Episode 061: A Conversation on Bold Leadership with Beth Shelton

Join Sarah Noll Wilson and guest Beth Shelton for a wide-ranging discussion on leadership, as Beth shares the perspectives and experiences that have led her to take innovative action to improve workplace culture and employee wellness.

About Our Guest

Beth Shelton is the Chief Executive Office of Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa, overseeing all operations for 13,000 members in portions of Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota.

She has shared her passionate message of recognizing the human side of workplace culture and benefits from coast to coast, from the Seattle Interactive Conference to the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Beth receiving national accolades for her innovative focus on employee wellness; highlighted recently on platforms ranging from Good Morning America, CNN and Working Mother Magazine, to The Washington Post, USA Today and the Today Show.

Beth is persistently curious, an avid reader and uses solution-focused leadership to encourage radical innovation. She holds an MBA from Drake University, and recently completed the Artificial Intelligence certificate program at MIT. Beth, a life-long amputee, also serves on the board for the Iowa Amputee Golf Association, raising scholarships for families affected by the trauma and impact of limb loss. She has a lifelong love of sports, having been a 3-time collegiate MVP in tennis. She loves driving her vintage Jeep with the top off, just took up guitar lessons, and is enjoying the journey of visiting every national park.

Website
LinkedIn
Instagram: @RadicalHumaning
TikTok: @elizabethshelton01

Episode Transcript

Sarah Noll Wilson
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Conversations on Conversations where each week we explore a topic to help us have more powerful conversations with ourselves and others. I’m your host, Sarah Noll Wilson. And joining me today is my dear friend, colleague, leader who inspires me, Beth Shelton. So let me tell you a little bit about Beth and then we’ll start digging into the topic we’ll be exploring today, which is how do we create work and culture and benefits to really support and serve the whole human? Beth is one of my favorite leaders. She is the Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa, overseeing all operations for 13,000 members in portions of Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. She has shared her passion message, passionate message of recognizing the human side of workplace culture and benefits from coast to coast. She has received national accolades for her innovative focus on employee wellness, highlighted recently on platforms ranging from Good Morning America, CNN, Working Mothers Magazine to Washington Post, USA Today, and The Today’s Show. Beth is persistently curious, an avid reader and uses solution focused leadership to encourage radical innovation. She holds an MBA from Drake University, recently completed the Artificial Intelligence Certificate Program at MIT. Real curious to hear about that. Beth is also a lifelong amputee and also serves on the board for the Iowa Amputee Golf Association, which raises scholarships for families affected by trauma and impact of limb loss. She has a lifelong love of sports, having been a three time collegiate MVP in tennis. She loves her vintage – driving her vintage Jeep with the top off, just took up guitar lessons and is enjoying the journey of visiting every national park. Welcome to the show, Miss Beth Shelton.

Beth Shelton
Oh, my goodness, it’s such an honor to be here. Thank you so much.

Sarah Noll Wilson
How? What else do you want people to know about you?

Beth Shelton
Oh, my goodness, well, I have three children. I’m a single parent. And so the juggle, the juggle, and the struggle and the joy, all of the above is real. And so you know, I’m pulled a lot of directions and I have a lot of interests and a lot of passion. And I’m just excited to get to talk about all the things.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Okay. First, like your kids clearly are taking after you with all of their, like multi passionate disciplines. I haven’t seen you to congratulate new Miss Teen Iowa or Miss Iowa. It was Miss Iowa right?

Beth Shelton
National American Miss Jr. Teen. My daughter was just, you know, participated about two weeks ago, and she’ll be going to Nationals this fall. So thank you, I will pass that along.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, that’s so exciting. I’m you know, I’m, I’m so, so excited to have this conversation because once we get into it, people will understand why I was so eager to talk about the work you’re doing. But first, take us back what, you know, talk to us about just like what was your journey to bring you to this point, not only from the standpoint of doing the work you do with Girl Scouts, but also from a standpoint of, you know, what has really shaped you as a leader?

Beth Shelton
Well, it’s a –

Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s a big question.

Beth Shelton
It is. And it’s always hard to talk about because it’s not like I’m there. It’s not like you hit the mark. And you’re like, cool. (swipes hands) Okay, I got it. You know, it’s such a journey. I think that the most pivotal moments when I think back, how did I get here and what shaped me most like anyone, I’ve had great leaders. And I’ve had leaders that I learned a lot from in terms of maybe missteps. And when I got the job at Girl Scouts, about eight years ago, I had a lot to learn. I was really green, and I really hadn’t lead people, I’d been a high performer on the front lines, but I really hadn’t done a lot of leadership. So I took a step back and thought about all of the leaders that I’ve had, and the ones that I felt like I performed the highest under. Not the ones I liked the most. Not even the jobs I liked the most, but which ones really brought out the best in me as a performer. And I tried to think about, okay, what attributes did they have? What did they share in common? And then on the flip side, the ones you know, where I was probably less engaged as an employee, what did they have in common? And I started thinking through what kind of leader I wanted to be, and kind of building or building that plane as I was flying it as the CEO of an organization. So I learned a lot also from my mom, I was raised by a single mom. And she has a very servant heart. She was a leader herself in corporate America. And I always saw the way she treated people. I think about it now like, you know, if you’re familiar with Ted Lasso, he’s very much sort of this authentic, earnest servant leader. And kind of think my mom was viewed that way. Years later, she has been retired for 20 years, when people see her in public, they’ll they’ll say, oh, my gosh, you were my favorite and you always cared about me. And so you know, it’s hard not to hopefully pick up some of that, you know, when I think about leadership.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. How do you feel like, you know, as somebody who is a steward and a student of leadership, what have you observed and or experienced has shifted for you, particularly because I know that we are seeing such a shift over the last four years, right, with everything going on from how the world is changing, from what we experienced with the pandemic, racial injustice, the and now rising technology changing. What are some of the the challenges and changes you’ve experienced from a leadership perspective over the last few years?

Beth Shelton
There’s so much. I started to feel like, we were doing great work, you know, in those first four years of my job, and like you said, you know, sort of in the pandemic era, it was it was a real catalyst for major changes for organizations clearly, for the world, clearly. But organizations are made up of human beings. And so I think, from the very most basic human level, I fundamentally changed. The person I was four years ago doesn’t even exist. So we’re all sort of familiar with like gender reveal parties, I kind of think about it now like, we need like personality reveal parties, like, who are we today? Like what happened? And you know, I’ve seen some stuff, right? (laughter) We all have. So I faced the biggest hurdles I’ve ever faced as a human being in the last four years. And I think that inherently shapes your perspective. I think I always leaned toward being a bit more of a servant, empathetic leader. But certainly, I didn’t, I wasn’t very well versed in topics around mental health, or sobriety or anxiety, or suicidal ideation. I mean, those are just the tip of the iceberg of things that I’ve learned a lot about in the last four years. Not that I’m an expert, but things that came into my awareness and my perspective, not just from my own first person experience as a human, but things I need to be aware of, and not just aware of, but create systems and processes that really help support people in those really fundamental lanes. And in those ways, I changed a lot as a leader, I’ve evolved a lot, and my eyes have been opened a lot.

Sarah Noll Wilson
What would you say? I can’t help but ask you this. You know, because I, I, I love everything that you’re talking about. And and the thing that I admire about how you have led and continue to try to lead is the awareness of the system pieces of it. That it isn’t just enough to say how can I care more deeply for team members? But systemically, what are the policies we need to put into place? What would you say to the people who are in positions of power and authority who maybe still don’t see the value of caring for their people? Because that does it still exist. I mean, we hear it, we see it. Like, what would you – what what are the lessons you’ve learned? Or what’s the the, I don’t want to say output that sounds so transactional, but by creating and being so intentional in how you’re designing the organization, and the culture and the policies, what, what are the results that you’ve experienced by putting such an intense focus on the humans?

Beth Shelton
A couple of things, and thank you for saying that. I would say a couple of things, first and foremost, that it’s not enough to just care and have intention. I think we share this in that I don’t actually care a lot about what someone’s intentions are, what I care a lot about is what you see and what the impact is. And so as a leader, or a friend, or a peer, I don’t really need to know what someone’s motivations are very often, and I don’t need them to know mine. What I need them to see is action. What am I actually doing? So I don’t think it’s enough to say I deeply care about people. What does that what does that mean? You know, you can deeply care about people and screw up a lot. So that’s not alone enough, right. So I think impact and action are the most important thing, first of all. But secondly, I’ll give you a really tangible example. When we rolled out Infants At Work, which was a benefit that went went viral and got a lot of attention back in 2019. And it had to do with supporting parents in the workplace and give gave them some autonomy and choice if they wanted to choose to bring their babies to work with them after they came back from parental leave. And what I would hear people say, as I started to – it got some attention, and I would speak at conferences about this. And people would say, oh, yeah, well, I had an employer that allowed that or allowed me to bring my infant carrier seat in 15 years ago, or, or do this one thing or do that one thing and they would give me one off examples. And the problem with one off examples or allowing something is that it’s not a systematic process, and if it’s not a systematic process, first of all, it’s not consistent. It’s seldom scalable. And you don’t have good clean data. And if you don’t have good clean data to track it, how are you going to make it scalable to other organizations. And so by having – and it becomes subjective when it’s a one off, right? So if we’re having to make subjective decisions about when we do, and don’t allow employees to do things, or not do things, and it just depends, all of a sudden it can get, we can get our biases in there. And we can get into the, we’re not always really great, reliable witnesses to our own intent, to our own motivators. And so it takes that element out when we create policies that are consistent, that people know they can rely on, and that they’re fair and equitable. And then they can also be scalable. And then now, now, because we had that foresight, four years later, we can say, we have really clean data of four years of this great program. And then we can show the ROI, the business ROI, the economic impact for our organization. And that’s just not the case if you’re just, if you’re allowing one off things to happen. So you can care about people one off, it’s not inherently bad. But if you want to have scalable, impactful change in organizations, and then potentially across other organizations, across sectors to do our parts for the enterprise of human beings in the workplace, then it’s important to have scalable systems.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yep, I love that. (laughs)

Beth Shelton
Yep, yep. (laughs)

Sarah Noll Wilson
Just keep preaching Beth, I’m just gonna sit here and just give you a platform because – so let’s so let’s talk about Infants At Work. And let’s talk about what it is. So here’s, I want you to explain what it is because it’s pretty unique, and incredible. And then I’m curious to know the journey to what got to that point, right? Because I imagine you got a lot of pushback. So take it away. Infants At Work.

Beth Shelton
So Infants At Work is one of our many benefits that are sort of innovative, and maybe radical, that allows any of our full time employees to bring their infants to work with them, when they return from parental leave. We offer 12 weeks of paid parental leave, for all mothers, fathers, guardians, adoptive, foster, etc. And after you return, after 12 weeks of paid leave, you have the option if you would like to bring your infant back to work with you up until age six months at age six months, we have little graduation ceremony. They have little caps and gowns, and it’s really great. And so it’s just one added layer that gives parents some, and caregivers, some autonomy, some flexibility, as they transition in a really, it’s a big season of life, at that time, for all parties involved. It gives just a little more padding, a little more support. And we got to this decision – it’s not like we were sitting around like hey, you know what’d be great? Like, let’s have babies at work, you know, in fact, that’s the opposite of how I felt. That’s the opposite. So in 2018, we had seven or eight employees, we have about 60, full time employees, seven or eight who were expecting children at the same time. And one of them came to me and said, “Hey, I’m really nervous about having my first child, I’ve been talking to my midwife, and she thinks it’d be great if I could bring my baby to work with me when I return. So, you know, we’ve had got this culture, you’re always saying, you know, bring our ideas forward. What do you think?” And in my head, Sarah, I was a hard no. I was like, that’s, that’s absurd. You know, have you ever met a human child? Like, that’s not gonna work? We’re a real workplace, you know. But I didn’t say that.

I have learned some humility. I have learned that not only do I not always know the best answer, even if I think I do. I don’t always know the best answer. And secondly, people like to feel valued. They like to feel heard. And so instead of saying, absolutely not, I said, “Let me, you know, that’s interesting. I let me think about that. And let me do some research. And let me reflect.” And I did that I reflected, I researched. And I found some really compelling information about the barriers that parents and caregivers face upon the return to work. The largest factor attributing to the wage gap by gender is parenthood. So it’s not that women don’t face a wage gap, regardless, they do. But the it’s mostly attributed to becoming a parent. And then all of these other things about caregiving and the burden and all these things generally tends to fall on women, not entirely, as a demographic group, the data says, and we are an organization that are really for women and girls, and how do we how do we show the equality? How do we show workplace equality and so all of a sudden, I got all these feelings about, if we’re not going to get some skin in this game, if we’re not going to start to systematically try to change this behavior, who will? Like who better is equipped to get sort of radical about what it might mean? And you know, we tend to tell ourselves a story. Here’s what I discovered about sort of our culture and I think a lot of workplace cultures, is we tend to start with like the fear or the reason we shouldn’t. So if you were to talk about a radical idea, like maybe maybe our whole workforce should work remotely. Or maybe we should allow babies at work. Immediately we tend to go, well, here’s all the reasons we shouldn’t. Here’s all the risks, all the reasons that might not work. And from a liability standpoint, you have to sometimes pose those questions. But what if we turned around and said, what if I said we had to. You know, what if we had to help support parents and caregivers? And then if you take that question to your team, what if I said we had to do it. How would the plan need to look like? Usually it starts with well, we shouldn’t do it because da ta da ta da. And then I’ll be like, yeah, okay, well, that’s not what I asked, is it?

Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs)

Beth Shelton
What I asked is, what if we had to do it? And once we can sort of free ourselves and say, okay, well, if we had to do it, that we shouldn’t, but if we had to, here’s what the plan would need to look like. And all of a sudden, the handcuffs are off in these incredibly talented smart people who weren’t, you know, work in our organizations are like, because they know best. They know our culture, they know our barriers, they know our resources, they’re like, well, we’d have to figure out how long can babies cry? Who can hold them? What’s the liability? Where do diapers go? Da ta da ta da. And before you know it, we had a 10 page document outlining all of the questions you would need to know. We got it, you know, ran by our insurance carriers, and we got the liability forms. And we talked to our staff, and we had town halls, and what kind of concerns would you have. Because it’s not just about systematically, how could we do it? Should we do it? Is it a fit with our people? You know. And what about an employee who might be struggling with fertility? What about an employee who gets migraines and doesn’t want to be around children, like, there’s all sorts of other things you have to think about, it’s not just the perspective of supporting the caregiver, it’s the perspective of the other people in the organization. So we just had to be really thoughtful about all of those pieces. And then we rolled it out in January of 19. And it’s been incredible for our organization. It doesn’t mean that it was a home run with every single, you know, stranger on the internet, that’s certainly not the case. Often they don’t know, you know, all the ins and outs, we would, it’s been incredible for our organization and for our people.

Sarah Noll Wilson
There’s, there’s so many lessons of leadership in everything you just shared, right? The – just starting at the beginning of your willingness to be changed, your willingness to have your mind changed. The understanding of the power of people feeling heard. The connection of, you know, I love that the team member was like, you always say we can do this, so I’m, I’m gonna do it. And right, and there’s a little bit – and sometimes we see in organizations where who they say they are is not who they actually are, right. The words on the wall do not match the actions on the hall. And then, and then the the exploration and the inclusion of voices of, right, doing town halls and talking about it and, and not just, oh, we’re going to do this, or no, we’re not going to do this. But we’re actually going to wrestle with this and have the conversations we need to have. So that, I would imagine, so that regardless of where you landed as an organization, you would feel good about it. There’s so many really beautiful lessons that I just want to highlight of, like, that’s what leadership looks like, right? How do we engage people? How do we be open to new perspectives? I really love that practice of and I wrote down so if we had to do it, we had to do it, how do we do it? Like let’s just force ourselves to go okay, like, what do we need to think about? What? What was that moment like? I’m so curious. I mean, you and I have known each other for a few years, but I’ve never gotten to ask you. Like, what was the moment like when it got rolled out and the first baby came? You know, what was it like for the organization? But then I’m also curious to know what was going through your head, as the leader who was, it was in slash is a very radical concept of we’re gonna have, we’re gonna have babies in the workplace and, and, and understand that we’re taking a stand that may create a culture that other people may go, I don’t know that that’s the culture for me. So what like what, take me back to 2019 when it became official, and the first baby physically rolled through the door. (laughs)

Beth Shelton
Right.

Sarah Noll Wilson
What was that like?

Beth Shelton
Well, it was all the things. It was exciting, because in tandem, you know, unintentionally, we didn’t know that all of this national media attention would start to happen, but it did. And it happened by accident. I wrote a Facebook post in January of 2019. And it was meant to be more of a hey, like, show us some grace, right? If you’re calling into our offices, or if you’re stopping in, you might hear a baby crying, we’re trying this out, we want to support people, but that post kind of went viral. So you have all this sort of external attention happening. And then internally you have, you know, and because of that we were getting donations like, you know, high chairs and toys, and people were, you know, companies for sending things. So you kind of had this flurry of activity externally. But then internally, you could see the impact and the excitement, it just happens to be, I’ll call her baby number one, because she was the first one in January, but it’s Finley. And she just happened to be this extraordinarily calm, happy baby. And so of course, you know, it was just really fun to get to have her in meeting. She happened to be affiliated with the executive team, so I got to spend a lot of time with her. And to see this parent also really benefitting joyfully at the opportunity to choose this path, you know, for for her family if she wanted to. And, of course, baby number one got a lot of attention around the office and things. And we really framed that up, because, you know, I get a lot of questions like, what about productivity? Well, first of all this, this benefits not forever and ever and ever, they graduate at six months, but we really put a lot of conversation and transparency in place with each employee who participates and we do a plan. And we very openly say to them, the expectations of productivity are not, that is not on your shoulders, we are here, we created this benefit to support you, and allow you this transition time. And if you, you know, it’s sort of I guess what I’m saying is, is sort of assumed that productivity, it might dip a little bit, right, there might be times that they’re stepping out of meetings or a little bit distracted and okay, like we just like peacefully started with and okay, because what we found that first year, –

Sarah Noll Wilson
I love that.

Beth Shelton
Is the employee would always be saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Sarah Noll Wilson
I’m so sorry.

Beth Shelton
I’m so sorry, I need to step out. I’m so sorry. They’re fussing, I’m so sorry. And we would just immediately say no, no, like, we, you know, we are here for this, we are in, we are in this with you. And that’s what it means to support the humans, you know, that you don’t have to like strip your humanity off when you walk through the door, or your little tiny human off. When you walk through the door. That’s kind of part of, part of the gig.

Sarah Noll Wilson
I just love it all.

Beth Shelton
I was really fun, it was really fun. It was a lot of pressure as well.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure, yeah,

Beth Shelton
Because a lot of organizations were, I think, I think it could come off and certainly not intentionally, but as we talked about intentions don’t always matter. It could come off that that I might have or we might have been on a soapbox saying like other organizations should do this. And that is not the case. I am not saying other organizations should allow infants at work. What I do, unapologetically say is other organizations should look thoughtfully at how they support people. What that means for their people, and what the what the needs are for their people, and that the business case is there for the organization. So I am very unapologetic about that. It doesn’t mean it’s infants at work. I mean, the benefits that we provide, and we have are a good fit for our system, our resources, our culture, our people, our mission. But if the mission and people and resources are different somewhere else, what can they do, but I am pretty unapologetic about equality. And I do think things like paid parental leave are must haves. And so I think you know, there’s a little bit of pressure, or sometimes people pointing the finger or saying, well, that’s easy for you to say, you know, your whatever insert that you support women or you’re a nonprofit. And I’m like, first of all, none of this is easy. There’s no part of this. There’s not one day in the past year that we have been fully staffed, because of accommodating paid parental leaves. And when we’re not fully staffed other people take on that workload. So it’s not easy. But it can be not easy, and it can still be right.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.

Beth Shelton
And I think it’s right. So sometimes I’m unapologetic about that. But it can be a high pressure situation. And the Internet can be mean. Internet can be really mean, I would love to share one lesson I learned from that.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Beth Shelton
The day The Today’s Show did the story it was about, it was roughly late February. So you know, fast forward five or six weeks after we rolled this out. They had gotten wind, they came in recorded for two or three days. It was great. And they air the story and then our chief marketing officer comes into my office that day. She’s like, hey, great news, Beth. Awesome. The story aired on TV, and then they put it on social. So that’s really great. By the way, don’t read the comments. And I’m like, wait, what? And she’s like, yeah, so if you’re like the central figure in a national story, what are you going to do?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right? You’re gonna read the comments

Beth Shelton
You’re gonna shut your door and read the comments. And you know, of course, 95% of them were great, right? But there was one in particular, I’m not gonna call her out by name, but she is, she is a doctor that works with children. So she her specialty her profession in life is working with children, okay. And she had a particularly harsh statement. And at the end of it was like, you know, how in the world can any organization think this is a good idea to have children in the workplace? It’s not equiped for babies, brava who ever had that brain fart was her exact quote at the end. I was like, oh, man, like, I’m like, oh man, I’m the brainfart lady now, right like that’s, that’s I’ve her. So here’s what I want to say, if I had handed her my yardstick of it being the right decision, or my self worth, or my esteem or my ability to lead, that would have been a pretty dire situation. But here’s what I want to say one year later, I happened to go back and check this person social media, this internet stranger, right. And she was posting about how grateful she was that her organization was finally willing and allowing children at work, because her perspective had changed. Because what happened? The pandemic hit and when the pandemic hit all sorts of professionals faced hurdles about caregiving. And all of a sudden, she faced some hurdles in her own life, right and saw the hurdles with her peers, about caregiving with the pandemic, and all of a sudden her workplace said, okay, yes, children can come to work because of XYZ. Now, her perspective greatly changed, the variables in her life change. But at the end of the day, we shouldn’t, that’s a great example of we shouldn’t allow our leadership vision, hand our yardstick of, of what our vision is to somebody else, because honestly, they can’t see it the same way. Their perspective is different.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Beth Shelton
And it was a good lesson for me not to allow too many outside sources, like if we know what our North Star is. And I think we’re pretty clear on that. I feel pretty clear on that, as a human and as a leader. I’m not going to, I’ll take input, I want to listen to feedback, but I’m not going to allow a naysayer to derail me because they have different variables in their workplace or in their life.

Sarah Noll Wilson
I mean, there’s so much – you have so much clarity and conviction when you say that, you know, just like, I’m not saying this, but this is where I am going to be unapologetic about and, and that idea of being really clear about your North Star as a company, and in particularly how that impacts your culture and how you show up. I see so often, companies struggle with that. They struggle with having the conviction behind who they are, having the conviction behind what they’re going to do, either because they don’t know what it feels like. They don’t know what it looks like to have that kind of conviction. Or they you know, like sometimes it’s like, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Well, well, yeah. I mean, I’ve never met, I’ve never met a leader. I’m pausing. Hold on, I’m going through my archives right now, before I said that say this. I haven’t met many leaders (laughs) I will say this, who wouldn’t say like, no, I care deeply about my people. And I would do, right, like whatever I can to support them. And I think there’s something really powerful in being really clear about this is who we are, and this is who we stand for. Because when you have that conviction, like, I’m, I’m a firm believer that when we have clarity, whether that’s our values, our you know, like our North Star, that clarity can give us conviction. And when we have that conviction, that gives us courage. Right? So by being clear about that, I think there’s something really beautiful, I’m just hearing your voice and and how you talk about that. How, so then how has that evolved for you? You know, what are some of the other ways and we don’t necessarily need to list out like, here’s all the benefits, but how did that then shape the conversations you – because – let me finish my thought and then I’ll tag on to it, how did it shape and change the kind of conversations you now have as an organization of what’s possible? Because I could imagine that that was sort of a that was a real linchpin moment of, well, if we can figure that out, what else kind of what else is on the table for us to figure out? And so I’m curious to know, from that point, and then obviously, yeah, pandemic hit, and we all had to figure out and shift and figure out how to take care of ourselves and take care of each other. So how has the conversation shifted? And what has continued to emerge as you think about the evolution of how you take care of the humans?

Beth Shelton
Yeah, I think what what it did you know, unintentionally, is it helped us build a culture of trust that not only do our employees, do our team members, trust that leadership is really going to listen and maybe take radical steps if it fits our organization, and it helps help support where we’re going. But it also helps I think, leadership trust that the people are going to do what they say they’re going to do. That people are going to rally behind when we create a plan like people are going to rally and have it and that became so important in the pandemic area, because it that trust first of all, you know, we started the day that we sort of closed our public facing operations, if you will, because of the pandemic was mid March, give or take, you know, March 17 or 18th. The next day we were having, of course, internal town halls on Zoom and saying things like, we are not – the last thing we will do is downsize the people, the last thing. So we will look at everything else first and here’s our assurance that the people are still number one. Like the taking care of our people is number one. And I think that trust was there, people heard that. And what what that meant is they stayed engaged, and they trusted the organization, and they did their jobs. And they, we all pivoted, we all, you know, changed our ways of work. And then I think the things that we faced, as human beings evolved so much at that time, we certainly saw, you know, as a collective, you know, culture, people across the country, and like, probably across the world, but certainly across the country, a big increase in depression, loneliness, anxiety, suicidal ideation, addiction, and all of a sudden, that meant that when we support people that looks really different now. You know, we have to be really mindful of mental well being and equality and racial injustice and things that maybe weren’t the top of the list of our conversation points pre pandemic, not that they shouldn’t have been, but they weren’t,

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.

Beth Shelton
Other things, other fires, other other big priorities were happening. And all of a sudden, those are the things that were happening. And it built a lot of trust I think with our people that we work hard and listen hard, like you said, we don’t need to go through a list of all the benefits we have. Many are radical things from, you know, paid leave for miscarriage, or, you know, we have with paid leave for everyone’s personal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion journey, you know, so everyone gets paid time off to explore their own DEI journeys, in addition to all of the resources we have at work. Paid leave for, for caregiving for the mental well being of others or oneself. Because what I don’t want is I don’t want to create a culture where people have to burn through their PTO just to be a human, right, especially if certain demographics are more likely to burn through PTO. So for example, we know, data wise that women are more likely to use PTO as a demographic group for things like caregiving, you know, household duties, you know, the tragic case of things like miscarriage, but then what happens is, then they don’t have PTO balances to do those engaging bucket filling things. And so if we want a fulfilled, engaged workforce, like, let’s make sure we give them the time to do that. And the way to do that is that we have paid leaves for all of these other things. And so we do give a lot of paid time off, you know, the average first year employees getting like 58, paid days off, first year. And that’s a lot, you know, but our productivity is higher than ever, our results are higher than ever. And why is that? I think it has a lot to do with that supporting that people can be fulfilled, and it doesn’t mean in working more hours, you know?

I just, I just I’ll just continue to just pause, right, I mean, even just the, the awareness, and again, the systematizing, the support for individuals who, you know, are experiencing different levels of stress, different levels of experiences, and how do we how do we take care of them? A couple of thoughts are going through my head. And I’m curious, I’m curious to get your perspective. A question that we often receive is, “Yeah, but can’t you be too empathetic?”

Mm hmm.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Like, and I’m, and I always pause, like, and I’ll you know, sometimes, right, like the yeah, I mean, this sounds great. But like, can’t you be too empathetic? Now, I would argue you can’t, right. Like, you, you take care of your people, and they take care of you. And so I’m just I’m kind of curious to get your thoughts on, right. Like, and yeah, I’ll just I’ll stop with that question, then I’ll ask you the second question.

Beth Shelton
Okay. So I’m deeply empathetic. And that gets me in the field. So I think that there’s no maximum to how much I can feel for someone. What I do think is that it’s great to have also, it’s not the opposite of accountability.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right! Right! Right!

Beth Shelton
So like, we also build in equal parts like empathy, accountability, they’re both true. And you think about it in terms of let’s take work out of it for a minute, think about if you if you have someone in your life who you love a lot, I’m going to pick one of my children, okay. I couldn’t be more loving and empathetic toward them. But do you think that means that I don’t have accountability, like they still have to be accountable to be like kind, respectful human beings, they still have to do what they say they’re going to do, within reason. Like, of course, they need those guardrails. And they excel when they have those guardrails and the same, you know, I don’t want to like patronize or make it sound like you know, like minimize you know, what what employees bring to the table. That’s not what I’m saying. But the parallel of equal parts of empathy and accountability is real. They’re not opposite.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. I love, I love that that’s where you went because I think so often when people are saying that they’re perceiving it as being not holding people accountable, and not you – and I’m like, well, no, that’s not the same thing. You can care deeply and hold people accountable. The other thing that I’m, I’m thinking is there’s probably some folks who may be listening to this right now. Or they work with somebody who’s who would say something like, “Yeah, but Beth, what if people take advantage of it?” Like what – and it’s always interesting to me that the irony is that whenever I observed that kind of phrase, it’s almost always in a culture, that’s very low trust.

Beth Shelton
Right, right. Right.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Like there are, there’s other things we’re already observing, that are representative of a really low trust culture. And, and it’s, it’s so interesting to me that like, when – I don’t know when you when you recognize someone for the value that they bring, or the potential that they can bring, when you say, I believe in you, I trust you, here’s the expectations, right, like, but I’m here to support you. And I trust that we’ll get there, people will meet that moment, more often than not, and it’s and it’s just always interesting to me that the – I think I think many organizations put policies in place for the two. Or don’t put policies in place, right, for the 2%, who might take advantage of it, right? Who might not use it responsibly, whatever that might mean, or, and then you miss out on this opportunity to offer something incredible, to the people who would really benefit from it. But my experience has always been whenever that question gets brought up, yeah, but what if Sarah, what if people… And I’m like that lack of trust you have in your people, I promise you, this is not the only place this shows up, and I promise you they feel it. And that that has an impact on your culture. And you know, and I don’t know if there’s anything like more, either anecdotal or concrete that you would want to share from your experience of how this has shifted and changed. I mean, you talked about productivity is up, right? I assume engagement is really high, right? All of that. I mean, because and when when you’re invested in as a person, it’s really easy to then turn around and go, I want to invest back in you. I don’t really have a question to that. I’m just curious to hear your thoughts, or what connections come up for you as I share that.

Beth Shelton
I think it’s one of the most common responses I get when I talk about our benefits or workplace and sometimes even internally, right, as a leadership team, maybe that question might come up. And what I, what I have to say about that is, you know, that address the behavior of the individual, we have such a, you know, I mean, you’re the expert, right, of avoiding, you know, the topic of avoiding the hard conversations, right?

Sarah Noll Wilson
We’ll send the email out about like dress code when one person is like struggling with it.

Beth Shelton
Right! Yes! First of all, let’s actually address and hold the person accountable who’s doing the thing. But I promise you, if you are worried, like it could be, in fact, to be the case, that someone on a team would take advantage of a benefit. But that person is also the person that has a multitude of other performance issues. Like that’s not the one hallmark of the thing that they’re causing an issue in. And so any person that’s going to take advantage – so our benefit of paid caregiver leave, you get four weeks paid off for the acute physical or mental care of a loved one or yourself. The only time you need this benefit is if something tragic has happened in every case where someone has used this benefit, something really terrible happened in their personal lives and their workplace was like, we’ve got your back, we see you you have four weeks paid off to go deal with this thing. And then when you come back, like you didn’t burn through any PTO, right, this is like – and in the number one question I get about that benefit, because there’s not like one tangible thing that that is like the first domino like okay, yep. Now they are on paid caregiver leave. It’s, it’s a little bit like, it could be a lot of things, right? What does that mean? The acute physical or mental care of a loved one or themselves? Well, it means what they think it means. It means that if you need the time to take care of your aging parent going to chemo your partner who had a stroke, you’re like, whatever. Okay. And so the question of like, what if someone took advantage of. If someone’s going to take advantage of that they are also going to be the person that is not accountable for other things. So if we just hold them to the accountable for the transactional things that are easy to hold them accountable for, we don’t have to worry about them on this other stuff. So that’s why accountability is important, because then it does build a culture of trust. They’re not going to, we’re not going to worry about these giant benefits when if we just can focus on their transactional things. Are they meeting their deadlines? Are they doing what they say they’re going to do? You know, those type of things?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Well said. What, what do you wish, what are the conversations you wish more leaders we’re having? Like, if you, if you could be a little Beth on someone’s shoulder. Just a tiny little Beth. What are – or maybe let me ask that question maybe a little bit differently –

Beth Shelton
Sure.

Sarah Noll Wilson
So that it doesn’t come from such a place of judgment. What are the conversations we need to be having now, as we think about moving forward into what the needs are of humans, what the future of work looks like, because the conversations have shifted. I mean, the needs of the workplace have shifted. And you know, you talked earlier about the whole like, we need that like personality reveal, I always lovingly say, when I see somebody I haven’t seen since the before times, my first question was always, “Who are you now?” Like, who are you now? So from, from your, your perspective and experience, what do you what do you feel like are the things we need to be thinking about as those of us who are maybe in positions of power and authority who can have influence? Or what are the needs you’re seeing emerge? Or even sustaining, that we need to be addressing?

Beth Shelton
Yeah, it’s a big question, because the variables are changing really quickly. And I feel like the needs of people are, it’s happening at such a fast pace, the change in workplaces in the changing culture. So there’s not like there’s one distinct answer, but what I would say is staying really receptive and open. I mean, listen to your people. I mean, they they, you know, if you have at least enough of a culture where they have a place to tell you, a willingness to tell you, like you said earlier, a culture is what your people say it is, it’s not a poster. It’s not aspirational words on a, you know, so you know, we do an annual employee survey. And at the end, it’s we say, you know, what are three words that describe, you know, our culture. And then we put all of those words in a big word cloud. And of course, the ones that are said the most frequently are the biggest and, and then we hand that word cloud out to every single employee. And every once awhile, there’s a word on there that I don’t like, and you know what I would love to do, I would love to delete it, I would love to delete the word. But instead, it’s my job to fix the culture, not delete the word. And so I guess it from like, a high level metaphor, don’t delete the words, right? Fix the culture, don’t delete the word. Because if you really want to address it, so you know, listen to what your people say, I do think mental well being, you know, I know that’s a that’s a big bucket. Loneliness. I mean, let’s, let’s just look at the data that’s out there, addiction is on the rise and loneliness is on the rise. And it’s a constant question for me what is in the purview of a workplace to solve, in terms of the human beings? I don’t know the answer. Because, you know, I think there can be, there’s a lot of figuring this stuff out. People want flexibility and autonomy, I want flexibility and autonomy. So we’ve created a culture largely around that. It can also sometimes create this polarity, that people feel lonely, they feel isolated, you know, if they’re working remotely the whole time. And so there’s this, you know, but polarities are not new. I mean, I think as human beings, we have that in us in our own selves, right? There’s this constant push and pull of what’s good for me, what do I want to do? What do I like to do? And I think that then on a larger level comes out in organizations that push and pull. I think being open minded, not not not being, you know, not thinking we know the answer. And I always I always think about that little sort of, you know, that microcosm of when the world sort of shut down in 2020. At first and, and for most of at least a year, that so many organizations did pivot, did figure it out, did do things that they thought they never could have done. And so if we can do that, if we can completely change the way we work, and how our people work and where they work from, let’s not just throw that concept away. Maybe it looks different today. But we can just completely do things different if we choose to. Let’s not get so set in the way the way we think it’s done. Yeah,

Sarah Noll Wilson
No, that’s awesome. The fix the culture don’t delete the word. Yeah, that’s nice.

Beth Shelton
And it’s evolving. You know, I wish, I wish I could say like, (swipes hands together) we figured it out. We solved it.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. (laughs)

Beth Shelton
But not only do the people that work in our teams, you know, it changes, right.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Beth Shelton
We tend to have very high employee retention, which is great, but it still changes over time. But the actual individual human beings change. Like I said, I’m a different person than I was four years ago. The worries that I carry, the stresses that I carry can change by the day. I can be a 10 out of 10 on one day as a leader and I can be a two out of 10 on some days as a leader. I can be snappy and frustrated and depressed and not open minded and not resilient, or I could be amazing in all those areas and so I’m just one person and I have a lot of privilege and I have a lot of access. And I have a lot of people that love me so if I’m that volatile in what I, how I show up. Every everyone could be that. So even if we had a stagnant pool of people, what they, what they shoulder and how they show up is different every single day. So we have to be sort of receptive and open, you know, to what that looks like and how to how to best meet people. It’s not like, you can’t solve it, you can’t just be like, okay, we gave them the benefits, right? Or we added the ping pong table or the espresso machine, and boom, it is a bucket with a hole in the bottom, metaphorically, and you gotta pour into it all the time. And it means active listening, active, work with intention to meet people, to listen to people, to validate people to see people, and it can be exhausting, especially when you’re a person. You know, I experienced those things, too. So it takes a lot of intention.

Yeah, yeah. Beth as we wind up our time, we could keep talking,

We could.

Sarah Noll Wilson
You know, but we will not. Yeah, I gotta let you go and be on your way at some point. But before we break, I would love to hear your answer to our final question that we ask every guest. What was the conversation you had with yourself or someone else that was transformative for you?

Beth Shelton
I, in 2020, I started seeking, actively seeking therapy because life was so hard. I was going through a divorce, I was leading an organization through crisis, I was living through a pandemic, I was caregiving to three children who never went away, right, who were there all the time. And I got a really great therapist, he’s given me so much advice. But I would say that the one of the conversations that sticks with me that I think about almost every day is, I, the truth is, and I tried to be, you know, really, really authentic as a leader. And, and I struggled with some suicidal ideation at that time. And I asked him, how I could take my own life without hurting my three kids. And he said to me, Beth I think you know, you cannot do that. He said, let’s focus instead on creating a life you don’t want to escape from. And I actively think about that every day. How do I create a life I don’t want to escape from, What does that mean? When am I most Beth? When do I feel the most seen? When do I feel the most valued? What am I doing? Who am I with? What? How am I spending my time? What am I listening to? And I have to actively remind myself of that every day. And so I feel really fortunate that that I had that support. And that I’m on a great path. But I try not to let that conversation get too far from from my mind.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Beth, you’re incredible. And you are such an – I mean, you really are such an inspiration for me. And I’m so excited to introduce you to our audience so that they can learn about you. For people who might be interested in just connecting with you. Maybe having you come speak to their organization. What’s the best way for people to connect with you?

Beth Shelton
Well, thank you for your kind words, it has been such an honor to be here. You’re one of my idols, as you know. Bethshelton dot com is the easiest. Of course, I’m on all the socials underbed. Shelton. So you know, Instagram and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is probably the one I use the most because I’d like to write, and so it gives me a chance to write those longer pieces. And, but bethshelton dot com is the easiest.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Okay, we’ll be sure to add that to the show notes. When’s the book coming?

Beth Shelton
Hey, it’s a –

Sarah Noll Wilson
I’m kidding. (laughs)

Beth Shelton
It’s a work in progress. It’s a lot of scattered writings, a lot of scattered ideas, I just got a funnel that one direction.

Sarah Noll Wilson
When you know, for people, I can’t, I can’t recommend enough, you know, it’s not always like gonna be consistent. But you know when Beth has been thinking about something and is pouring her heart out. And it’s always so compelling. And I think you’re just – you have such a way with speaking so honestly, and eloquently, and in a way that is accessible, you know, by sharing your own suffering, your own struggles, has normalized it for so many people. So be sure to connect with Beth and Beth, thank you so much for saying yes.

Beth Shelton
Oh, thank you for having me. It’s such an honor. It really made my day. You’re amazing.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Likewise.

Our guests this week has been Beth Shelton, CEO, Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa and a what a conversation on what it means and looks like to lead people. I have so many pages of notes. One of the things that I want to just call out was that story she shared about productivity and like yeah, we know it’s, it’s, it’s gonna be less and that’s okay. And it almost brings tears to my eyes of what would be possible if when somebody is struggling, when they’re suffering and they’ve committed, you know, they’ve committed their time and their life, right, to your company, and and they’re struggling and then that moment you say and it’s okay. I just think there’s something so powerful about that.

And we’d love to hear from you. What resonated, what came up for you? You can send us a message at podcast @ Sarah Noll Wilson dot com. Otherwise, you can always drop me a direct message on social media where my DMs are always open. And if you’d like to support the show, there’s a couple of ways you can do that. First, be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast platform. Or you can become and/or you can become a patron. You can go to patreon.com/conversations on conversations, where your financial contribution will support the incredible team that makes this show possible. Speaking of the team let’s give them some love! To our producer Nick Wilson, our sound editor Drew Noll, our transcriptionist Becky Reinert and the rest of the SNoWCo. team. And just a big wholehearted thank you to Beth Shelton for all the amazing work she’s doing. And we’ll continue to do. This has been Conversations on Conversations. Thank you so much for listening and giving us your time. And remember, when we can change the conversations we have with ourselves and others, we can change the world. So be sure to rest, rehydrate and I’ll see you again next week.