Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: If you don't have the operational understanding, if you don't know the tips and tricks, you can get very bogged down as a manager. Similarly, if you're over rotated on, all we need to do is create great experiences. The operational necessities can really be hindered and so that balance of understanding for us was a real priority.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome to a new episode of the what Works podcast series. That was Kendra Goldbass, global head of Learning and development at PayPal. In this episode, Cathy and Darius talks with Kendra about her journey of transforming leadership and management skills in a rapidly evolving work environment. The two explore how PayPal has built a center of excellence for learning through precision, skilling and and fostering a culture of accountability and growth among leaders with the help of growth space. Let's take a listen.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Kendra, welcome to the what Works podcast.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Thanks very much. Happy to be here.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: I'm so excited to talk with you about your management and leadership transformation and how you help managers build their skills and their capabilities in remote work environment. So before we even get into that, tell us about yourself, tell us about you, your role, and a little bit about PayPal.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Sure. I am the global Head of learning and development here at PayPal. It's a role that I have proudly had for the last three years. So I joined PayPal actually in the midst of the pandemic in 2021, really with the intention to build a true center of excellence around learning for a rapidly growing population employees. PayPal is, I hope, a company everybody knows, but we are here to revolutionize commerce across the globe and we do that in helping all people learn how to shop, pay and save. And so that's really a lot of what we are about as a company and during the pandemic and even today, all of our employees are active members of leading that mission through understanding the purpose of our work and how they grow and develop as individuals and as leaders to contribute to that mission.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: That's amazing. And I've certainly used PayPal so much. How big is PayPal? How many employees do you have?
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Yeah, so we are just under 30,000 employees. We sit sort of around between 27 and 25,000 employees at this time. I will say during the pandemic, however, as many organizations and companies who are really seeking to fuel the e commerce environment, we were actually a little larger at that time as we were responding to the demand. A huge part of our organization, naturally as a fintech company, is based in our product and engineering teams, but we have employees across the gamut of enabling functions, sales Tons of leaders in our customer service organization as well.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Yeah, so have lots of different employees, lots of different employee groups, and lots.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Of different employee needs, particularly when it comes to how they are developing and growing their skills and, you know, delivering on the responsibilities of their roles.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: Got it, got it. No, that totally makes sense. And are you a remote company, a hybrid company? How do you work?
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's a great question. So clearly when I arrived, we were very much a remote company. As you know, most companies around the globe were in that period. We have actually recently returned to office as a hybrid company who is seeking to really support new ways of working and bringing ourselves back together in collaboration spaces where appropriate. So focusing in on ensuring that employees have exciting opportunities to revisit return to office. I myself actually am a virtual employee, so I sit outside of one of our particular hubs. But I think one of the really amazing things that we've done is be very intentional about what it means to talk about collaboration and creating hybrid experiences for employees to be their best selves and deliver their best work.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: No, absolutely. I mean, regardless if you're working in an office environment or not, the people are usually not sitting in one location anyway. Right?
[00:04:33] Speaker A: That is exactly right. And we effectively collaborate globally. And so our ability to, myself included, lead global teams, drive global collaboration, partner with one another across regions. It does require a different way of working, an intentional way of working that is not without skilling.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: So it doesn't just happen amorphously. It's really something that requires intentional thought and practice and focus.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Tell us more about what happened there. When PayPal was growing really rapidly, as you said, and everybody was remote, so what happened to managers? What was the need?
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Sure, sure. So again, you know, focused mission early on was to build a center of excellence that was really focused on learning and development in a way that served the true enterprise.
So naturally, as we set out to do that, we started asking questions, where's the need? Where's the felt need? And one of the things we heard resoundingly, both in our employee surveys and in talking to business leaders, was this desire to see better readiness of our managers, recognizing that we had many well intentioned managers, many who clearly wanted to do well in role, yet we're not always equipped with the right, both what I'll call hard and soft skills and resources to do the job effectively. You are absolutely right. This was also happening at a time when we were growing quite rapidly and so many of these managers, you know, were a little trial by fire and thrown into roles that they maybe didn't intend to be in.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: So you had individual contributors who suddenly needed to manage a workforce, you know, remotely and across regions. You may have had folks who had small team environments suddenly thrust into large team responsibilities. And so there was a lot of felt need by both employees who were lacking, you know, the support and the apprenticeship that they needed to be successful. But I would also say from the managers themselves, I think one of the things that I'm, as someone who's spent a lot of time in learning and development, I've really never met someone who doesn't want to do well in their role. And so when you are a manager who feels ill equipped and you don't have the, again, right tools or right understanding of expectations, that's just as bad of a feeling as the employee who's not getting what they need in order to develop. So there was, I think, a felt need on both sides of that equation that we knew was a real opportunity for us to have impact on as we were building out a number of different programs and resources. So we, we knew that manager readiness, preparing people for role was a place where we could have some very clear impact at, at PayPal at that time and going forward. And so our MAPS program, managing at PayPal successfully was designed to do just that.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: So Kendra, I think you're so right because lots of times these management or leadership development programs are either on one side where it's all about like operational management and finances and time tracking and scheduling or what, whatever you have to do or PTO requests and like how you transfer people or whatever, how do you give a salary increase, like very operational stuff. But then you're missing the big leadership piece on like culture and empowering people and talking with people and communicating inspiring or vice versa. Right. So I, that's really great.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And bear in mind, right, both of these things are critically important to being a successful manager and leader.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: And we know that if you don't have the operational understanding, if you don't know the tips and tricks of where to find efficiencies in those tools, you can get very bogged down as a manager.
[00:08:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: And lose the time for the other side of the equation. Similarly, if you're over rotated on, all we need to do is create great experiences. Right. The operational necessities can really be, you know, be hindered. And so that that balance of understanding for us was a real priority. What we are trying to convey to new leaders and new managers is how important both of these sides of the coin are and why, for us, it's important that we both introduce both and then leave them with lots of resources to return to in the flow of work. And that is actually a big theme for all of our learning programs here at PayPal is that recognition that so much of learning happens in the flow of work and not just in immersive moments.
We know that if you really want to retain learning, you have to keep practicing that learning and you have to keep having access to it. And so a big part is actually a SharePoint site, but it's a, it's a resource hub where they can exchange information with each other, where we can continue to provide them with new tools and resources. Obviously we are an evolving and innovating environment, but, but it becomes this place that they can consistently come back to following that six week journey and know that the latest and greatest in these two areas of leadership and operations are available to them.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Great. So if I have to now like approve an expense report, I have some place to refresh my memory on how to do this. Right. Or if I am going into a team meeting and I want to tell them about kind of our team goals or something like that, I similarly, I can, I can use some resources.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And it's not to suggest that those resources aren't available to all managers in other areas, but one of the other, you know, kind of key, I think, unique aspects of MAPS is we want those who go through this cohort experience to feel like they're part of an ongoing community.
We know you are 90% more likely to retain new information and new learning when you teach it to someone else. So we've tried to create a real sense of peer sharing and peer support in that cohort experience. I think, as I was mentioning, we pair small groups in the cohorts with another Senior Leader at PayPal, we call them deans, just to give them, you know, a bit of a, of an academic kind of spin. But the intention of those deans is to do, you know, is to really fertilize that cohort based insight, collaboration and what have you. And we really encourage MAPS graduates to think about playing that role themselves at a future state.
[00:11:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: So that whole notion of, you know, you're you, you know, learn, practice, teach, learn, practice, teach being a pivotal component of what we do. The last thing I'd love to mention too is beyond the cohort based experience of six weeks, we leave them with sort of some precision skilling as a tail end to the journey. So I'm sure you've experienced this too, Kathy, where you come out of a really big program of some kind, you've got lots of ideas swirling about how you're going to use this new information.
Almost too many ideas and you can either end up falling short of, you know, holding onto any of them, or you might pick one thing to really practice. We really encourage that practice one thing kind of mindset and so we pair them with an expert to help with accountability on that particular topic. So if it's for you, I really as a leader want to improve my delegation skills. I'm finding that I'm struggling from going from an IC to a manager and I'm not quite giving my team the space. You can work with an expert over another six week period just on this particular kind of accountability skill. How can I do that? How can I test different ways that feel authentic to me as a leader but really still open up that aperture on that particular skill and get some tooling and resourcing to do that? And we've found that's been a really great sticking point for those who come out of the program. Right, because it, it, it grounds them in that notion of accountability. It helps them understand when you focus on one thing at a time and see how it's applied and create a KPI for yourself, share it with your leader. Right? It becomes a little bit infectious and then you wanna do it again and again.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Oh, that's great. So after I come out of this program, I say then I want to work on this topic. I wanna work on delegation for example, or more inclusion or inspiration, whatever it's going to be. Right, but only one thing. And then an expert, a coach, coaches me through that. Is that an internal coach or an external coach?
[00:13:45] Speaker A: It's actually an external coach that we've partnered with a group called GrowthSpace to deliver that for us as an add on to the work we do internally. And it's been really successful. Again, I think that notion of I am as the manager have selected something of priority. I shared that with my own leader. So we do encourage there to be that practice of shared goals, that notion of really holding myself accountable, but making sure that it's in alignment obviously with what's prioritized by my business leaders and then seeing that arc of success.
This is of course not to suggest we're not all juggling a whole host of things at any given time, but the focus on skilling in a particular area, seeing that as, you know, a constant wheel of invention and evolution has been a really powerful muscle. I Think we've been building in our manager body.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: That's fantastic because I love also how you call it precision development because it reminds me of precision medicine and it might be that. Right. And. But precision medicine is where you personalize medicine as I understand it. Right. And so this is really personalized and unique to just one area that you as a leader, pick yourself. Right. And then you can fine tune that, which is really powerful because if you're behind it, of course, then you're much more likely to actually do it rather.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And it's also, I think it sparks a really important kind of focus of self awareness in us as managers and leaders.
It is not that often as a leader that you are able to spend the time being introspective in your development. So I think it's just a unique opportunity to showcase to new leaders how the importance of their own development is actually a really critical element of how they can help others be successful.
[00:15:39] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's, that's a great point. I mean it reminds me a little bit of the put on your own oxygen mask first. Right. Because otherwise you can't help somebody else. Let's talk a little bit about the, the results. What, what were the benefits? What were the results? I know you were already starting down that line. So what, what did you see happen?
[00:15:58] Speaker A: When we started out two years ago, we were in this. Please, would you maybe consider letting your manager attend this program or please, is it okay if we invite your newly promoted manager? We now have such a great partnership with not only the business, but our, what we call PDP or HRBP community that it is. I won't go so far as to use the word mandatory because I know that can be. Have a negative connotation in some sense, but it, it is absolutely, I would say, expected learning. It is a, it is a gift that you are given when you become a new manager. And that to me has been just seeing become integrated in the way we work has been a tremendous, I think, benefit to the business and to the overall impact of the program. We've also naturally seen some, you know, uptick in our manager effectiveness scoring as we, like many companies, engage our employees or we survey our employees. We use Engage is the title of ours. But we do try to, you know, monitor that manager effectiveness score, you know, quick, quite intently.
[00:17:14] Speaker C: So it's actually working. And even like it gets a pull from people. So it's no longer just a push, right. It's more the pull now. And even experienced managers say now, well, Maybe I could use a refresher too. Or maybe when I joined, right. I didn't know I know how to manage, but maybe I don't know how to manage the PayPal way. Right. I don't know how it works here.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: And that's what we're spending time with the business on now, which is how do we take this? Again, the importance of new manager I can't underscore enough because it is when they are most in need of that confidence booster skilling to really ensure that they can be successful in the new role. But I do think as we're partnering with the business on what's next, how do we reach those folks who are seasoned in seat but you know, also eager for development opportunity? How do we reach them in the right ways and at the right moment? Moments in time for sure. Wow.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: Fantastic. What did you learn along the way? What are some lessons learned that you would like to share with our listeners?
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say, Kathy, one of the most important things I've learned, not just in this program, but in trying to establish the CoE over the last three years is perfection does not exist anywhere in the space.
And the most important thing you. Well, there's a couple of things that are most important. Number one, you have to partner effectively with the business to understand what is most important for not only how we serve our customers, but how do we skill our people to be their best selves. So I think if we had gone into this work with a we know what's best energy, we probably wouldn't have started with managers, we probably would have started with something else. And I'm so glad we listened to the business to hear that this was what was most important in that period of time. So that, that to me, that partnership with business leaders, hearing what is needed and being responsive and collaborative I think is really important. As I mentioned, perfection does not exist.
And I'll just say in everything that we've done, I think the iterating, testing and not being defensive, you know, we can get a little bit contorted around that and not just be willing to say hey, you know what, that was a bad idea or it didn't work in this moment or it, it might have come from this great place, but it's not working for us right now. I think that's been one of the things that I think has given our team, I think a lot more wins on the board, if you will, that willingness to pivot.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: Wow, amazing. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Kendra. This was such a great conversation and congrats to all the program success and for what's to come.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Ah, thank you so much. It's wonderful and I wish all of your listeners the best and I look forward to listening to more of these podcasts so I can learn more from others. Sounds great.
[00:20:11] Speaker D: Thank you so much.
Thanks for joining this episode of the what Works podcast. You heard from Kendra Goldbas, the Global Head of Learning and development at PayPal. She walked us through managing at PayPal successfully. It's a collaborative learning program for every manager in the organization to learn two things. First, the nuts and bolts of being a manager, like how to give a compensation adjustment, how to transfer a person, and second, the leadership behavior behaviors. Every new manager needs to be an effective leader, like inspiring the team to do their best work or setting a vision. What's really unique about the program is what she calls precision development.
After the manager has gone through the core learning aspects of the program, they themselves select one key behavior to focus on. Then they are paired with an expert from Growth Space who works with them one on one to hone the specific behavior that they selected. I hope you found this conversation useful and insightful. We'll be back soon with more episodes about what works in the world of work.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: Until next time.
