Gainsight's Easton Taylor on the Power of Human-First Leadership

Are you struggling to balance business results with employee well-being? 

Do you wonder how to create a high-performing team while treating them with humanity? 

It's time to explore the transformative impact of human-first leadership in customer success.

Join Rachel Provan as she sits down with Easton Taylor, SVP of Customer Success at Gainsight, to uncover the secrets of creating a thriving, human-centric culture that drives business success.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• What human-first leadership really means beyond the buzzwords, and why it's more critical now than ever in the challenging tech economy
• The 8 key ingredients of human-first leadership, including empathy, authenticity, and personalized experiences
• How Gainsight's core values, including "childlike joy" and "Shoshin" (beginner's mind), shape their unique culture
• Practical strategies for new leaders to build trust and transparency with their teams
• The crucial role of psychology in developing effective leadership skills
• How to maintain a human-first approach while driving results in challenging times

Don't let the pressure to deliver results destroy your team's morale and effectiveness. Tune in to learn how human-first leadership can transform your customer success department, boost employee engagement, and ultimately drive better business outcomes.

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This episode was sponsored by Vitally.io

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🎬 This content was edited by Lifetime Value Media. 

Learn more at: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com 

🎬 This content was edited by Lifetime Value Media.

Learn more at: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

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Transcript

(0:00 - 1:33)
Hey, CS Psychos, Rachel Provan here, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about human-first leadership with Easton Taylor, who's the SVP of customer success at Gainsight. We'll get into what human-first leadership is beyond the buzzwords, into what it actually means, why it's the most effective way to run your teams, and how it's benefited Gainsight as one of its core values. Plus, some tips on how to start implementing it today so that you can create high-performing teams in a way that's just slightly more beneficial than screaming more revenue at them. 

That's all coming up next right here on Psychology of Customer Success. Stay tuned. Humans don't think or behave like computers. 

You can't just run a command and get them to do what you want them to do. So why are you still basing your CS strategy based solely on logic? I'm Rachel Provan, CS leadership coach, award-winning CS strategist, and certified psych nerd. I teach CS leaders how to build and scale world-class CS departments using a combination of strategy, leadership, and mindset using my secret weapon, psychology. 

Come join me every Wednesday for Psychology of Customer Success, where we'll dive into why people do the things they do, what motivates them, and the effect that has on your CS strategy, team dynamics, and executive presence. Make sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and make sure to share it with your CS bestie. Talk soon, and here's to your success.

(1:38 - 3:10)
Welcome back. I'm so lucky to be joined today by Easton Taylor, the SVP of Customer Success at Gainsight. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience in CS, and how you got interested in human-first leadership? Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me, Rachel. Big fan of the podcast. 

Hello, all CS psychos. I'm so excited to be here and really excited about the topic. The path to CS leadership has been a unique one for me. 

I've been at Gainsight coming up on nine years in a variety of different customer success and customer-facing roles. The past three years have been really primarily focused on our entire customer success team, which includes customer success managers that are very much focused on the strategic guidance, best practices, and outcomes for our customer base, and what we call our customer success solutions consultants, which is an amazing team based in India that are very much focused on helping our admins and operations teams operationalize Gainsight in their instance and providing best practices around that. What led me to Gainsight was actually about 10 years ago, I was working for a company called Genesis. 

And Genesis, we were first creating our customer success management function. And a few folks asked me to lead that function, and I was in the process of actually looking at software. We were a very reactive team, working out of spreadsheets, working out of multiple different toolkits, and so started shopping around.

(3:10 - 3:50)
And at the time, this was, again, 10 years ago, there weren't many vendors in this space, but there were two. And Gainsight was the one that we ended up selecting. And I actually implemented it for the team, rolled it out, and just fell in love with the company, fell in love with the technology and said, my goodness, I need to be a part of this journey. 

And here I am today. So yeah, very humbled to be a part of Gainsight. We've created an amazing culture that I know we're going to speak to. 

And we've just got an amazing leadership team in place. Honestly, if I did not work for myself, which I'm thrilled at doing and want to do forever, I think possibly the only place I would want to work besides for myself would be Gainsight. Well, whenever that happens, you've got to keep me posted.

(3:50 - 5:38)
I don't know. It's been really amazing working for myself. But that says a lot, given how much I love doing that. 

Yeah, I really am a huge fan of your culture, your messaging, and how much you guys really live it. With so many companies, it's just, oh, whatever people decided to kind of throw up there on a website. But I just love how present it is in everything you guys do. 

Thank you so much. It actually means so much to us and really appreciate that. Absolutely. 

You talk about your culture being human-first. Can you define for people what exactly you mean by that? Yeah. And it's interesting because when we first kind of created this mission statement, and this was very much of our executive leadership team coming together and really defining what we want to do in the SaaS space. 

And one would think immediately, customer success. And of course, that is a big thing, obviously, a part of our organization. But what I love about the decision that was made is that they really wanted to ensure that Gainsight can be living proof that you can win in business while being human-first. 

And the human-first piece, when I originally or initially explain our mission statement, provides and kind of motivates some people around, wow, what does that mean? What does that look like? And there's so many different aspects of being human-first. I think it really starts with the core values that guide Gainsight. And we've got five core values. 

The first one is the golden rule. And I'm sure a lot of folks that are listening to this podcast are probably familiar with the golden rule just in their day-to-day lives, but it's treat people the way that you would want to be treated. And I think it's a really key thing with customers, with internal employees, with peers, so on and so forth.

(5:39 - 6:33)
The second is what we call stay thirsty. And that's really about how do we continue to strive for greatness? How do we continue to stay motivated? How do we motivate our teammates to strive for greatness? The third and probably one of my favorites is childlike joy. And we ask all of our employees to bring the inner child in you to work every single day. 

And I think when we originally released these values, I think the childlike joy was probably difficult for some folks to really take on because in a professional environment, typically, you're not thinking about bringing your inner child. But I think there's a lot of really strong outcomes that can come from bringing that inner child into work in any type of interaction or environment, whether it be virtually or in person. The fourth value for us is what we call success for all.

(6:34 - 17:36)
And that's really a tireless pursuit of success for Gainsight and also our community. Nick is probably a shining example of success for all. He is consistently helping individuals that have left Gainsight that haven't been employees that are looking for their next role, but really build out a community of customer success, like-minded individuals where in which we can rely on each other, maybe to find that next job, maybe to share some best practices, maybe to join an amazing podcast like the one that you're putting on Rachel or whatever that might be. 

But how do we not just pursue success for Gainsight, but also everyone in this space, no matter what CSP folks are using? We just want to make sure that we can build a strong community. I love, it was one of my probably absolute favorite values. And then the last one here is what we call Shoshin. 

And that is, how do we start with a beginner's mind in taking on any type of obstacle? We consistently want to innovate and we consistently want to redefine ourselves. And I think that's a pretty impactful way to grow as an individual, not just in an organization, but also just as an individual in the world is to consistently start with a beginner's mindset when taking on any big project, any big challenge or any maybe in our world customer situation. God, those are fantastic. 

I feel like a beginner's mindset is so hard. That's something that I work on a lot, especially when trying to talk about CS leadership. I'm like, I know too much. 

I don't know how to break this down simply. I have too much. Yeah. 

I mean, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And Rachel, I think it's probably actually going to get more difficult with AI and all the tools that we have at our fingertips to get and access information and ask questions. I think starting with a beginner's mindset actually begins with almost sitting down in a quiet space and having a quiet mind so that you can then start formulating your own ideas. 

And hopefully those ideas come from a place of innovation or something new. I love that you said that because the more I study leadership and just innovation as someone who has a company now, and I have to figure things out, creating content, any of that inspiration is important. And it's amazing how much of confidence, leadership, all the things that are important to really reaching that highest level in business comes down to being willing to sit with some quiet. 

You really don't get the good stuff until you just give your brain a break because there's just so much going on in there. It really is amazing. It's one of those advanced techniques that shouldn't be so advanced because it's just like sitting quietly and breathing. 

It's amazing what that will do for your life, for your career. Absolutely. Yeah. 

And I know this podcast is very much focused on the psychology of customer success and the psychology of human beings. One of the things to the point that you just made is whenever I sit down and meditate, typically after is when I want to approach that level of Shoshin because the mind is at rest and in a place where in which new ideas can come to fruition. And it's such a key point that you had made there. 

Exactly. Yeah. And I think our modern workplace really isn't set up for us to do that. 

It's set up for us to be constantly zinging back and forth between everything, which is why you have to both be able to handle that, but also carve out space for all of those things that you just mentioned, not just the quiet, but for fun. I like that you do childlike joy because it just is so much more descriptive. I think the first time I saw it, I was like, oh, I roll. 

And then once I went to pulse and met some of you guys and saw more of your content, I was like, wow, they actually do that. And it's fun. And as a leader, I had always been, it had been so important to me that no, you show up, you're yourself. 

And we have a little fun because I mean, honestly, we work so hard and you don't have to wait till after work to have fun. You can enjoy each other. I know the majority of our days are spent at work and I feel as though folks are motivated when they're working in an environment that is fun and it is a space where they feel like they can be their genuine selves. 

And I think that childlike joy or inner child comes out when a culture is created around being human-first. So it's such a key point. And I think you nailed it. 

If you ever come to our conferences or if you ever see some of the stuff that Nick posts or others, there's always a little bit of a sliver of childlike joy in all of it. Yeah. It's delightful. 

So what would you say are some tangible examples of being human-first? Yeah. When I think about human-first, and when we first introduced this concept at Gainsight, one of the things that we did as a leadership team were really kind of to start to document some of the key ingredients, right? I've got about eight that I try to follow and I'll go through each of them and then I'll provide some examples afterward. But the first one I think is really key is a level of empathy and understanding or emotional intelligence. 

Taking time, I think, to understand the perspectives, challenges, emotions of your teammates or your customer base. So really having some active listening and responding with some level of sensitivity or understanding, I think is really key. And that's one thing that I have really tried to do as a leader with my direct reports, with CSMs, where in which I have quarterly skip level one-on-ones, or even within our customer base, when I'm just speaking with a peer that might be struggling, is I really want to ask solid questions and listen so that I can understand better and provide a level of empathy. 

The second is just authenticity, being honest and transparent in communication. This one is, I think, a critical key ingredient in terms of feedback. I'm sure a lot of folks have probably read the book Radical Candor, but that is one book where in which we really try to drive at Gainsight because it is being honest and transparent around maybe a situation that occurred, not necessarily in the moment, you don't have to necessarily do it in the moment, but potentially afterward with some type of data backup and proper communication and transparency around the expectations that were potentially missed. 

And being authentic around feedback, I think, can really build trust and it can show a level of integrity and that you want the best in the teammate. So that's one example I would provide as being a really strong component of this, because I think feedback is just generally hard to give as a leader, especially first-time leaders. The third is what we just respect. 

We have and encourage a lot of different, what we call teammate resource groups within Gainsight. And so valuing each person's unique differences, contributions, and really treating everyone kind of going back to the golden rule with a level of dignity, regardless of their choices in life or their opinions or role or status or whatever it might be. The fourth is support and well-being. 

And that, I think, is more critical now than ever, just with everything that's happening outside of work, all of the anxiety and the mental well-being that humans need right now more than ever. Prioritizing physical and emotional and mental well-being of employees and customers is really key. And this for us includes providing support, providing some flexibility, and the resources to help these individuals if they're going through any potential struggles. 

And also, how do we get in front of that? The key thing, I think, is being proactive in that. So we have what's called recharge days. They're not holidays. 

They're just days to recharge and prioritize your well-being, whether that's physical, emotional, or something other. I talked a little bit about this inclusivity of culture, which is number five, and it kind of goes along with, I think, the respect piece. But creating an environment where everyone feels welcome, every voice is heard, I think that's really key. 

And for the soft voices in the room, sometimes you have to encourage them to speak, but that's something we always want to do. And embracing that diversity as much as possible and really promoting the quality. I think a lot of organizations now are doing this proactively and hiring proactively to ensure an inclusive environment and diverse environment, which I think is fantastic. 

Six, I think it's building relationships, which is difficult to do virtually. The majority of Gainsight outside of the office that I'd referenced to earlier in India is primarily just spread across the US and India, and there's no real central hubs. And so building relationships can be difficult, specifically long-term relationships. 

How do you nurture those connections with employees, customers, partners, so that you can kind of create a supportive network? And we've done some creative things to promote that. One, we have an in-person event every year that we call Cohesion. Another thing that we do is to try to ensure that we get as many folks to our big conferences. 

Some of the tactical things that we do just day-to-day, though, is have meetings where in which in the morning or toward the end of the day, we just have a catch-up with our teammates. Or we have topics that other teammates cross-functionally might want to just hop in and discuss, and so that we can start building some of that relationship cross-functionally. And one of the new initiatives myself and one of my innovation and enablement individuals, a part of our team, have been doing is remote co-working spaces. 

And so we have just Zoom room that we all can join in customer success for our CSMs and our leaders. And we have different topics that folks can jump into a room and discuss those topics with other individuals. If you don't want to discuss those topics, that's fine. 

You could just be heads down doing work and pop up occasionally if you have a question. We've released and started doing this just recently, actually, this year. And I've found that it's actually really helping build solid relationships across our CSMs because it's so easy just to be heads down in your own space and not get that feeling of togetherness. 

So it's one simple tactical example that has helped us. That's really cool. And I've seen people doing that as well in the entrepreneur community, just opening up a Zoom room and being like, all right, you can talk if you want to, but we're just going to be together and work.

(17:36 - 18:09)
And I don't miss the office at all. But what I do miss is just those conversations and those friendships with people that you would organically make just because you were around each other all the time. And that is something that you miss. 

And I think those sort of Zoom rooms, co-working, even if it's virtually, it does give the opportunity for those sort of connections to build. And I think those are so important when it comes to being attached to a company, caring about your work. A part of that is caring about each other.

(18:10 - 19:58)
A hundred percent. I love that. I am starting to see this tactic actually take on across the SaaS space too. 

I think it's a great way to your point perfectly is just a feeling of togetherness and helping foster some of those relationships that you might not have. So that's a great point. The last two here, the seventh one here is what we call ethical practices. 

And that's how do we conduct business in a fair, responsible, and also sustainable way? Because I think with a mission statement that includes human-first, one might think that we are easily to be potentially taken advantage of. I mean, that was one thing that is always something that we keep in the forefront of our minds, especially with our teammates is we want to conduct business and win in business. And part of the human-first mentality is to be fair and is to be responsible for the business so that the business can sustain. 

And I think that goes with pushing back on customer potential asks and ensure that it makes sense for both and not just say, okay, yes, we'll do whatever. And also just being very transparent and radically candor, as I described earlier to our employees to ensure that they understand our expectations and how they need to progress in their career and provide the feedback in real time so that they can get better. And that's a key piece. 

And then the last is just for me, I try to personalize experiences for my direct reports as much as possible. So recognizing their own individuality, understanding what motivates them, what they like to do in their free time, what they like to do at work and how they work. And there's some personality tests, which are fantastic that we've gone through at Gainsight.

(19:58 - 20:32)
And there's plenty out there, but I think understanding the type of person that you are managing and how to individualize and personalize those experiences, whether it's a one-on-one, whether it's interacting with the person via Slack or Microsoft Teams, or whether that's thinking about how you might want to recognize their contributions or celebrate their birthday, right? Personalized experience, I think it's really key. And we try to do that too. And taking that methodology to our customer base as well, as we start building really firm relationships with some of the executives that we work with.

(20:33 - 22:45)
No, that makes a ton of sense. And I love how you've systematized all of this and really thought about all the ingredients. It shows you're not checking a box. 

You're not just saying it. You're spending the time to map out what does that look like so that you can look at, are we doing this? Are we not? Where could we do better? And that's really putting your money where your mouth is. This next question, I think that people talked about human-first leadership and cared a lot about human-first leadership when times were good. 

And with it being tougher in the tech economy, a lot of that has gone out the window. And while that is understandable, I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding that it's a nice to have or that you're going to get more revenue by just focusing on revenue and not focusing on the person. You handle a lot more clients than I do. 

You've seen a lot more companies than I do, and you are at a large successful one that still prioritizes this. So I'm interested in your take on that. Yeah. 

In the past year and a half has been, as you described, very difficult for SaaS organizations. The economy and the forces from a macroeconomic perspective has proven to be one of probably the most difficult times outside of 2008 for me in my entire career. And I think the key piece is everyone is going through this, at least for our B2B SaaS world. 

And as I say, our Gainsight specifically, because we primarily sell to and our customer base are SaaS companies. And so human-first, it's probably more critical now than ever, because one, the folks that you're speaking to at your customer base are going through something very difficult as well. And so if you don't implement that empathy and understanding, that authenticity, the respect that I had described earlier, they're going to sense that.

(22:45 - 24:10)
They're going to feel that. And they're also not going to be willing to, and probably trust you as much as they once have. So I think now it's probably even more critical because everyone's going through a very similar situation, again, in our world, in Gainsight's world. 

I think internally, the pressure to drive results, the pressure to a lot of organizations are having to reduce the cost to serve their customer base. So make very difficult decisions around their organization, whether that's potential freezing of hiring, maybe that's a reduction in force. Again, the human-first mentality is even more critical than it ever has been. 

As we've been, again, more focused on performance and results, because that is something that all businesses have to do. Because at the end of the day, these are businesses that organizations have to run. We've made a very clear promise to ourselves, every individual inside of Gainsight, that we're not going to lose that human-first mentality and aspect because in difficult times, it's easy to get stressed. 

It's easy to get anxious. It's easy to maybe get frustrated with a teammate. And what inevitably happens is that then just gets transferred across the entire business.

(24:11 - 25:19)
And it will impact the business more in terms of a revenue perspective than just focusing on, or just completely foregoing the human-first mentality. I think it's critical and absolutely key, and probably more key than ever to really instill this in organizations. Yeah. 

What I'm really seeing happening a lot, and again, it's understandable. I understand so much more now, owning a business about the perspective of the people who own businesses and why they make certain decisions. Even though I know better, I understand their flawed logic now. 

Because basically right now with everything that's going on in the macroeconomic landscape, and with AI breathing down our necks, what does this mean? Everybody is in basically a fight or flight state because our brains understand that our jobs are essential to our survival. That's how we get our food. That's how we get our shelter.

(25:19 - 29:21)
So anything that even slightly makes us feel threatened in that way just triggers our whole animal instinct of fight or flight, which also actually includes freeze or fawn. A lot of us freeze. But it's not logical. 

When we're doing that, we're not able to say, oh, let me sit down and think logically. If I just handle it this way, it will be better for all. It's literally not possible when we're in that moment. 

A lot of us are getting triggered in that way every day, multiple times a day. It is important to go back to it when you're not feeling like it's going to be the end of the world. Me included, everyone's brain just kind of runs away with a thought and thinks it knows every bad thing that's going to happen in the future because this one person said something just now. 

We really do run away with that. But everyone does best when they're respected, when they're treated like an adult, when they're treated like someone worthwhile and of value. I don't know anybody who performs their best when it's like, oh, you're such a disappointment. 

The more people are treated like, I don't know, machines, or, okay, how many people did you call? CS is very much getting treated like account management lately. I think it's losing a lot of its benefit when that happens, when it's solely revenue focused. I think the revenue is a result of customer success. 

Just trying to chase it down without actually getting customers to success is causing a lot of our problems. Understanding that these are humans and not in business to business, in technology, it's easy to think of it as programs. If this, then that, I do this, they should do that. 

That's just not how people work. It's not how your employees work. It's not how your customers work. 

If you lose the human part of it, you lose the game because you're not dealing with only computers. You're dealing with humans and you can lose humans on a dime. Yeah. 

You mentioned something earlier too that I want to double click into because I think it's key, especially from a psychological perspective is there's this level of uncertainty for teammates, which does cause a fight or flight kind of scenario. I think organizations can combat this with transparency and clarity. I think that's one thing that we've done and I try to do as a leader is to ensure my leaders and also the folks under us are clear on the decisions that we have to make, why we have to make those decisions and our path forward and making sure that the path forward is one where in which we get input also from the individuals because that, to your point, again, provides a level of respect and responsibility on the future of the organization. 

That's a key piece. I think also a very key ingredient is the transparency around the decisions that have to be made and why those decisions have to be made can bring a level of, again, clarity for individuals that helps ease the fight or flight response. A hundred percent. 

I could not agree more. I think in so many ways we treat people who aren't in leadership like children and they're not, and they can feel that things are being kept from them. And of course that's going to make them nervous. 

And just because they're not in a leadership position, that doesn't mean that they don't have amazing ideas that you probably haven't thought of yet. So looping them in, sometimes they can give you a different angle that you might not have considered, but at the very least having the respect to say, hey, here's what's going on. I'd love your thoughts. 

I'd love your feedback. We all know how we want this to go. What are your thoughts here? Not just, oh, you couldn't possibly solve this with your tiny icy brain.

(29:22 - 30:39)
If there's, it's such a good point, Rachel, because if there's any CSMs listening to this podcast, one very tactical thing I will tell you to do, and I love this when RICs or CSMs do this with me, is if you're not getting asked for some of that feedback, proactively reach out. And this goes back to that core value of ours in terms of Shoshin, that beginner's mindset. If there's a challenge that you're facing or the organization is facing, and you feel as though you might have an idea on how to solve for it, proactively reach out to your leader and share it. 

I guarantee it will go over very well. And if it doesn't, then I would question the leadership because good leaders take input and sometimes they might not ask for it. But if you share thoughts, it's a great way to one, build some trust with that leader and also potentially accelerate your career. 

I could not agree more. I tell people all the time, you can lead from wherever you are. Your position does not determine whether or not you are a leader. 

And as a new leader, it can be a little bit scary when people know things that you don't, who are below you. It takes a little while to be like, oh, this is okay. I'm getting the best out of people.

(30:40 - 30:52)
That's all I need to do. No one's going to be like, oh, this one knows more than she does. Maybe we should switch. 

That's not how it works. People knowing more than you is a positive thing. Other people having ideas is a positive thing.

(30:53 - 31:19)
Absolutely. So what would you tell new leaders about how to create a human-first culture when they are maybe feeling some of that imposter syndrome? Yeah. Imposter syndrome is real. 

I feel it. I feel it all the time. And you know what? I think the best thing to do as a new leader for me, when I first started my leadership career, it was really to build trust between the teammates.

(31:19 - 34:45)
Because without trust, I think it's one, you're not going to get a level of transparency from your individuals that you're leading around challenges, around problems, maybe potential solutions as we just shared earlier around that tactical thing you could do as an IC. And when that trust is built, what I have found is it is very much a component in driving results. They want to entrust that you are making the right decision, not only for the organization, but for themselves and their career. 

And they're going to be eager and motivated to work for you and do the things that you're asking them to do. I think the second component is to build some of that trust. I think it's very key to be transparent. 

And hard times are not transparency around why we're making this decision. Why am I asking you to do this? And then also allow them to potentially have a little bit of pushback if necessary on, okay, guess what? I think maybe we can do this better. A great question to ask folks is a very tactical example is we're rolling out this new project X, Y, Z. Here are the components of those projects. 

And I'm speaking as a leader right now. And these are some of the aspects that I would like you to go tackle. In that message, we're missing the why potentially. 

So that's the first thing. You want to explain to them why we're thinking about rolling out this initiative project, so on and so forth. And then what I love to do typically is ask them, what are your thoughts? How can we improve this? One, it's going to help build trust because then you're, again, this kind of goes back to that respect and responsibility. 

And then two, it's also going to potentially provide ideas on how to improve that project. And they feel a level of involvement if that feedback is validated and something that you might actually take into practice. And if it's not, that's completely fine too. 

Or at least they feel like, wow, this person, this leader actually respects my contributions. And that is a really key thing, I think, to build trust. So those are the two components out of the gate I would really focus on. 

And then you can start focusing on some more of those kind of lagging outcomes and aspects of building strong relationships, personalizing some of those experiences to recognize the individual, and then driving some of the support and well-being if they're going to start opening up about maybe some of the struggles that they're having. And they won't open up without that trust kind of being at its core. Absolutely. 

And it's funny that you talk about that in terms of initiatives and the why. I actually build that in my course where I'm talking about setting up the weekly team meeting. I'm a big believer that meetings should be a conversation. 

They should not be for updates. You can read updates, but meetings should be to brainstorm if you need to go back and forth on something, if you need to discuss something and come to a decision, or to be together and build trust and build community. But those are the three main reasons you should be in a meeting. 

If you're not doing that, if you're not having a discussion, if it's one person with a microphone announcing from on high to everyone else, literally no one needed to be there. You could have sent a loom. You could have sent an email.

(34:45 - 38:19)
The power of those kinds of meetings is having all those voices in one room, bouncing things off each other. These are theoretically smart people. That's why you hired them. 

You get so many amazing things when you can just step back for a minute and say, what do you think? It's really cool to watch. Yeah. The act of listening as a leader is key, and you nailed it, Rachel. 

I try to implement that as much as possible in our meetings as well. Right now, I'm leading leaders. It's not individual CSMs. 

When our leadership team comes together, there's typically problems that we need to go solve for. My first, always my first request of them is, one, come with some ideas prior to that meeting to share so we can have a very inclusive conversation and we can red team together and try to solve it as a team. Again, there's then that sense of accountability that is instilled. 

They understand, okay, this is what we as a leadership came to the conclusion of, not somebody telling me. They can then go relay that more engaging and also more transparent with their CSMs on the why and how we're going to go accomplish specific things. It's funny, you stole my question right out of my mouth, which was, yeah, in terms of how you drive that as an executive when you're not working directly with the CSMs. 

I do think every time you move up a level in leadership, even if it's your first level of leadership, it's the, oh, but what I was doing before, that's not going to get the job done now. How do I influence them from up here when I'm not talking directly to them all the time? How do I get results for the customer when I'm not talking to the customer? It really does, every level gets a little more challenging and you need to get higher up in how you influence others rather than doing things yourself. Is how you manage experienced leaders different from how you would teach a newer leader to incorporate this kind of human-first leadership and this trust in their employees? How do you sort of mitigate their, I have to prove myself? Yeah, there is a difference and an understanding of, again, the personality and skill sets of those individuals is really key. 

For leaders out there, if you haven't gone through some business personality and psychological kind of tests and courses for your teammates, I think it's such a powerful tool because there's so many aspects of psychology that are intertwined in our everyday lives. And so understanding personalities and what, how they think, how they process information, how they engage with individuals, it is so powerful to be able to then guide what's potentially needed. And I know that's kind of more broadly than your question, but I wanted to make that point. 

The question that you had asked that the point I would make there is a new leader, for example, like you want to make sure that they understand what human-first leadership means. There's courses that we've created and instilled and practices that we put into place to ensure that our leadership team is continuing to drive those outcomes and drive that mindset specifically. A lot of the time spent with new leaders for me is really going through examples of how to drive those core ingredients that I shared earlier and also our values in everyday interactions.

(38:20 - 38:53)
And the best thing that I can do for them is join them in customer conversations, join them in their one-on-ones, maybe join them for one of their team meetings so that I can provide the feedback that is needed and really ensure that they're moving in the right direction. So I try to be very hands-on with them in the beginning, Rachel. And then with our more experienced leaders, it's really for me, a matter of questioning specific scenarios to ensure that they are still keeping those key ingredients top of mind.

(38:54 - 41:17)
For example, I have a very experienced leader under me and a lot of our time spent in one-on-ones is discussing specific strategic things that we need to do in their segment of business and discussing specific things that we need to do to get their teammates feeling motivated, inspired to take action. And a lot of the time I let that leader kind of guide the conversation, right? And by him or her guiding that conversation, that allows me the opportunity to double check into those ingredients and ensure that those things are being managed and being top of mind for that individual. I think there's a little bit of a difference for me, at least with newer leaders, where I'm a bit maybe more proactive than experienced leaders, where they are actually bringing to me the things that they've been doing or instilling or implementing. 

And that gives me the opportunity to ensure that it's being done in the human-first way. So I hope that helps kind of answer the question. Absolutely. 

That's a perfect answer, I would actually say. And it got me thinking a little bit, just the more advanced you get in leadership and the more advanced your team is, just how much more it's a situation where you do less, you talk less, and how hard that can be to just listen and put your own thoughts aside. To me, that's some of the hardest part of leadership, thought leadership, coaching. 

It's just like, shut up, let them talk. There's good stuff going on here. You'll get in the way. 

It's a find out. The best leaders I've ever had and a lot of the times, if you're lucky enough to have a fantastic leader, you probably will start mirroring some of their skills that you really appreciate. But the best leaders I've had have been active listeners and ask really good questions. 

I talk about this in coaching, the best coaching you can do is don't give them the answer, ask them the questions that will help them get to the answer themselves because they'll be so much more bought in. It takes a lot more time and you don't get to be the hero who came up with it, but that's how you really impact change, make people feel amazing about themselves and make that knowledge stick. But it's harder.

(41:17 - 43:42)
I love that. So we've gone through so many cool things. I think what I'd like to wrap up with is, in order to develop your leadership skills, what was the most useful thing or some of the most useful things you did that you feel really got you to where you are? Oh, what a great question. 

I am an avid reader and listener of podcasts. And so consuming information for me has been probably one of the most helpful things that I've done in terms of my leadership career. And there's fantastic books out there and there's fantastic podcasts. 

The books that have helped me the most have been specifically focused on psychology, the psychology of humans. And I didn't study psychology in university and really actually in high school at all. I wish I would have because in business, you're dealing with humans, right? And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon with AI, there's still going to be a human aspect. 

And understanding the psychology of humans can make you such a more impactful leader, not only in the business that you're working in, but also outside of work. I'm a father of two children and psychology has helped me significantly in raising those children. It's helped me significantly in friendships. 

It's helped me significantly in my marriage. And so understanding psychology, I think, is probably the best advice I could give, the best thing that helped me accelerate in my overall leadership capabilities and my overall career. And there's some great, fantastic books out there on psychology and business, but there's also just, for me, it was the core psychology books and looking at Jung and psychology and Freud and others that really helped kind of- Oh, wow. 

You went old school. Yeah. No, I know. 

I've been getting very deep into psychology as I age, but I do think it's a critical piece for leaders to understand how the human brain works. And I think, yeah, that would be my biggest piece of advice for folks is consume great information. And if you're interested, I think psychology is a great starting point. 

Definitely. I have a huge list of books that I recommend to people. And on my website, I have one that's here, the CS books that you should read and here, like all the psych books you need to read.

(43:42 - 43:46)
Yes. I love it. I'm going to go check that out because I need some good new reads.

(43:46 - 44:11)
And most of them, you're a busy dad, like I'm a busy mom. 90% of them are available and actually worth listening to on Audible because that's how I consume the majority of my stuff when I'm chasing around people, having to run errands because I'm completely fed by that kind of thing too. That's great. 

That's so great. Thank you so much. What a dream getting to talk to you about this.

(44:12 - 44:38)
Oh my gosh. No, thank you so much. Such a great conversation. 

And I love what you're doing with the psychology of CS and just a big fan and so appreciative of anyone that finds some value out of this conversation. Appreciate the listeners as well. A hundred percent. 

Anytime you want to geek out over psychology with me. I will take you up on that, my friend. Yes. 

All right. So that's all I have for today for you folks. Thank you so much for being here.

(44:38 - 45:13)
A huge thank you to Easton. There will be links in the show notes for everything we talked about today. If you're interested in leveling up your CS strategy, team leadership, and executive presence with me, make sure to get on that VIP notification for customer success leadership Academy. 

So you'll be the first to know when the doors open back up in September. That's the last time they're opening up this year. That would be at provansuccess.com slash C S L A. And until next time, take care of yourself, get some rest and make sure to share this with your CS bestie.

(45:13 - 45:15)
Talk soon and here's to your success.