Coaching as Corporate Culture w/ Julie Billingsley

03/02/21 • 57 min

Julie Billingsley is the Vice President of Human Resources at ZS Associates, a global professional services and consulting firm with 10,000 employees and contractors spanning 13 countries. Julie has been with ZS for 26+ years, helping them grow double digits year-over-year while purposely building and expanding their workforce and corporate culture. She has been integral to establishing their coaching practices, which now touch every employee around the world, as well as their workforce modeling tools that keep them appropriately staffed through periods of uncertainty and growth.
Time Stamps:

(2:39) - Can you pitch ZS Associates?
(5:26) - What do your US and Global footprints look like?
(6:41) - Are your people location-based or do they move around all the time?
(9:35) - Was it a conscious decision to make sure associates were based in the same area as their clients instead of relying on heavy travel?
(10:19) - What are the biggest challenges in leading people with a model of a lot of small offices spread out?
(11:57) - What is your role as a human resources leader?
(12:50) - What does surveying the landscape of the employees look like to you?
(13:53) - The coaching side of the business
(17:47) - The line between coaching young people to act professional and expecting them to be professional
20:18) - What were you looking for as far as an ROI in bringing on these coaches?
(21:33) - What happens after they’ve had a coach for 4-5 years?
(22:51) - Where did that belief in the value of coaching come from?
(25:02) - What are the challenges to building out coaching in other countries?
(27:00) - Are all of the coaches coordinating their work globally?
(28:06) - How do you maintain a consistent culture with a global workforce?
(29:20) - How do you give credence to the cultural differences in global offices while keeping the performance standard the same?
(35:22) - Teaching people how to interact with other people & facilitating meetings
(37:22) - How the English language differentiates globally
(38:26) - Is everyone expected at a seniority level to be able to coach someone below them or are coaches selected based on abilities?
(41:11) - How have you evolved your practices to manage growth?
(45:41) - Does your agile framework allow you to expand during “hot” months?
(46:56) - How are you aggregating all of your data?
(50:27) - What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned from leading the people function of business throughout your career?
(51:09) - Is there anything you believe about business or leadership that you think is contrary to what most people are doing in the market?
(52:26) - Did you know that human resources would be something you would love to do?
(54:58) - What is the purpose of Business?

Previous Episode

Be. Yourself w/ Jessica Zweig

Jessica Zweig is the Founder & CEO of SimplyBe., a premier personal branding company based in Chicago.
She is an internationally award-winning entrepreneur who was named a “Personal Branding Expert” (Forbes) and a "Top Digital Marketer To Watch" (INC.) as well as a dynamic and highly sought-after speaker and presenter. Jessica has spoken on national and international stages, including those of Google, Mindvalley, and Virgin, and has facilitated sold-out workshops and masterminds around the world.
In 2018 and 2019, Jessica was honored with the Gold and Silver Stevie® Award for “Female Entrepreneur of the Year." Her work has been featured in Business Insider, MarketWatch, The Washington Post, and Thrive Global.
In February 2021, Jessica released her book, Be. - A No B.S. Guide to Increasing Your Self Worth and Net Worth by Simply Being Yourself.

Mentioned in this Episode:

The SimplyBe. Podcast
1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelley
The Quote About Judgement We Couldn't Remember
- “The things we dislike most in others are the characteristics we like least in ourselves.” ― Marian Keyes, Rachel's Holiday
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Time Codes:

(3:51) - Can you pitch Simply Be and the work you do?
(6:16) - How do you define Personal Brand?
(7:16) - what’s the difference between Personal Brand and Self Promotion?
(9:09) - Finding the purpose behind your self-promotion
(11:52) - Reframing self-promotion to add value to the world
(15:48) - How to make money
(18:54) - How do you help somebody figure out who they are and the value that they offer?
(25:46) - What’s the framework of The Hologram?
(30:25) - How do you help people draw the line between being vulnerable and what they want to keep private?
(32:33) - Being “too” authentic
(36:21) - Being an introvert in an extroverted field
(38:55) - How do you set boundaries to take the time to think?
(41:41) - What are you sick of talking about?
(42:44) - What are you most excited to be talking about?
(42:53) - What is the purpose of Business?

Next Episode

Branding as a Filter w/ Nate Guggia

Nate Guggia is the Co-Founder of Before You Apply, a creative studio and content platform that helps companies and their recruiting teams give candidates an insider's look at their work and culture. They work with growth-focused organizations in highly competitive markets to help companies and talent teams hire fast.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of employer branding to both attract and repel talent so that you are only getting the best people for your unique needs. Nate also helps define and make actionable the elusive "Employee Value Proposition" (EVP).
Mentioned in this Episode:

Timestamps:
(2:27) - Can you pitch your organization and how you approach your work?
(4:53) - How much of your work is around making a company attractive to people vs. helping them ‘opt out’?
(6:41) - Getting the right people in the right door instead of pure volume of moving candidates
(10:28) - How do you define Employee Value Proposition & Employer Branding? How are they the same or different?
(15:27) - What’s the final product a client is getting from the EVP?
(18:30) - Do you have an example of what a good EVP for one of your clients is and how they used it?
(19:56) - What did the initial conversations with Mozilla look like and how did you help them define things?
(25:00) - What did Mozilla get from you and how did they use it?
(26:40) - How do you tell stories?
(28:19) - What makes a good question?
(30:42) - Authenticity at the company level
(34:40) - Content as a filter at the top of the funnel
(37:34) - Candidate FAQs
(40:16) - Where are people getting things wrong when telling their story? (content, medium, storytelling ability, etc.)
(45:48) - What are you sick of talking about?
(49:09) - What is the purpose of Business?