PES_Kahilla: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

PES_Kahilla: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Noa Ries:
During the last recession, data shows that companies that continued to focus on diversity and inclusion actually achieved significantly greater financial performance than those that did not.

Niko Skievaski:
Hello, friends. Niko here, along with Andy. We're your hosts of the People Everywhere Show. And what a show it is we have for you today! Kim Havens and Noa Ries are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Kahilla, which is a rapidly growing tech-enabled community of women on the rise. They work to bring equity to the workplace by democratizing access to leadership development. Every conversation I've had with these two has been both profound and joyous, and this recording is a wonderful example of that. Kim, Noa, welcome to The People Everywhere Show!

Noa Ries:
Thanks for having us.

Kim Havens:
Yup.

Noa Ries:
Great to be here.

Niko Skievaski:
I am very excited to have you. We've been pumped. I've been pumped to have you on the show since I first met you many months ago. I was wondering if you could start by giving us some background, like the story of how you found yourselves in the place you are today with Kahilla. And, yeah, just kind of that journey of how you ended up in this place.

Kim Havens:
Sure, I'll kick it off. Noa and I, we met about almost seven years ago now, actually, at kindergarten drop off. And it's funny to say that because what we really noticed in each other was a kindred spirit. We were both rushing off, dropping the kids, rushing off, and clearly rushing off to the office. We have very different backgrounds. Noa has been a serial entrepreneur, I was in commercial real estate development, but as we really got to know each other, we realized we had so much in common. We've both done a lot of personal-professional development and through our relationship, one day we sat down actually over chips and guacamole and really dug into, hey, where are you today? What are you thinking about the future? And started this big conversation which actually led to where we are now with Kahila.

Noa Ries:
Yeah. So all good businesses start over at chips and guacamole and at the kindergarten to drop off. Kim and I, as Kim said, both very different professional backgrounds, but we both have this deep passion and something in our deepest being, which is this commitment to really wanting to change the future for our daughters. And that stems from both of our grandmothers, actually. So both of our grandmothers had their lives and their capabilities cut short by systems outside of their control. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, pardon me, and a refugee to Australia and not able to live her life to what she was really capable of being because of a system of oppression outside of her control. Kim's grandmother worked during World War Two and at the end of the war was told, okay, thanks, you can go back to the kitchen now. And that has just, I think, informed both of who we are at our deepest being. And as mothers of two daughters each, it's incumbent upon both of us to do what we can to change the future. And as Kim and I started chatting about, gosh, we both feel this tremendous sense of agency and self-authorship, like we both felt like we were in the driver's seat of our lives. And why was that? We had invested a ton of time and money and effort and interest in our own personal and professional development. Obviously, this is only an audio, but we are two white privileged ladies and we recognize that not everyone has the opportunity to pay out of pocket for personal and professional development, and it's transformative when you do. And so we started thinking, well, what if we gave this magic that we both feel to everyone, where everyone then feels that they are able to have the pen to their life and also live their lives to their full capabilities. So that was really the genesis of the idea for Kahilla.

Niko Skievaski:
And fast forward, how would you describe what Kahilla does today?

Noa Ries:
Kayla is a digital leadership development platform for women in the corporate world. We help companies retain, engage and really advance those women into leadership today, and also, today it is actually just for women. But from the very beginning, we've always wanted to be conscious of helping all underrepresented minorities rise. And so we started with a platform just for women, creating a space for women to learn and grow and connect with other light-hearted peers. So that magic of that kindred spirit that Kim and I felt at kindergarten drop off, and in April, we're actually launching a pilot for Men of Color as well, because they are also historically have been overlooked for that tap on the shoulder, that opportunity to have personal and professional development. So the platform is going to be expanding in April for men of color as well as just women, which it is today.

Niko Skievaski:
Nice. I love this. I always love to ask founders how you got your first customer because you have that vision of wanting to help provide this for people, but, and certainly through customer acquisition, it's probably evolved into what it is today. But what does it start as and how did you actually get that first customer to agree to? Do you come in and I guess work with the women of their organization?

Kim Havens:
Great question. When we first launched Kahilla, we had a different name and we were really a direct-to-consumer business, so that was January 2019. We had also, it was a hybrid, we were doing in-person events San Francisco, New York, and here in Sun Valley, and we had a digital community in the middle of that year, we had this incredible event with quite senior women from corporate America, and they asked us for a receipt so they can get reimbursed. And two things dawned on us that one, first of all, just to pay out of pocket to show up, even to an event if you live locally in New York or San Francisco, it's still if you're coming out of pocket, it's really only for those who are privileged. That's so, that doesn't resonate well with us as we really honestly took a look at our business. We're like, this is not equitable, how do we, we've always wanted to make this for all people, and clearly flying to an event in the middle of the mountains is absolutely not equitable and inclusive. So we took a look at that, but what we did make is some amazing connections with these senior corporate women. And we said, hey, we're looking at flipping our business model, going B2B, going exclusively digital because we want to scale and we want to provide truly equitable access. Are you in? And so we dug in deep with a couple of those corporate leaders, and one really piloted that with us.

Andy Kitson:
You mentioned that it had a different name to begin with and now you're Kahilla. What does Kahilla mean?

Noa Ries:
Well, I was born in Israel and it's an ancient Hebrew word, and it means a community united by a common goal. And for us, that common goal is to become better humans and better leaders along the way. And before that it was called The Nook Online. And as our business grew, we realized, first of all, we can't trademark The Nook Online because I think, probably, I don't even know if it's still in existence, but it was one of those readers. And secondly, we're telling women to be expansive and be bold. And then the name of The Nook is like cozy and suggests like you're staying in a corner. And so it just felt like there was a bit of a disconnect there, and so we really wanted to have this sense of expansiveness and boldness and also to change the name, to be one day open to all genders. The Nook also felt really feminine.

Niko Skievaski:
Nice. I was reading through your website and you use this term the power skill gap. I was wondering if you could tell us more about what that gap is and how our company is addressing closing the power skill gap?

Kim Havens:
Sure. So we consider power skills, soft skills. That's sort of the name we use because we do know that those are the skills that get people from doing a really good job to actually being in leadership. And those skills are things like communication, empathy, teamwork, problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and the list goes on. But it's those harder-to-quantify skills that you really know when you see it in someone, but they're kind of hard to measure and they're they can definitely be hard to train, but they are trainable. Something that we also know, there was a more recent Wall Street Journal survey that found that 92% of surveyed executives said that those soft skills, what we call power skills, were equally or more important than technical skills, yet 89% of them said they had a very or somewhat difficult time finding employees with those soft skills. And so that's that disconnect we're seeing, the executive leaders who are doing the hiring try to bring people up the pipeline, can't find the talent with soft skills.

Noa Ries:
And you asked how is corporate America or the corporate world in general, globally addressing this? And usually it's giving executive coaching because executive coaching provides personal and professional development and skill development, that mindset, development of soft skills, power skills, we call them, as Kahilla, that Kim was just mentioning. But usually, executive coaching is either only provided to those who are already at the top or those who are at the top tap on the shoulder individuals for that opportunity to have executive coaching. And what we see is that those at the top typically only tap people on the shoulder who look like them. And so we really wanted to provide democratized, equitable access to this transformative benefit of skill development, mindset development, it's an increase in your confidence, but it's also an increase in your capabilities that happens when you have that power of skill development that we talk about. And you know, at Kahilla we say you're getting an edge, kind of that Kahilla edge.

Andy Kitson:
Noa, could you go a little bit deeper on that confidence versus capabilities? Kim, as you are listing out a lot of those skills, they sounded like skills that I was wondering to what degree is the challenge, skill development is an actually learning how to do these versus being recognized for knowing how to do these and being good at them and, yeah, I would just love to hear you talk a bit about kind of that confidence versus capabilities and like how you think about where to focus when you're looking at leadership development.

Noa Ries:
You know, I think they're inextricably linked. One of the things that I think we do very differently than some other leadership development organizations is we look at personal and professional development because the reality is, especially since March 2020, all of us have been at home. Work and life are inextricably linked. And so you ask that individual who has confidence, but it's really the confidence to then advocate for themselves. And that is a skill, you know, it's emotional intelligence at its core. I think being able to read your audience, read the room, knowing how to build strategic relationships in an organization. Niko, you asked us how did we get our first client? A big part of that is there's a Jewish word, chutzpah. Having the chutzpah to go and ask a Fortune 100 company, will you do business with us? ... To, you know what, ladies based in Idaho, we had no business asking them, but we were confident and we built that confidence throughout our careers through really intentional work. And it is something that not everybody has access to, you know, building confidence. It's obviously, systems need to change, policies need to change, cultures need to change, but what we really want to do is put the individual in the driver's seat so that they are the one who's able to understand how to navigate some of the norms in the corporate world, how to navigate the politics, and that again goes back to emotional intelligence, having a growth mindset, being curious, having communication skills as well, which are so critical to be able to advocate for yourself with grace and with confidence.

Kim Havens:
I was just going to add with women, so say confidence, for instance, that can be a good thing, or you could look like a bull in a china shop, right? And people get like, oh, she's like overtly called vague, become a real negative, so it goes back to the social and emotional intelligence of what environment, what is this culturally here and actually being smart, and then hopefully, and one of the reasons we work with cohorts from a large organizations, not just individuals, is shifting the culture at a company where, hey, that's a positive to celebrate when someone's confident and really knows what they're doing and speaks up, but also recognizing you can't just tell everyone to jump out there and like be more confident in a meeting because sometimes it backfires on people and that's a problem.

Andy Kitson:
What are some of the inflection points in your own development as leaders, and how does that experience inform how you are putting together the content or the experience that you want the members of Kahilla to have?

Noa Ries:
I think we initially used ourselves as the litmus test of how to develop the programming and the curriculum, and it was really, I love the term me-search. It was, you know, what did we want to learn more about ourselves and how do we want to improve ourselves? I think some of the inflection points for us have been actually learning when to say, I don't know, being able to be confident enough in what we do know and confident enough in our capabilities to then say, I don't know. And being curious constantly, how can we do this better? What are we missing? Being really open to feedback. And I think also being able to kind of manage that tension of being fierce and strong and assertive, but also kind and compassionate. And I don't want to say soft but open-hearted as a leader that I think we've both kind of tapped into more of the last couple of years. And then I think it's just we're all busy humans and the to-do list, it's never-ending. We have young kids and we said we want to have full personal and professional lives. So it's also, okay, well, how can we work smarter? How can we problem-solve more efficiently? How can we manage our time more productively? How can we learn to delegate and delay or diminish tasks that don't actually need to be done? So those are all skills that we wanted to work on and kind of how the Kahilla community and the programming developed.

Kim Havens:
And I think to add to that, just thinking there are some personal experiences in my past, I would say I definitely can recall a couple of moments in my previous career in ... life where what I recognized is I had a really good community around me that would say, well, of course you're ready to take that next leap. One of the things we know statistically is women go "ah, I'm not ready," right? There's a checklist I got to fill out. I can't take that job, I'm not even going to put my name in the ring, so I'm 120% and then go get the MBA and PhD before I even apply for that job. And so I actually have this memory in my sort of mid-twenties where I was like, oh, maybe I should get my MBA, everybody has got their MBA. So I started that process of going after my MBA and then I had people around me who said, you don't need your MBA, why don't you just go after this job? And so it was sort of this community, the right people, the right support network, which is really important for us at Kahilla, which is part of what we've built, but surrounding me, and at the same time, I started pursuing two paths, well I'm going to put my name in the ring for that next job, if I get it, forget the MBA. But I'm also at the same time got to pursue the MBA until if I don't get this job and maybe it feels like I need this step, I'll take it. But kind of not limiting myself to being like, hey, what are all the things I can open up? And what I found is I never got my MBA. I kept reaching for the next move and looking at my network strategically, where do I want to be? Who do I want to be connected with? Which was really critical to then people saying, hey, I'm going to pull you up and give you these opportunities. And that was really powerful. And I want women in our community and other people to recognize and surrounding yourself with the right people, the right community who's really supportive and encouraging you to take kind of a scary next step is important because none of us know forward without sort of a bit of a push. I mean, often it feels like you're jumping off a cliff, it's scary for a lot of people to make that next big move and you need people around you to do that.

Niko Skievaski:
It sounds like you work with primarily kind of larger companies who have employee resource groups, they are trying to improve their equity and diversity within their leadership, that seems like the common problem. I always am fascinated by it, when you start a company, how can you start the right way? How can you not find yourself in a place where you have to make these improvements and you're a young company, what are the things that you're doing on a regular basis to build the company in this way where you don't end up in a situation where you have challenges with DEI that you need to focus on, or maybe I'm thinking about it wrong and that we should always be investing in DEI, even if equity is perfect from whatever sort of ideal that might come from. If you could just speak to that, that would be amazing.

Noa Ries:
Yeah. We have built the company with principles of diversity, equity, inclusion in mind from the very beginning. Everything we do points back to that, and that's for a few reasons. But the most important one is that it makes the business better. You know, it has a bottom line benefit when you have cognitive diversity, diversity of thought across all of the intersections of humanity, whether it's race, ethnicity, orientation, even age or geographical diversity. You know, there's so many different dimensions to a problem, and so the more people who are thinking about how to solve that problem, the better the outcome is going to be. And that leads to increases in not only productivity for the organization but also performance. Because you are solving problems in a better way, you are working more smartly, you're creating and ideating better. And so that's something that we tried to do from the very beginning, but it requires intentionality as well. When we first launched Kahilla, we thought we're going to be better than the corporate world and we're going to make sure 35% of our experts are from historically underrepresented minorities so that we're could be better than the corporate world. And then George Floyd was murdered and we thought, you know what, it's actually not good enough. We need to do a lot better. And so we stopped and put all of our programming on pause for two weeks. And over the last couple of years, we worked really intentionally to exponentially increase the diversity of our experts. And we now have over 75% of our content delivered by those who are from historically underrepresented minorities. And that does a few things, one, it shows our diverse community. They are able to aspirationally see themselves represented in these amazing subject matter experts and seasoned career executives sharing their stories who happen to reflect their lived experiences and reflect them, but also for our white cis-gender members to learn from people unlike them and in a safe, secure space. Again, communities really at the core of everything that we do, there's no gotcha moments. We want people to learn and unpack some of their biases that they didn't even have in a really safe space. And so it's been so incredibly powerful for all of us to just continue to push the way we think about things and push the boundaries. One of our experts says to think that there isn't a box.

Niko Skievaski:
That being said, what challenges do you still run into? Having been thoughtful about this from the beginning?

Kim Havens:
I would say challenges in terms of growing the business, hiring people, our, well actually, when we launched Kahilla, knowing a really diverse group of people, we didn't. We worked so hard to build those connections, build trust with people, and so then we could again hire them, whether they're internal employees or they're working as executive coaches or experts that were contractors with us. So really thoughtfully going through that, it's hard. And, you know, you hear that from companies building a good pipeline of diverse candidates, it's hard, it takes work and it takes a lot of thought and time and then making sure that, again, building that trust in a remote environment. Most of our people are remote, so we have to think through how do we, we bring people in. How do we make sure everyone feels included? And they belong and their voice is really important. So having thoughtful, really thinking through our meetings, right? When do we meet? How do we sort of socialize remotely and make sure that the team members are building trust so they can work well, but also are building friendships? Because ultimately we're at work most of the day, and having those friendships is really important where they can do really good work together. I don't think that we're ever friends, especially as you're growing and you're bringing new people in. It's constantly, okay, how do we invite the next crew of people in properly and really think through, who are they? Where are they coming from and how do we open up the doors to say, you're really welcome here and we need and want all of you?

Andy Kitson:
What are some of the key tactics that you rely on to establish that trust to make people feel welcome? Just kind of concretely, if someone shows up on their first day, what's the experience that they have? What are the things that you're doing to help them feel that way?

Noa Ries:
I think it's making an effort to get to know somebody as a whole person. And so beyond their resume, what are their interests? What do you like doing on the weekend? Find out a little bit more about that individual as a whole person so that you can connect to them. That then builds trust when you, someone tells you that they have a two-year-old daughter, three weeks later, you ask them, okay, how's your daughter? How was your weekend? And you're asking them about their personal life as much as you are asking them to get the job done. I think that is really important and I think it's also important to model it. One of the things we work to model is owning our own mistakes and also owning our own challenges. And so we are the first to admit when we have a team call, oh gosh, one of my kids kept me up all night last night or the dog vomited and then whatever it was, and so I'm really exhausted today, I'm not my best. And I think that level of humility then shows everyone, okay, I don't, first of all, need to take myself too seriously here. And secondly, I can, it's safe for me to take my armor off, if you will.

Kim Havens:
We did, so right after we hired a large number of people, we did an in-person event and got everyone together and that was really amazing. We did basically a retreat, couple of day retreat, and we did bonding, we didn't talk work. Actually, some people were very anxious because we didn't talk work. We got people to do trust walks with blindfolds and had meals together and brainstorming groups with coaches, but more personal and bonding-focused than work-focused. And that was really amazing, it was an incredible experience. And we do things as you ask, like, what do we do on the first day? Well, we do try to send a box of Kahilla swag to people, kind of getting people excited, you know, and then whoever is there, no one, I usually jump on a call to welcome people. I think we've done that with everybody on first day, even if it's just 15 minutes and we don't work directly just to say hi and you know, that's who we are and we are here, we're not that large of a company, we're here if you have questions and then make sure that we encourage everybody on the team to get on a quick Zoom call with the new person, introduce yourself and learn more about them personally and share who you are personally. So thinking through that culture that when they come in, they're not like, okay, I'm sitting 2000 miles away and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do today, and I don't know who these people are. So we do spend time thinking through that and really trying to build those connections.

Noa Ries:
One of the simplest tactics, and we do a weekly leadership table, which is a smaller group, and it's just a two-word chicken. How are you feeling today in two words? And nobody ever sticks to two words. But that does set the stage for us getting to know each other as whole people. We're all geographically scattered and dispersed across the country. And so you can't see someone's body language, you can't see that they're slumping. So that individual is saying, I'm tired, but I'm excited or whatever it may be. And then they say a little bit more about why they are those two words. And that's just been a really powerful way to show our team that we care about them.

Andy Kitson:
Cool. I would love to hear more about community. I feel like that word has come up so much and it seems central to what you do and would love it if the two of you could take us a couple of layers deeper on, like what's the healthy community look like? How does it work? Like kind of mechanically, like what's going on in the community that actually makes it a tool, like a mechanism in someone's development? And as you're fostering these communities and building them, what are the things that you're focused on to kind of do that in that repeatable, scalable way? I don't know if you have like a, here are the principles of getting community off the grounds that does the things we want, but let's just want to hear the two of you talk about community for a while.

Noa Ries:
.... I'll start with an anecdote. You know, when Kim and I first started brainstorming about this business, it was the connection to someone who I was able to say, actually, I'm not having a very good day today, and Kim then saying to me, okay, but what's next? You've got to think beyond where you are right now and giving me the audacity to think that there was a beyond the doldrums that I was in right now, and that sense of connection to another human who A,cared, but B, enabled me to say, you know, actually I'm not awesome right now was transformative for me and life-changing for me. And, you know, that really was at the spirit of what we wanted to create with Kahilla. We wanted to have women feel like they could show up as their whole self, which is good some days and bad some days. But some days, and back we were in the offices all working together, you don't want to necessarily share that you're having a bad day with your colleague at the water cooler. Sometimes you don't trust that person. Similarly, you bump into your next-door neighbor at the grocery store and they ask you, How are you? You're often just going to say, great, how are you? Even when you're not. And so there's something magical about a little bit of anonymity in helping people to be candid, that we found we wanted to scale and create. And so what we do at Kahilla is facilitate a cross-industry community of peers, and we do that in a multitude of ways. So you're not just connecting with your colleagues, which we do facilitate as well. We basically create a digital employee resource group here at Kahila. But what we do that I think is one of the most magical parts of Kahilla is enable women to build this cross-industry, cross-geography, communities of peers, where they really can be candid with each other and they can share their challenges, they can ask bold questions, and we do that in a few different ways. So one, it's through our digital platform. Our director of community has this rhythm every week where we're asking questions that are as light as what are you reading right now? To what are you tips for your annual review with your manager next week? And there's the multitude, the spectrum of personal and professional development. And then in addition to that kind of weekly conversations happening on the digital platform, there's also monthly peer learning circles where there's a topic and we use an AI-based algorithm to match people, so someone who wants to work on their pitch is matched with somebody else who wants to work on their pitch, and two people on the East Coast are matched because their time zone works and then two people at the same level based on similar seniority are also matched. So we're using technology to facilitate that matching, it's kind of like a dating app, but for women in the corporate world. And then we have kind of like a book club conversation guide. So we're taking the awkwardness out of networking. I don't know about you, but I hate going to those networking events where you just swap business cards. This is really helping people get to know the other person and takes the awkwardness out of what do I even talk about? We give them a conversation guide and we do those either one-on-one or small groups. And oftentimes our members go on a tangent, just last week, our members had this conversation, it was supposed to be about goal setting, but they all recognized that they had identified as middle managers, even though they'd all have 20 years of experience and none of them self-identified as senior executives. And they had this whole discussion on why are we diminishing ourselves and the whole conversation and went on that. And these are women who otherwise wouldn't have met had it not been for Kahilla, but they were able to have very vulnerable conversations because of the Kahilla community.

Kim Havens:
What we really think of it as it's that combination of the science of building community and the art of it. And the reality is it actually takes a lot of work to do. I don't know if you've been involved in many other communities, but it doesn't happen without a few key people and personalities who really help champion things. And so we also look for those who, people who sort of rise to the top naturally, often they're more outgoing people. Although what we have found and I think this is true across a lot of digital communities, is we have our self-proclaimed introverts actually tell us this is a place I feel safe to share because they're not anonymous, but they feel a sense, there's enough of a anonymity, as Noa was saying, and just sort of like a wall that they can share, they don't feel like HR is looking over their shoulder. And it's really, again, the community that we've built is very supportive and positive. And so there's not this negative, there's no trolls on there, it's not allowed. And so people, these introverts are stepping up into more of our leadership, taking the role and being facilitator and the small groups that get formed. And we are our community team builds this, but they then pass it off and then it sort of moves on from there. And as Noa explained, these sessions where, hey, we gave them a topic and they took it someplace else, which is even more important because they're building and talking about things that they care about versus just the things that we're like, oh, our director of programming and our curriculum is thinking, this is where we are, but we want people to get to what did they need to talk about and how are they going to build those connections? But it's really amazing to see that, you know, what other people start, we have that flow, as Noa was talking about, posting questions, polls, prompts. But then what is the community? Because they're allowed to start to post as well themselves and ask questions. And it does take work though. It doesn't just.

Niko Skievaski:
Sure.

Kim Havens:
Just because you put up a platform doesn't mean people start talking.

Noa Ries:
And actually, you know, that is what we hear so often. We work with employee resource group leaders and it is so much work to create the event, to create the content, and then to be the cheerleader, constantly championing, to get everybody to show up and engage. And so our team does all that work for them so that they can maximize the impact of the employee resource group, and what we know is that it works. Increasing sense of belonging has a direct correlation to increases in retention for an organization where I think still in the midst of this great resignation or great breakup, whatever you want to call it, where people are rethinking their relationship with work. And what we saw in 2020 was 81% of our members said they were more likely to stay with their company because of their Kahilla membership. And we dug into that, and it was this connection to others where, you know, they said, nobody on my team gets the fact that it's a struggle for me to make lunch for my one-year-old and do a PowerPoint presentation for my boss and do the load of laundry and, and, and, and still look somewhat like I'm a functioning human. But everybody here at Kahilla gets it. And so, you know, our community are sharing tips and tricks and just recognizing, yeah, I also have that challenge, actually, but you're not alone.

Kim Havens:
Yeah, the not alone has been the big epiphany for the women in our community of like, I'm not alone. You're, on the surface you're like, of course we're all not alone, but we often all feel alone and like, nobody has this experience, but you know what? There are millions of people who probably have a similar experience and helping them find each other and go, oh, I'm not the only one, it's so important. It's really magical when they meet up. And so that's what we're trying to do, is give them this facilitation guides, give them the tools by poking and prodding them with prompts where they start to meet people who they go, oh, I'm not alone. And now I feel like I can build my support, I can move forward, I can share with people and really just feel back to the I feel a sense of community, I feel a sense of belonging and inclusivity. So that's the coolest way they spend time on. No, I just say that is really important to us.

Noa Ries:
We're very passionate about community. One other cool anecdote I wanted to share with you. So we have a digital platform, now fully digital, and it's an app as well. And app has geo-targeting. If somebody turns it on, they can find people near them. And in, I think it was in early December, one of our members posted I just landed in North Carolina, is anyone here want to meet for a coffee? And we saw a whole bunch of people who were also in North Carolina take her up on that. So now facilitating online and offline gathering as well is something we're starting to explore even more, helping our members develop connections in really meaningful ways.

Niko Skievaski:
I love this. I have always felt awkward in employee resource groups and I've been a member of a few of them and never quite understood how I should show up. And as a founder, like I want these groups to succeed, I want them to be helpful, but always felt kind of awkward about how to do that. And I think what you're describing is a lot of the challenges with employee resource groups and why they often just become a Slack channel that might get an article posted once a week, but like not much else than that. I'm wondering where do companies go wrong in creating more equity and more inclusiveness in their workplaces, especially for women?

Noa Ries:
I mean, I think part of it is obviously not having the policies and the systems, first of all, to be setting up a woman specifically for success. The reality is, I'll say caregivers have unique challenges and unique experiences in the workplace, and I think more organizations need to have parental leave. And I am specifically saying parental leave, not maternity leave, because it needs to be celebrated for males as well as females to take that time off to be a caregiver, because then the onus isn't all on the female. So I think creating policies for parental leave and then just more flexibility in general. So that's from a system perspective, but then again, I think that age-old problem of just tapping a select few on the shoulder for opportunities for stretch assignments or opportunities for face time with senior leadership, that is such a subjective process. And Kim and I talk a lot about this. Go ahead, Kim.

Kim Havens:
I would just say.

Noa Ries:
I know what you're going to say.

Kim Havens:
And it's hard. So you can have all the best strategy and sort of thinking at the top about this, like we're going to have this really equitable and inclusive environment and we've come up with even metrics or tracking. But if everyone doesn't buy in and feel included in the creation of the strategy and sort of what the culture is going to be, kind of starts to fall apart. So you might say, hey, we've built this great pipeline, we're going to be promoting women, but if actually the hiring manager just looks around and he goes, oh, hey, I know you, I'm just going to interview these three men that I know because it's easy and everyone has to stop themselves and go, oh, but wait, no, I need to think a little bit more thoughtfully. And so I think companies often have good intentions, but it starts to break down on individual basis where the individual doesn't always make decisions that relate back to the goal maybe of the company or strategy on DEI. And it's hard, especially with a big company, it's harder, I think, than a small company. But even in a small company, it's hard. Everybody has to really like put it into their DNA, I think. And I think on that, especially people managers, people managers need to be set up for success, to be inclusive people managers. Very often a company does all this work, fantastic work, to recruit and hire diverse talent, and then the individual manager responsible for them is not creating the conditions for success for those people to want to stay, let alone be able to rise in that organization. And so I think making sure it's not just at the very top of an organization, that the senior leadership values equity, it's got to go all the way down, to Kim's point. Everyone's got to be bought into it.

Kim Havens:
But even on that, it's hard, right? We are talking about when you bring in a lot of diversity and that's everything, gender, age, ethnicity, race, everything, things, we do know through research, it breeds better problem-solving and innovation, it's messy. And so if you're like, no, no, no, we just need an answer right this second, it can feel slower to make sure you're listening or even the introvert like, wait, I haven't heard from you, Niko, please tell me more about what you're thinking, takes a little more effort. And that is also a cultural thing of saying this is important to us, we do need to slow down for a second, we need to make sure we've heard from people. We might have more dissension, which, you know, so it could feel a little slower. But ultimately we're still trying to get to write more innovation, more problem-solving, a better bottom line. So if we can just pause for a little bit to give space to think through equity in this exact moment, in this discussion we're having today around building a new product or hiring new person, we actually might get to a better answer. And I think that's where companies go. We've got to move faster, we're not moving fast enough and we know we've got to move fast all the time, but making sure we have enough space to think about equity and diversity in that discussion's important.

Niko Skievaski:
I think you're pointing out a lot of the responsibility that lies in everyone else in the company and the full company culture to actually have the skill set of inclusion to be able to actually solve these problems of diversity. Kahilla itself focuses on empowering women right now, but as we just talked about, there's so much else in the organization that needs to have training, as well, it needs to have these skills developed. How are you thinking about that? And maybe you're focused now, but like, are you thinking about expanding to help other folks?

Noa Ries:
Yes. The reality is most leadership development is centered around the white, cisgender male. They are the ones who get the access to the majority of those opportunities. And what we want at Kahilla is that our members are in the driver's seat. And so the way we have empowered our members to help be agents of change in their organization is they are now able to download resources and then cascade that knowledge to their team, so they're able to practice leadership and cascade knowledge. So what that might look like is we do a session on how to run an inclusive meeting, for example, and then our member is able to download that resource and take back to their manager and say, you know, here are some ways I'm thinking about maybe redoing the way we run meetings so that they are more inclusive, that it puts our member in the driver's seat. We do also have programming that has white males sharing their perspectives as well, because they obviously do need to be a part of that solution. And then as we mentioned in April, we're launching a experience for men of color to also have access to this safe community, interactive executive coaching and curated content to help them more effectively navigate the norms of the corporate world and more effectively be able to have the tools, the skill sets, the mindsets to rise in the corporate world as well.

Kim Havens:
And two things I'll add. One is we work with larger cohorts. So really when 100, 1000, whatever the number is, come on together from an organization, they are sharing and learning together. And so they walk away with similar lexicon. And if they all go back and actually starts to shift the company culture, depending on how large the company is, so that's important to us. It's why we really steer away from like, oh, you can just have one .... We really want there to be a cohort that's learning together. Two, we also have done and we do about annually, which is again part of our testing as we are working towards opening for all, learning intensives, where it's open to all genders. And we've done a lot on inclusive leadership. And I will say that older white gentlemen have really had their mind exploded in those conversations. And often what we've seen in the feedback from that is I honestly never thought about this stuff. I never realized I had to recognize it because I didn't have to, because I've got the privilege. I didn't even have to think about it. And I had no idea people felt this way. And it was really it was awesome. They enjoyed it. They felt a bit challenged. Sometimes. Some people got defensive, but at the end of the day, we had great discussion groups. It really did open their eyes to a lot of experiences that not just women, but really everyone not like them in their organization was experiencing. And so that was again, for us as a community testing, okay, how would we have this idea of we want to have open spaces where people can learn and share with each other, but also close spaces where, you know, okay, this is my group where I can share. I had this really hard challenge and I need to do that in a safe place so that maybe I can come up with some good ways to react or interact. And so this is part of our growth as a company. How do we really thoughtfully open up.

Andy Kitson:
What are a few of kind of like the most important or the highest leverage or it's kind of like if you could only choose, say, like two or three skills or pieces of knowledge or perspectives to the people to take away. I'm actually kind of curious both for, say, their female members and then also for somebody to say the older white male executives that you're just talking about their experience. Yeah, we'd love to hear you just kind of talk a bit more about what they would be taking away.

Noa Ries:
What are the most important skill sets that we hope our members will take away? I can answer that question and then, Kim, feel free to answer the question on what do we hope senior executives change as a result of the Kahilla program. So.

Kim Havens:
Yeah.

Noa Ries:
Did I nail the question?

Andy Kitson:
That's perfect.

Noa Ries:
Okay.

Andy Kitson:
Better than I did.

Noa Ries:
So I would say my top three would be how to build strategic relationship capital. And I say capital because it is capital. It's something that building relationships of meaning in the corporate world is capital, because then when you ultimately need something, you can make a withdrawal from the bank. Somebody who's going to advocate for you, sponsor you when you're not in the room. That is a skill to learn how to build meaningful relationships and connections. And that is not something that every individual is taught. To Kim's point earlier, it's not a hard skill that you would learn at university or whatever education system that you've gone through, so that is the first one. The second one, I would say is building your personal brand. What do you want to be known for? That is a really important thing to nurture intentionally, and that is everything from the way you communicate, the way you show up physically, visibly, even in a thumbnail. There's only this much real estate available to you. You have to be really intentional about how you show up. And I think this third one, I would say is your growth mindset being curious, being a constant learner and being adaptable to change. Because I think if we've learned anything over the last couple of years is that change is certain and we've all got to be able to go with the flow. And I think that is again, a skill not being fixed in. I've always done it this way and it's always going to be done this way. You've got to be able to say, okay, yes, but there might be a better way to do it today. And so that is something that is a mindset we really are proud to be teaching at Kahilla. Kim, would you add anything else to that?

Kim Havens:
I think those are my top three as well, absolutely. In terms of more senior executives walking away, say, from one of our exclusive meetings or programs, I would say it's really having them, right now we're at the stage of having them open their eyes and go, wow, these people that I work with that maybe report to me have amazing talent. They're not just skilled, again, but I didn't even recognize they have a really different lived experience than me. And there's probably a value in there that I have not because I haven't spent time getting to know them. I haven't been able to sort of draw out. So my guess is we see all the time they actually are kind of limiting because people will hold their cards tight, they're like, I'm not going to share who I really am. And so having these generally speaking, male cisgender white men say, okay, I see you for who you are. And I would love to know more if you're willing to share. So again, being thoughtful about that, but which also means that they need to open up as well about who they are, because we've also know they're probably have an experience that we might be assuming something of them. Well, well, maybe you all went to this Ivy League country club life, and that might not be true at all. But we're making assumptions about some of these white men, have risen to the top. And so I think just really everybody is sharing a little bit more about who they are and their life story, which again, helps build bonds, build trust, ultimately build better teams.

Noa Ries:
The other thing I would add to that is that having more diversity at the top is good for business. And I think the more senior executives that recognize that, the sooner the better their businesses will be and the better the world will be. During the last recession, data shows that companies that continue to focus on diversity and inclusion actually achieved significantly greater financial performance than those that did not. When the S&P was down 35%, companies whose underrepresented minorities reported a highly positive work experience, actually showed a 14% increase in financial performance. And so it's frustrating for us to still have conversations with organizations that don't believe that and don't recognize the fiscal benefit and just having more representation at the top. And the reality is companies customer bases are changing. All of the latest census shows the population of America, just America is changing right now. And so companies need to reflect their customer bases. Leadership needs to reflect their customer bases.

Andy Kitson:
I'm curious, you're talking about specifically diversity at the top. Are the issues you're seeing with diversity evenly spread throughout the different stages of seniority, or are there certain bottlenecks, say, that folks hit and are there particular hurdles or stages? If you really need to solve one thing, if you solve this thing, then the system gets much better? Or is it something where it is more of just like everything just needs to be fixed and you kind of have to.

Noa Ries:
No, I actually think that broken rung.

Noa Ries:
On all fronts.

Kim Havens:
It's a broken rung. Yeah. So I don't know if you've seen that there's this like great, terrible, but pyramid showing the statistics, right, of where, how many women, and then there's also women of color at different seniorities. And basically it's a pyramid, and by the top there's almost none. And really it's at that VP level where, that's what everyone talks about is the broken rung, the glass ceiling. What we are finding, especially in the last couple of years, is large companies especially have gotten very good at recruiting diverse talent. They are building a pipeline. The bottom of the pyramid is quite healthy and the attrition starts about two years in where early on people go, I just don't really feel like I belong here. So starts with the belonging, those who sort of push through that and say, it doesn't matter, I got my head down, I'm just going to do a great job. Ultimately, they get to a place and that's really middle management, which is why we focus on women in middle management right now. That's where they get stuck and that's where they either stay there. We have within our community who've been in the same job, the same job for over ten years, and it's a combination of different things of them not raising their hand, of their managers not really seeing, being like, well, that's great. It's awesome that you want to stay here and then they want to ...

Noa Ries:
And they're so good at their job that they're just, well, I'm not going to promote her, she never asks for anything and she does her job fantastically, So I'm just going to keep her there.

Kim Havens:
Yeah, she's quiet. I'm going to keep her there. Which, so it's a problem on both sides, right? So learning to say, hey, I'm really good at this and I don't want to stay here. You do need to advocate for yourself, but then also managers going, actually, we're not being very equitable in this situation. Like we have people who are so ready to move up and we're not investing in them, that sticky floor is very real. And so what you see is those women who stay or who leave. And so that's when you see the women quit and it's usually correlates very strongly with child rearing as well. And so what happens for a lot of women who decide, well, this is only true and this happens more for white women. So is that, hey, I don't really have to work, right? So white women who get around that VP level, well, I guess I can just raise a family. There are a lot of women of color who do not have that option, and so they get stuck and they sit there forever and the rest of their career in middle management.

Noa Ries:
And again, that broken rung, the statistic is for every 100 men who are promoted from entry-level to manager, only 87 women are and 82 women of color. And so, again, it just continues to perpetuate the problem. And as Kim was saying, there's either an exodus of women getting on the off-rent because they don't see anyone who looks like them at the top and they think, oh, well, it's not possible to have a full personal and professional life here. So I'm just going to piece out and go do either be a full-time caregiver or go and do my own side hustle or small business or malaise sets in, and they just decide I'm just going to settle with the purgatory of the mundane and I'm just going to sit here forever because that's my lot in life. And that is something we really want to change, we want everyone to recognize you can have a full personal and professional life. It takes work and it is not easy and it is certainly not a balance, but it is possible and it's better for the company as well.

Andy Kitson:
Very eloquently said.

Niko Skievaski:
I want to transition to our rapid-fire questions. So we have five questions. I want an answer from at least one of you. But if both of you have something to say, rapid-fire them out. To start off with question number one, what is a story that illustrates culture to you? And this could be both professional or personal.

Kim Havens:
Well, I've got one. Showed up in our company culture today and this week more than once actually, these is the little things, birthdays. So we as a team celebrate birthdays, and Noa is really good at this part, where we create, again, we're all remote, we can't, there's no cakes, there's no in-person whatever gathering. But we get together, we all produce, send in information, a little quote, a saying, and she creates a beautiful card, digital card, and sends it off on email, and then everyone kind of adds to that, and it's a really nice way, it happened twice this week, it's just a nice reminder of like, oh, it's a fun birthday. It's yeah, we have a lot of those in our company.

Noa Ries:
Another one and I'll try to be rapid-fireish with this is we do values awards now once a month and it's basically recognizing someone who has put into practice the values that are really important to us and our team all nominate other people for somebody who did something that demonstrated one of our values. And once a month, Kim and I read them out and people are so stoked to be recognized. It's not a monetary compensation, it's literally just we see you and we recognize you and we value you and thank you for upholding that which is so important to us.

Niko Skievaski:
I love that, I'm going to implement that.

Noa Ries:
It was actually Nadia's idea and.

Kim Havens:
Yeah.

Noa Ries:
And it was awesome. Brilliant. I will say initially I was doing certificates for everyone, but we are so busy right now that now we just read them out and I write them in an email to everyone from Kim and I. So if you have time to do the certificates, it's lovely, but it is sweet. We embarrass people, the reading them out loud. People just are like, oh my gosh, and then everybody, you know, everybody heard them, which is also important because we want people to really embrace our values and embody them. So it reinforces like, oh, I want an award.

Niko Skievaski:
Yeah.

Noa Ries:
I want recognition. And there's a, we're trying to positively encourage that.

Niko Skievaski:
Follow-up question with this. I always look for ways to encompass stories around values, like, do you keep these in a place where people can say, oh, this is our value, let me see all the words that are associated with this, like the reason why they got that award.

Noa Ries:
Yeah, so when you nominate someone, you have to say what value you're nominating them for and then what they did that is making you nominate them.

Kim Havens:
And we have a living document that everyone has access to all the time of our values. So they could print it out if they want. They could have on their desktop, whatever. But it's there, it's part of that welcome. Actually, when we onboard people, they get those immediately, day one, so they can start to think through.

Andy Kitson:
The next one. Are you ready?

Noa Ries:
Sure.

Andy Kitson:
What book do you want everyone you work with to have read?

Noa Ries:
Oh, you can see behind Kim that is.

Kim Havens:
Part of our library. We have..

Noa Ries:
It's hard. Oh, I know. Edith Eager, the gift. So Dr. Edith Eager is a 94-year-old still working psychiatrist and a survivor of Auschwitz. And she is a preeminent expert in the world focused on post-traumatic stress disorder. But her book, The Gift, is really talking about how in every single moment you have, you have a choice to view it as a gift and you have the opportunity to recognize that you always have gifts available to you. And so we interviewed her at Kahilla. I mean, it was a pinch-me moment. She is my total hero, her book is amazing. And she.

Kim Havens:
We cried.

Noa Ries:
Yeah.

Kim Havens:
I mean, literally, she, we actually. ...

Noa Ries:
... Cried.

Kim Havens:
Luckily.

Noa Ries:
We weren't doing the interview. Our amazing director of programming, Harriet Cole, did the interview. And because we were in tears when we said .... sort of talk, hello, there are so many wonderful books, but that really I would actually just agree. It's such a phenomenal book. And really we want that idea of the gift. Yeah, use everything and you've got this gift of life and who you are.

Niko Skievaski:
I love that. And I was going to mention it earlier, but it seems like a great time to mention it that we are recording today on January 27th, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. So I love these examples that you brought forth through that even though the show will air sometime in the future, I'm giving it away now. How long it takes us to put one of these out. Okay. Rapid fire number three.

Noa Ries:
Just acknowledging that. Yeah, right.

Niko Skievaski:
Of course. What non-business related hobby or interest has impacted your work the most?

Noa Ries:
Oh, walking. Kim and I.

Niko Skievaski:
A walk? Yeah, I said working. I'm like, no non-business.

Noa Ries:
Okay. Walking. I'll say that with my better American accent walking. Every Monday, Kim and I, every season start out week with a walking meeting. Sometimes it is skinning up the mountain with our skis on our backs and then skiing back down. And other times it's going for a trail run or just a walk around the block. But we have this movement and we're not looking at each other in the eye and we're talking about what are our big boulders we need to accomplish this week? How are we going to navigate this roadblock? And it's really just become a hugely important part of our business, and it is not business related.

Niko Skievaski:
I love it. Movement is so important to bring out creativity and productivity. And so I love that you brought that into it. And we're actually going to have a show talking about Flow State and why getting into the body, into movement is just vital to actually achieving that. And so I love that you start your week with that because it kind of brings out a lot of what I would imagine would be more creative views on the challenges that are ahead of you for the week to come.

Kim Havens:
It has. How we solve every challenge is we go for a walk or a hike or yes, it's movement. Then we encourage everybody in our team to do it. I don't know how much they take us up on it, but we do weekly and actually during the pandemic, we have the very beginning of the pandemic. We're like, what are we going with the world? And we would still go for our walks and we made sure we were both distance away from each other just in case. And we had photos of us standing like this, making sure we were more than six feet away from each other while we were walking outside so we could still keep our business running.

Andy Kitson:
All right, number four, what do leaders too often under-emphasize or overemphasize when it comes to remote company culture? What's underrated or overrated?

Kim Havens:
Hmm, that's a hard one. I will say communication is underrated. I think it's something that is unbelievably critical and actually everything falls apart without amazing communication. I would say over communication, actually, in a remote culture, until you figure out the right rhythm. And that often again, I think sometimes in leadership and including we've learned a lot in the last couple of years as well of being like, oh, I'm sure that person's fine. Having enough touch points and asking if we're not hearing from someone, really inviting them into the conversation and making sure they're working and said that to me is something that's a bit underrated. Overrated, Noa, do you have any thoughts?

Noa Ries:
I know this is going to give you whiplash based on everything else I've said over the last hour and a half. But actually I think confidence is overemphasized because oftentimes you just think, oh, well, the person who speaks the most in the meeting is the smartest, is the most capable. And actually, there are gems sometimes right in front of you who are introverted, and I think making sure that you are not overindexed on just who's the loudest, squeakiest wheel in the meeting.

Niko Skievaski:
Absolutely.

Kim Havens:
I saw cheerleaders snap today. My week is a success. I can tell my children, two cheerleader snaps.

Niko Skievaski:
Nice. It's Friday. We can count it.

Andy Kitson:
You might get a third with this next one.

Niko Skievaski:
Wow. We will see.

Noa Ries:
We're competitive.

Kim Havens:
Oh, oh.

Noa Ries:
So you just said the challenge.

Kim Havens:
Yeah.

Niko Skievaski:
Number five, what work changes have you made since the pandemic started that you plan to carry forward indefinitely?

Noa Ries:
This is an interesting question because we were remote pre-pandemic, so remote culture, all that team stuff. We were also going after clients remotely, we were using Zoom and video, all of those technologies pre-pandemic, so it's not that. I think actually during the pandemic when everyone was wearing sweatpants, Kim and I decided we're actually going to really dress up. And we have continued doing that because it's snapped our brains into we both wear big earrings, it's our brand. We both recognize that you've got to dress up to show up, and it's like you're putting on a character, you'll find us on the weekend in sweatpants and workout clothes. But when we are working, even if we are working out of our bedroom and our bed is five feet away from us, which was the case during the pandemic, we were always dressed to the nines and it told our brain that we were in work mode. And it also showed our clients and our members that we cared about them. And that has carried through. You will never find us on a Zoom call or not never, rarely you will.

Kim Havens:
Very rarely.

Noa Ries:
Yeah, in a hoodie. But we do wear them on the weekend.

Kim Havens:
Yeah.

Niko Skievaski:
I thought you were going to go the other direction and say we're going hard into the sweatpants, but looking nice on top.

Noa Ries:
That is our version of the business mullet.

Kim Havens:
Yeah.

Niko Skievaski:
My business mullet.

Kim Havens:
My little .... Especially if we're out hiking and we're like, oh, wait, but yes. We definitely kind of show up for our clients and other people members. So we look very professional and respectful for them, that they're giving us their time.

Andy Kitson:
So we have one more rapid-fire question I'm kind of adding impromptu at the end here. If you could be part of any community in history or even today that's out there, what would you choose?

Kim Havens:
The hard one.

Noa Ries:
Past history or today?

Kim Havens:
Anything. You've got a magic wand you can just kind of like show up and everyone will assume that you've been there forever or that you just arrived and they welcome you in as part of it. And if there's not an answer, like we often cut these rapid-fire questions. So no worry. I was just if there was something top of mind, I was curious.

Kim Havens:
I don't have anything top of mind.

Noa Ries:
I would say I would have liked to be in a community of witches just like, there's like Spirit Sisters stirring the cauldron and just concocting, concocting cool things and being woefully misunderstood for their magic. And I just think a community of witchy sisters, I would have liked to be in one of them.

Andy Kitson:
Love it.

Kim Havens:
Yeah. My thing. This is going to sound super weird, like cheerleader, you did. You're very proud of yourself, is I can't think of any because I'm not normally a joiner of communities. And so I'm not like, oh, I want to be on the inside of that. Not really my thing yet, when I find myself in community, I really enjoy it. So probably more of the one-on-one, small group, is more important to me. But then recognize if you step back, you're like, wow, we're personally really big. That's interesting to me.

Noa Ries:
And I also think the magic of the Kahilla community. I am so proud of the community that we have. We get handwritten thank you cards from our members that it's changed their lives. And it's just I don't think there's anything like it out there in the corporate world, certainly of just a community of women who have your back, women who cheer you on, and women who you can ask your bold or challenging questions.

Kim Havens:
And we.

Noa Ries:
It's magical.

Kim Havens:
Read, we read obviously all those handwritten, but we read any email, any DM that we receive in the community. We respond to everybody individually and we love hearing from our community members about what they love, what's a challenge, what we could improve, anything, just that connection and that one on one connection inside the community is so, it just feels great.

Niko Skievaski:
Love it. That is a beautiful place to end our show today. Kim, Noa, thank you so much for showing up. Your energy and the spirit that you bring to conversations is so palpable and it's always just a pleasure to be in your presence. This show will undoubtedly cause people to be interested in Kahilla. Where can they go to learn more about it? To figure out if it makes sense to bring into their organizations, to join a community? How can they get involved?

Noa Ries:
Awesome. Well, we would love to have you. This is an inclusive community. Check out our website www.Kahilla.com, and it's K A H. I double L A.com. I said it like that because often Amazon, Alexa or any of those audio transcribing things think we said tequila with my Australian accent. So it is Kahilla.com.

Kim Havens:
And you can follow us on LinkedIn as well.

Niko Skievaski:
Great. We will certainly link out to those in our show notes. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Noa Ries:
Thanks for having us.

Kim Havens:
Thank you both!

Andy Kitson:
Well, there you have it. Thank you so much to our friends at Kahilla for the conversation today, and thank you for joining us. If you're looking for more information on Kahilla, including how you can bring them into your workplace, check out their site at Kahilla.com. That's K A H I L L A.com, and thank you for listening to the People Everywhere Show.

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