leaders Ithink, leaders, because again,
the higher up you go, the lesslikely you are to take these
classes and kind of upskill Ithink leaders, you know, should
build in time to become betterleaders, like you identified
that leadership is a skillthat's really needed right now.
(25:56):
And therefore, I think leadersneed to take these courses and
kind of get educated andwhatnot, and maybe go to
executive to executive edclasses or whatever they need to
do, that's going to work best inhow they, how they specifically
learn to advance become betterleaders, because then that's
going to signal that learningis, is something culturally,
that's okay. And then, you know,obviously, having the budget and
(26:19):
the support is going to beimportant for getting employees
involved to follow suit. So I dothink the other way I've seen a
lot of organizations handle thisis to show learning paths to
promotion, and advancementthrough skills. So just say,
Hey, if you learn these skills,this is what's keeping you from
getting more money or to get apromotion or or title. So if you
(26:40):
learn these skills, by takingthese courses and practicing
this at work, you're more you'reyou know, you're set up to
advance, I think that'ssomething that can be very, very
useful as well.
Eveline Oehrlich (26:51):
One of the things we've been, I want to
say, I don't want to saybatching. But discussing in the
leadership team at DevOpsInstitute is the ROI of
upskilling. So that we canactually share some details with
those folks who don't step up tothe plate and allow and enable
their employees. So that's somework to come. But I know we have
(27:11):
a few minutes left, and I havetwo more questions for you. The
first one is human skills, youcall them soft skills, I call
them human skills doesn't reallymatter. Everybody knows what
we're talking about, cannot becertified. But how have you seen
others? How have you seen folksto improve their human skills?
Besides, you said, practicingand having coaches, but on the
(27:31):
human side? It's a little bitdifficult, right? Like, I could
not step up. I couldn't imaginesome of my colleagues step up
and say, Hey, can you help me onsome of those human skills? Any
ideas? You have?
Dan Schawbel (27:45):
Yes, I did. So I think the best way to build
human skills is for people tojust have more conversations. So
for instance, my human skills,even for doing interviews, years
ago, weren't that strong. Butyou know, after 3000,
interviews, you know, having anorganic conversation within a
(28:06):
podcast format, or any otherformat becomes much easier
because of experience andcomfort, doing it many, many
times. And then, you know,learning from other people
watching other interviews andother people how they
communicate, and then kind ofadjusting to make my
communication style, you know,better. So I do think that
(28:26):
stepping outside of your comfortzone, continuing to practice put
yourself in as many situationswhere you can practice these
soft skills, or as you say,human skills, making it a
priority for you gettingfeedback from other people, you
know, after meeting Was I tooaggressive? How was my tone? I
was my body language, should Icommunicate this effectively?
(28:46):
You know, it's asking those typeof questions to solicit feedback
from your manager that can bevery helpful. observing others,
like I was saying, you know, ifyou want to, you know, you know,
Google like the top bestcommunicators, and then watch,
you know, YouTube videos ofthem, and see how they watch a
TED Talk. For instance, they aretrained to be good
communicators, especially at theannual conference. So you get a
(29:08):
sense of, oh, this is whatthey're doing. Right? This is
how they tell stories. So it's,I think it's observing, it's
putting yourself in thesituation, getting a mentor or
getting feedback from yourmanager, I think all of those
can really help you be better.
Eveline Oehrlich (29:20):
Great ideas that made me just remember
something we used to do at thesame company I was talking
earlier about with theToastmasters. For those
sessions, we it was actuallymore for improving our public
speaking. And many of us got upat really early to do that
outside of our day to day job,but it helped us because we
(29:43):
actually opened up almost liketo the folks who were listening
in to give me feedback on all ofthose things, and then had to do
with human skills. And I think,I think back to those times,
some of those were painful,particularly if you had to get
some feedback. You didn't like,but I for myself did a lot of
(30:03):
Galala learning there anything.Anything I got there was great.
All right, we're almost to theend, give us a short summary of
the type of work which is doneat Workplace Intelligence
because I know you are there alot. Did you do a lot of work
there? Give us just a quicklike, two or three lines of what
type of work do you guys do?
Dan Schawbel (30:22):
Yeah, so the type of work we do is we work on big
research projects, and campaignsfocus on every single workplace
topic, including upscaling. Sowe've done 66 So far with, you
know, another five to seven morecoming this year. So it's a ton
of research goal is to kind ofconnect the dots and you know,
(30:43):
help brands tell their storiesthrough thought leadership
content. Also, we have anewsletter, like you were saying
earlier, Workplace Intelligenceweekly on LinkedIn, you know,
it's continues to grow. And weagain, use that as a mechanism
to, you know, talk aboutdifferent workplace topics and
(31:03):
tie them in to what's relevantin today's society, today's
working world. So we're alwaystrying to do that, you know,
trying to think about, hey,what's the most relevant, you
know, type topics, and thenworking with companies to
develop content to then link tothose topics.
Eveline Oehrlich (31:22):
Fantastic. And I have been signed up for that
LinkedIn newsletter, and I getit, it's part of my reading. If
I skip it, I miss it, becausethere was always very good
things in there. So to ourlisteners, I highly recommend go
there. Okay, now I have a funquestion has nothing to do with
upskilling. But what do you dofor fun if you don't do your
(31:44):
research and your work or writebooks?
Dan Schawbel (31:47):
Aside from this being fun? As you can tell, I
love this stuff. Yeah, I mean,you know, walks, runs,
traveling, you know, I'm goingto be going to Central Europe
this year, and back to Greeceand Italy. And, you know, so I,
you know, I like to kind of getout there and explore the world
and, you know, big avid readerevery day. Yeah, speak to Pete
(32:12):
speaking to people practicingthose soft skills, which again,
helps you personally andprofessionally. And yeah, and
you know, I love listening tomusic and, you know, different
shows on TV.
Eveline Oehrlich (32:24):
Fantastic. If you make it to the southern part
of Germany, just ring the bell.I have a nice cup of coffee and
adult beverage or whatever you'dlike love to take you out for
dinner. This has been a greatconversation, then. We have been
talking to Dan Schawbel , NewYork Times bestselling author
and a managing partner ofWorkplace Intelligence. Dan,
(32:47):
again, thank you so much forjoining me today on Humans of
DevOps Podcast.
Dan Schawbel (32:52):
Thank you again, it's a pleasure.
Eveline Oehrlich (32:54):
Humans of DevOps podcast is produced by
DevOps Institute. Our audioproduction team includes Julia
pape, Daniel Newman, Schultz andBrandon Lay. I'm Humans of
DevOps Podcast, executiveproducer Eveline Oehrlich. If
you would like to join us on apodcast, please contact us at
Humans of DevOps podcast atDevOpsInstitute.com. Boy, that's
(33:17):
a mouthful. I'm EvelineOehrlich, talk to you soon.
Narrator (33:24):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps Podcast. Don't forget tojoin our global community to get
access to even more greatresources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part ofsomething bigger than yourself.
You belong
You're listening to the Humans of DevOps Podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing thehumans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning,or the SKIL framework.
Dan Schawbel (00:16):
During COVID, there was a 300% or more
increase in digital scales. Why?Because with people working
remote, you needed those digitalskills in order to continue to
work. With these new ways ofworking, it impacts what skills
are more or less important andthings are changing really fast.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to the Humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Eveline Oehrlich, Chief ResearchOfficer at DevOps Institute. Our
podcast title today is "Tipsfrom an Expert: Essential
Reasons for Upskilling.Upskilling, reskilling,
continuous learning, training,are really really hot topics and
(00:54):
we at DevOps Institute have donesome significant work in this
topic area for the last fiveyears. And while I am knee deep,
or actually I should say neckdeep in the research for the
upcoming 2023 upskilling itreport. I am thrilled to have
with me an expert, thenChevelle. Hey, Dan, how are you?
Dan Schawbel (01:16):
So happy to be here with you.
Eveline Oehrlich (01:18):
Excited, I'm thrilled looking at your bio.
I'm really honored to be withyou on this podcast because I
know you talk to a lot of famouspeople. So let me give our
listeners a little bit of areview or an overview who Dan
is. So he is a New York BestTimes bestselling author and the
(01:39):
managing partner of WorkplaceIntelligence, which is an award
winning thought leadership andresearch agency focused on the
world of work. He is the BestSelling Author of Speaker Your
Books Back to Human, PromoteYourself, and Me to That Oh, I
love that title. Through hiscompany. Dan has led over 60
(02:01):
research studies with majorbrands including Amazon, Oracle
to Lloyd, American Express, andWe Work. He is also hosting
himself a podcast he calls itit's The Five Questions Podcast,
where he interviews world classhumans like Natalie Portman,
Richard Branson, CondoleezzaRice, Reed Hastings, again,
(02:23):
thank you so much for being withus. His Workplace Intelligence
Weekly, LinkedIn Newsletter isone of the most read in his
industry, with over 380,000subscribers. And over 180,000
students have taken his LinkedInlearning course on leadership,
management and hybrid working,then, I just suggested to both
(02:45):
of my daughters to take one ofyour courses in LinkedIn. So
hopefully, they will follow myadvice. Again, welcome for being
with us today.
Dan Schawbel (02:56):
So happy to be here, and what a really
important relevant topic.
Eveline Oehrlich (03:02):
So let's drive, dive into it right away.
And just to share with you, Dan,our listeners are folks in IT,
such as DevOps folks,developers, IT operations, site
reliability engineers, security,folks, technologists, and
practice practitioners. But wealso have leaders. And we might
(03:23):
have in sometimes do get some Clevel folks on our call on our
podcast. And I think we alsosometimes get folks outside of
business, in it in the otherareas of an organization. And
just again, our recent, as Imentioned earlier, upskilling. I
team Sherway. So showed us avariety of challenges around
(03:46):
skill gaps, which continue. Andwe found that the biggest skill
gaps actually using the roles ofthe developer in IT operations,
and in a leadership, and again,for those who are listening in
look for the upcoming report.But then I would love to hear
your thoughts on the skill gaptopic, we read it everywhere.
(04:06):
Are we ever going to see abetter balance between what
skilled individuals we have? Andwhat do we need?
Dan Schawbel (04:14):
I think the top three biggest workplace trends
right now are the skills gap andlabor shortage. Both of them are
intertwined course because ifyou can't find people with the
right skills, you can't filljobs, and therefore it stunts
the corporate growth while beingin remote slash hybrid work,
right? And everything is veryintertwined. So for instance,
(04:36):
during COVID, there was a 300%or more increase in digital
skills. Why? Because with peopleworking remote, you needed those
digital skills in order tocontinue to work right. So I
think that with these new waysof working it impacts what
skills are more or lessimportant and things are
changing really fast. Over theyears. I've looked at kind of
the skills gaps, what skills aremore in demand less in demand
(04:59):
from a heart and soul upskillstandpoint, which we're going to
be talking about, but one of thethings that's really been
interesting recently, even withkind of the economic downturn is
there's still 11 millionunfilled jobs just in America.
So we still have the skills gap,despite, you know, over 100,000,
you know, tech workers beinglaid off. And if you go into
those numbers, which is reallyinteresting, about 60% of tech
(05:21):
workers don't even work in thetech industry. So it's very
interesting economic climate.And regardless of, you know, all
the layoffs that are happening,there are still positions that
companies, you know, can stillcan't fail, because they can't
find the available talent withthese skills. And one of the
ways that companies areaugmenting this and filling
(05:41):
these gaps is not even by hiringhumans, sometimes it's by using
automation, right. And so Ithink, whether it's today or in
the future, more and more everysingle year, jobs are being
augmented by artificialintelligence, right, like look
at chat GPT, like more and morepeople are using that were using
chat GPT, along with human voiceto better create content now in
(06:05):
a more efficient way. And sothink about these new AI
technologies, we'll talk moreabout this as well, are kind of
offsetting some of the skillsgap and augmenting positions.
And therefore, potentially, whenwe talk about skills, we're
talking about a revolutionarychange, whether you're an hourly
worker or a salaried worker,these new technologies are going
to reshape how you work and liveand do your job. So I think that
(06:28):
that is something that, youknow, we have to take seriously,
because if a company can't findhumans to fill roles, then
they're starting to look totechnology. And over the past
three years during thosepandemic conditions, with that
labor shortage that continuestill today, the investment in
this type of technology,multiplied more so than that, I
(06:49):
think what what's reallyfascinating about the skills gap
is that companies are nowrelying more on certifications,
you know, even though they'restill relying on degrees and
degrees are important, you know,because they need to expand
their talent pool in order torecruit their jaw. A lot of
these companies are dropping thefour year degree requirements.
And that's been a trend for thepast maybe five or so years. So
(07:11):
we call it the unorthodox hire.And then the other thing, the
biggest companies are doing thisl&d pledge, which I've been
following. And you know, one ofour clients is Deloitte. And
they just did a, a while beingpledged for 1.4 billion. Another
client is Amazon 1.2 billion acenters 200 million, at&t was
(07:32):
actually the first to do thisfrom my records at 1 billion.
And so there's been a hugeinvestment in this space,
because it's not just looking atthe skills of today. But the
skills of tomorrow, which aredriven by advancements in
technology, and new markets thatthese organizations need to get
to. And because it's easier tokind of rescale and retrain and
(07:54):
upscale people who are currentworkers, rather than pay more
money to hire external workers,which also takes more time
hiring internally takes ashorter amount of time. And one
of the best examples duringCOVID, which I thought was
fascinating and brilliant wasfrom Verizon. So what they did
was because of COVID, a lot ofthe retail stores shut down. And
(08:15):
therefore all those sales repswithin those retail stores could
have been unemployed. But whatthey did was they retrain them
to be call center employees,because they were getting way
more of an uptick from the callcenter. So basically, they see a
ton of money by week, retrainingand rescaling their current
workforce for jobs that weremore in demand. At that time, of
(08:36):
course, things have kind ofshifted back a bit with people,
you know, going back and beingsales reps, but at the time
again, you know, it's a shift inlabor. And the other thing too,
what I saw, which I thought wasreally interesting is
industries, sharing talent,meaning like a, a clothing
retail store that wasn't doingwell and had too many employees,
basically helping and partneringwith, you know, a pharmacy to
(08:58):
bring those skills and thattalent over to them because they
needed that work, again, noncompetitive, but kind of this
new thing that I had never seenbefore. And then the reason why
these persist is really, becausethere is also a disconnect
between our education system andthe needs of organizations. So
(09:19):
you know, it's very hard foreducation to kind of stay
relevant and pump out, you know,students that have the right
skills at the right time, it'shard to change that curriculum
fast enough to keep up witheverything that's going on. So a
lot of people graduate, and theyalmost become kind of irrelevant
in that market after graduation.So they're paying all this
(09:39):
money, and then they'redeveloping skills that might not
be as relevant. So more of theneed is coming on companies,
companies, in my opinion, tobecoming the post secondary
universities. So again, likewith that investment, like I
said, you know, over a billiondollars of many of these
companies, they're taking on alot of the slack, a lot of
teachers who have left theeducation system are now
(10:00):
becoming curriculum designers atcompanies. So that's a huge
shift to right burn. They'reburned out in the school system.
And they're like, Well, I stillwant to make money make a
living. And then the demand forfor more l&d within companies is
shooting up. So they're movinginto organizations to be part of
l&d. And then from our study, wejust did a study of 1500 hourly
(10:23):
workers and 1500 salariedworkers in the US with Amazon.
And what we found was that 78%of employees are concerned, they
lack the skills they need, and71% they lack education to
advance in their careers. And sothis is this is an ongoing
problem that is not going to besolved this year or next. But
it's something that we have toall wrap our heads around.
Eveline Oehrlich (10:45):
And the great news is that we see from our
research that sea level andleaders in organizations, and
you mentioned quite a few ofthem are seeing this finally,
and I want to say a hallelujah,right? Because that's really
most important to that. You'vehighlighted quite a few things
here, which fantastic, I wouldlove to dive in deeper. But I
(11:08):
have another question, which issomething I want to ask you. So
we do this research around thesedifferent skill domains, human
technical leadership skills,process and framework skills.
And as you mentioned automation,because that's a big part of
what we do in it, and I've beenin it forever, I know nothing
else. But in terms of thesedifferent domains, we are seeing
(11:30):
a little bit of a shift fromyear to year, sometimes
automation becomes moreimportant than process than
human. I think in the COVIDyears, human skills were really,
really important. This year, theranking is process skills,
technical skills, then humanskills. But we also found this
(11:51):
year that leadership skill andthe domain was for the first
time the fourth highest musthave skill domain. And we'll
elaborate more on that in thereport. We also know from our
community, and from the workI've done as an industry analyst
that there are a variety ofskill gaps at the leadership
level. So having said that,skill gaps, leadership and
(12:14):
leadership skills, what's yourreaction to this finding?
Dan Schawbel (12:19):
So I've studied most in demand skills from hard
and soft kill perspective, sinceI believe 2013, when I did a
study with American Express on,you know, the most in demand and
hardest to fill positions whenit comes to jobs, and then
skills etc. And what I found is,it's typically, you know, you
know, and more recently,actually, management skills,
(12:40):
leadership skills, communicationskills, customer service, and
sales skills. So, and again,these all kind of blend into
each other in a sense, right. Solike, clearly, like, if you're
not a good communicator, it'spretty hard to be a good
salesperson as, as one example,customer service again,
community. So communicationreally cuts across everything.
So is, is typically ranked veryhigh. I do think that a lot of
(13:04):
leaders over the past threeyears were kind of burned out, a
lot of people were in, there's abig talk with executives that
I'm speaking with a lot of,especially managers, middle
managers, kind of set up tofail, they didn't really have
the necessary training and andthat's led to a lot of the
issues we have. And for thefrontline employees, that's why
a lot of my courses really focuson frontline managers, because
(13:25):
they're underserved, from aleadership development and
management perspective, because,you know, it's not like they
went to school and learned howto manage a hybrid or remote
workforce, right? Or we're hadto, you know, you know, almost
act like a therapist in theworkplace, because people are
dealing with all these wellbeing mental health type
behavioral problems. So there'sall these things that managers
(13:48):
didn't really have to thinkabout before that are now at the
forefront, right. Like, I alwaysthink that everything we always
have taken for granted in theworkforce, kind of the human
skills, if you think of Maslow'shierarchy of needs, is now at
the forefront, right? Likesafety and security, like when
we didn't really talk about thatin the past, maybe in
warehouses, maybe in other othertypes of areas where workforce
(14:09):
injuries are usually higher, butin general, we took it for
granted, especially knowledgeworkers, and now this is most of
what we think about, you know,if we go back to the office, do
they have, you know, thenecessary protocols, etc. So,
these type of conversation havekind of risen. The way I think
about hard and soft skills are,you know, soft skills are
somewhat consistent. So whetherit leadership's one or
(14:31):
communications one, you know,they're all kind of intersected
and they're all very you wealways need them, there's always
going to be demand for them andthose are things that are
consistent, whereas like hardskills, for instance, you know,
over the past year, you know,software development, SQL, you
know, finance, Python, Java havebeen, you know, some of the
biggest skills you know, thatare, you know, where you know
(14:55):
they're hiring the most for,but, you know, this could change
year over year based on newsTechnology is based on, you
know, irrelevant softwareprograms, all these different
things, right. And I'm not goingto talk like, I'm the expert at
programming languages, but Iwill say that, you know, it's,
you're more likely to seechanges in hard skills over
time. And in the speed at whichthose are going to change, it's
(15:17):
going to be more rapid than softskills that again, are, you
know, there's a lot of overlap.And these are things that in
order to kind of be a human insociety personally or
professionally, they'reimportant, right, like
leadership skills, like that'sstill important in your personal
life in a way, right. And so Ithink that and communication
skills, so I think that yeah,hard skills a little bit more
(15:38):
volatile communication skills alittle bit more consistent. And
then the top five of the softskills are have been pretty
consistent over the years, butorder has changed, but still,
it's top five is top five, like,these are the ones you clearly
have to focus on. And then interms of upscaling, you know,
when it comes to these type ofskills, you know, peer led
(15:58):
learning, coaching, mentoring,again, you know, a lot of
managers are kind of set up tofail. So the rise of, you know,
coaching kind of programs hasbeen huge, there's a lot more
companies that are kind oftackling that right now, because
they see that gap. But for alllevels, like oh, it's almost
like the coaching for executivesis now something that, you know,
(16:20):
managers and middle managershave to have to get as well. And
so I think that leadership isvery situational as well, as
well as all the soft skills. Soin order to develop them, you
need to, you know, be indifferent situations and
practice them and tweak tobecome a better leader.
Eveline Oehrlich (16:37):
So a lot more active than passive learning. I
think what I want to hear yousay, is that correct?
Dan Schawbel (16:44):
And I think it's on the individual, I think it's
on the manager, I think it's onmentors, and I think it's on the
C suite. And I think, you know,I think it's across the board.
It's not just, it's theindividuals responsibility, but
it's the culture, it's yes, allthese facets to make that into
that individual a better leader,it's not just them, like,
(17:05):
because you could be a greatleader, but an organization that
doesn't respect your leadershipqualities or promote you or
support you, and then you'regonna fail anyways. So I do
think that the organizationplays a big role.
Narrator (17:18):
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(17:41):
get started by visiting DevOpsInstitute.com.
Eveline Oehrlich (17:46):
I mean, I've been if I think back of my
career, I have been in a verylarge technology company in it
at the time coming out of theUniversity with a Master's and
really I had that activelearning by being a leader being
coached by another leader, thatwas really quite, quite
fantastic. And that's many, manyyears ago. And I don't want to
(18:08):
say what year because it willdate me, and we'll just
continue. Thank you. Those weregreat ideas. Now. We also found,
we every year, we ask, Where arefolks relative to the upskilling
programs, and you mentioned thatthere is a significant amount of
investment. We see companieslike Deloitte, for example, or
(18:29):
ServiceNow, those are somecompanies in our space have done
or Infosys is another one, theyhave implemented great programs
to upskill and rescale. But wealso see that there is a
challenge for manyorganizations, and this is
within our research, they'restuck somewhere in their
assessment state. They'reassessing their programs, and
(18:49):
they're not getting them overthe hump to actually get them
out. Right. And so in this, thiseconomic condition we're in and
it is a challenge, right? Whatdo you see relative to the
economic conditions in terms ofthe budgets and the plans for
upskilling program development?Will the efforts continue? Will
(19:11):
they sustain? Will they slowdown? What's your crystal ball?
Say, when you look into that,then,
Dan Schawbel (19:17):
You know, a lot of it depends on competing for
talent and where the gaps are.So a company that has more
unfilled positions that's, youknow, struggling right now
that's, you know, trying tocompete in their market, they're
more likely to make those typeof investments and acquisitions.
But other companies maybe not somuch, and then depends on
(19:38):
company size, in terms of interms of the investment as well.
So that's always a variable. ButI do think that especially young
people are demanding more of, oflearning development
opportunities and careeradvancement, you know, as they
always have, right, but I thinkwell, one of the things we asked
in the Amazon study was, youknow, how does this impact your
(20:00):
willingness to stay within anorganization relief right and
74% of millennials and Gen z's,are likely to quit this year due
to a lack of skill developmentopportunities. So clearly, like,
you know, younger people, andwe've seen this over time, too,
the younger you are, the morelikely you are to demand more
learning and development, youknow, initiatives and programs
(20:22):
or curriculum, right, becauseyou're just starting out in your
career, you're just thirsty tolearn as much as you can.
Whereas, typically, again, youknow, this, you know, this is
not for everyone. But you know,if you're, when you're much
older in the workforce, you'reprobably you're probably more
settled and your job, you'remaybe a leader, you know, you
(20:43):
know, so you might not be doingthe day to day work. So that's
just how it's been. And in termsof offerings that we looked at,
basically found that theseemployees, not just Gen Z and
millennials, but all employeessay that they really benefit or
they could really benefit fromthese Allen l&d programs that
their company's currentlyoffering. But they don't have
(21:05):
access to those programs likethey wish they did. And so some
of those programs include freeor partial coverage of tuition,
training programs in other areasof the business, because there's
been a huge push for theadaptable workforce and moving
horizontally, not justvertically within an
organization, and thennetworking opportunities. So
(21:25):
just about about half ofemployees have access to all
three of those. So, you know,employees recognize that this is
beneficial. They don't have asmuch access to it, maybe it's
because of seeing lack ofseniority, which kind of goes
against the whole thing ofeverything I just told you,
right? Because if, you know, bythe time you have seniority, you
(21:46):
might not want them as much,right? So I think that there's a
disconnect there. And it justshows you there is a lack of
preparation in college. And wehad studied that for years and
years and years, we interviewedpeople as young as 16 years old
to kind of look at that, andtheir careers prospects and how
they saw the world. So I dothink that I do think that that
(22:08):
there, there's a gap in learningbetween college and employer.
And I think there's a gapbetween employer and employee,
especially entry level employ interms of the skills they need
and the access to thecurriculum. And the the need for
this is going to continue toincrease, I think is going to
get to the government level,because it's, it's kind of that
(22:29):
dire. So I do think thatgovernments will have to make an
investment in their population,so that they have those skills,
because again, like what we'regoing to eventually face year
over year is more technologypermeating our lives, and
therefore the eliminationpartially or fully of jobs, and
therefore, the need to upskilland retrain the population, not
(22:50):
just employers retraining theirtheir employees is going to be huge.
Eveline Oehrlich (22:56):
You know, something I wanted to add at
this point is we have a lot ofambassadors, we have over 200
Ambassadors, I think today whoare volunteers who help us on
content and training and doingall kinds of things. And some of
them actually are engaged incoaching and taking the
knowledge over to universitiesand schools and things like
(23:16):
that. It's quite honorable tosee those folks. I just wanted
to point that out. But the thepoints you made, relative to how
folks are maybe not necessarilyhaving access and so on is kind
of a lead into my next question.We found that in many cases,
when we asked about upskilling,programs that are service taker
(23:40):
said, There is no time of coursein it, that's always the top
issues are we need to solve aproblem, we need to get the code
out we need whatever, right?Close that cybersecurity hole
which just opened up, whatever.But there was also no budget and
there's no leadership approval,which are, unfortunately, still
the top issues for the folkswe've surveyed, as I said, and
(24:03):
we've seen a significantpercentage of people also say
that they invest their own timeand money into upskilling. And
rescaling. So you've alluded tothose already. But I want your
advice for our listeners, thosewho are in the spots where they
say, I don't have budget, myleadership does not approve, I
really don't have time, and Ireally don't want to invest my
(24:25):
own money. What should thesefolks do? Any advice?
Dan Schawbel (24:29):
You know, you got to find that this is where it
gets tough, right? Because I wastrying to think of advice for
employees, but my real advice isfor employers. And the reality
is you have to make time youhave to do the budget. You have
to do the mentoring, you have toyou know, have the company
invest in maybe a portal, youknow, that has a curriculum for
them to take just somethingwhere they can get those skills.
(24:51):
And so my advice is mostly forthe employers because if an
employee doesn't you know, isnot able to have time they you
know, not everyone wants tosacrifice their way And, and
obviously, the demands of theirjob are really high, then the
employers have to give and buildin skill development as part of
their work day. And instead ofhaving the employee pay for it,
(25:13):
because again, once the economychanges, again, part of what the
organizations compete on is notjust compensation or health care
or flexibility, but alsolearning and development
opportunities, especially forthe younger generations. So I do
think that organizations need tofocus on creating a culture of
learning, I call it like aculture of shared learning where
(25:35):
people are organically mentoringand supporting each other, and
then have have the leaders Ithink, leaders, because again,
the higher up you go, the lesslikely you are to take these
classes and kind of upskill Ithink leaders, you know, should
build in time to become betterleaders, like you identified
that leadership is a skillthat's really needed right now.
(25:56):
And therefore, I think leadersneed to take these courses and
kind of get educated andwhatnot, and maybe go to
executive to executive edclasses or whatever they need to
do, that's going to work best inhow they, how they specifically
learn to advance become betterleaders, because then that's
going to signal that learningis, is something culturally,
that's okay. And then, you know,obviously, having the budget and
(26:19):
the support is going to beimportant for getting employees
involved to follow suit. So I dothink the other way I've seen a
lot of organizations handle thisis to show learning paths to
promotion, and advancementthrough skills. So just say,
Hey, if you learn these skills,this is what's keeping you from
getting more money or to get apromotion or or title. So if you
(26:40):
learn these skills, by takingthese courses and practicing
this at work, you're more you'reyou know, you're set up to
advance, I think that'ssomething that can be very, very
useful as well.
Eveline Oehrlich (26:51):
One of the things we've been, I want to
say, I don't want to saybatching. But discussing in the
leadership team at DevOpsInstitute is the ROI of
upskilling. So that we canactually share some details with
those folks who don't step up tothe plate and allow and enable
their employees. So that's somework to come. But I know we have
(27:11):
a few minutes left, and I havetwo more questions for you. The
first one is human skills, youcall them soft skills, I call
them human skills doesn't reallymatter. Everybody knows what
we're talking about, cannot becertified. But how have you seen
others? How have you seen folksto improve their human skills?
Besides, you said, practicingand having coaches, but on the
(27:31):
human side? It's a little bitdifficult, right? Like, I could
not step up. I couldn't imaginesome of my colleagues step up
and say, Hey, can you help me onsome of those human skills? Any
ideas? You have?
Dan Schawbel (27:45):
Yes, I did. So I think the best way to build
human skills is for people tojust have more conversations. So
for instance, my human skills,even for doing interviews, years
ago, weren't that strong. Butyou know, after 3000,
interviews, you know, having anorganic conversation within a
(28:06):
podcast format, or any otherformat becomes much easier
because of experience andcomfort, doing it many, many
times. And then, you know,learning from other people
watching other interviews andother people how they
communicate, and then kind ofadjusting to make my
communication style, you know,better. So I do think that
(28:26):
stepping outside of your comfortzone, continuing to practice put
yourself in as many situationswhere you can practice these
soft skills, or as you say,human skills, making it a
priority for you gettingfeedback from other people, you
know, after meeting Was I tooaggressive? How was my tone? I
was my body language, should Icommunicate this effectively?
(28:46):
You know, it's asking those typeof questions to solicit feedback
from your manager that can bevery helpful. observing others,
like I was saying, you know, ifyou want to, you know, you know,
Google like the top bestcommunicators, and then watch,
you know, YouTube videos ofthem, and see how they watch a
TED Talk. For instance, they aretrained to be good
communicators, especially at theannual conference. So you get a
(29:08):
sense of, oh, this is whatthey're doing. Right? This is
how they tell stories. So it's,I think it's observing, it's
putting yourself in thesituation, getting a mentor or
getting feedback from yourmanager, I think all of those
can really help you be better.
Eveline Oehrlich (29:20):
Great ideas that made me just remember
something we used to do at thesame company I was talking
earlier about with theToastmasters. For those
sessions, we it was actuallymore for improving our public
speaking. And many of us got upat really early to do that
outside of our day to day job,but it helped us because we
(29:43):
actually opened up almost liketo the folks who were listening
in to give me feedback on all ofthose things, and then had to do
with human skills. And I think,I think back to those times,
some of those were painful,particularly if you had to get
some feedback. You didn't like,but I for myself did a lot of
(30:03):
Galala learning there anything.Anything I got there was great.
All right, we're almost to theend, give us a short summary of
the type of work which is doneat Workplace Intelligence
because I know you are there alot. Did you do a lot of work
there? Give us just a quicklike, two or three lines of what
type of work do you guys do?
Dan Schawbel (30:22):
Yeah, so the type of work we do is we work on big
research projects, and campaignsfocus on every single workplace
topic, including upscaling. Sowe've done 66 So far with, you
know, another five to seven morecoming this year. So it's a ton
of research goal is to kind ofconnect the dots and you know,
(30:43):
help brands tell their storiesthrough thought leadership
content. Also, we have anewsletter, like you were saying
earlier, Workplace Intelligenceweekly on LinkedIn, you know,
it's continues to grow. And weagain, use that as a mechanism
to, you know, talk aboutdifferent workplace topics and
(31:03):
tie them in to what's relevantin today's society, today's
working world. So we're alwaystrying to do that, you know,
trying to think about, hey,what's the most relevant, you
know, type topics, and thenworking with companies to
develop content to then link tothose topics.
Eveline Oehrlich (31:22):
Fantastic. And I have been signed up for that
LinkedIn newsletter, and I getit, it's part of my reading. If
I skip it, I miss it, becausethere was always very good
things in there. So to ourlisteners, I highly recommend go
there. Okay, now I have a funquestion has nothing to do with
upskilling. But what do you dofor fun if you don't do your
(31:44):
research and your work or writebooks?
Dan Schawbel (31:47):
Aside from this being fun? As you can tell, I
love this stuff. Yeah, I mean,you know, walks, runs,
traveling, you know, I'm goingto be going to Central Europe
this year, and back to Greeceand Italy. And, you know, so I,
you know, I like to kind of getout there and explore the world
and, you know, big avid readerevery day. Yeah, speak to Pete
(32:12):
speaking to people practicingthose soft skills, which again,
helps you personally andprofessionally. And yeah, and
you know, I love listening tomusic and, you know, different
shows on TV.
Eveline Oehrlich (32:24):
Fantastic. If you make it to the southern part
of Germany, just ring the bell.I have a nice cup of coffee and
adult beverage or whatever you'dlike love to take you out for
dinner. This has been a greatconversation, then. We have been
talking to Dan Schawbel , NewYork Times bestselling author
and a managing partner ofWorkplace Intelligence. Dan,
(32:47):
again, thank you so much forjoining me today on Humans of
DevOps Podcast.
Dan Schawbel (32:52):
Thank you again, it's a pleasure.
Eveline Oehrlich (32:54):
Humans of DevOps podcast is produced by
DevOps Institute. Our audioproduction team includes Julia
pape, Daniel Newman, Schultz andBrandon Lay. I'm Humans of
DevOps Podcast, executiveproducer Eveline Oehrlich. If
you would like to join us on apodcast, please contact us at
Humans of DevOps podcast atDevOpsInstitute.com. Boy, that's
(33:17):
a mouthful. I'm EvelineOehrlich, talk to you soon.
Narrator (33:24):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps Podcast. Don't forget tojoin our global community to get
access to even more greatresources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part ofsomething bigger than yourself.
You belong
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