Carol:
Hi there. Welcome. Welcome to the People-Forward Leadership Podcast. I am so excited about today's guest because while many transit agencies have been fighting the war for talent since 2020, our guest today has led one of the most closely watched turnarounds in the industry. Rosa Mendina Cristobal is senior vice president and chief human resource officer for one of the largest agencies in the country at Dallas Area Rapid Transit. She leads DART's people strategy with a focus on attracting, developing, and retaining talent. She started as a human resources intern at the city of Grand Prairie and worked her way up through Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority via Metropolitan Transit in San Antonio and now DART. When the pandemic left DART with roughly 500 vacancies and attrition running around 15 to 16%, Rosa and her team rebuilt how the agency hires and keeps its people. And she's been very clear about the lesson underneath it all.
If you don't put as much effort into developing your workforce as you do in recruiting it, you're losing the battle. Rosa was named one of Mass Transit Magazine's top 40 under 40, is a graduate of APTA's leadership class of 2023, and serves on the board of the Latinos in Transit where she chairs its workforce development workforce. So Rosa, thank you so much for being on the podcast and welcome today.
Rosa:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.
Carol:
Awesome. Awesome. So I would love to get into, one of the questions I'm always fascinated about is people's journey into transit, how they found their way into this remarkably unique industry. And I know, as I mentioned before, you started as an HR intern in the city of Grand Prairie and you now sit at the executive table at one of the biggest transit agencies in the country. And that's a path a lot of people in HR dream about, but very few actually get there. So tell me about your journey and what pulled you into this work and what pulled you into transit and your HR career?
Rosa:
Sure, sure. So I love mentoring people and DART actually has a very robust summer internship program. And so I'd love to tell the story about my journey. I feel like my journey has been defined by a series of these kinds of moments throughout my career. And one of my first defining moments, I'm actually a high school valedictorian. And when I was in high school, my high school counselor said, "You're really good at math. You're really good at science. You need to go be an engineer." And I didn't know any better. So I started my freshman year in college as an electrical engineering major. So I go off to St. Mary's University in San Antonio. I'm an electrical engineering major. One of the very first courses I took was a drafting course and I'm sitting in class with all these engineering majors and they all have their little drafting tools and I'm sitting there and everyone is drafting away.
And I knew within seconds of sitting in this course that I was in the wrong place. I'm a people person by nature. I'm very social. I'm a social butterfly and no one was talking in this classroom. They all had their tools, they're all drafting. And I'm looking around and after that class, I went to my college advisor and I said, "I'm in the wrong place. I am not an engineering major. Find me something else." And so after talking to her, fast-forward, I am a political science undergraduate and I got my master's in public administration. I knew from a very early age that I wanted to help people. I wanted to do something where I could make a difference. And that's how I found my way into the public sector. The way that I found my way into human resources is as a junior in college, we had to do an internship unpaid. Back in the day, internships were unpaid. That's why I'm such a proponent of internships.
And that's how I found my way to the city of Grand Prairie. It was through an internship. I loved it. Once I stepped foot in the human resources department, I was a sponge. I just knew that's where I belonged and I just kind of stumbled into HR and I never looked back. So for anybody listening, internships are a must. It's how you get your foot in the door. It's how you get people to recognize you and get to know you, and it's a great way to jumpstart your career.
Transit is another way that just kind of... I stumbled into it. There was a position for a human resources manager listed at a transit agency. I applied for it. I was selected. And people say that once you're bit by the transit bug, it's over. And it is so true. I took an HR manager position at Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority, and a transit family is like no other. Once you're in a transit family, it's like the mafia, you're never coming out. And that was about 15 years ago, and I stayed in transit and I love it. I love it. I will be transit for life now.
Carol:
I love that. That's definitely a through thread that I hear from so many leaders just about when they think about the impact that transit has on a community, that it's so meaningful and powerful for the people who work in the industry that they're committed. Once you're in, like you say, you get bit by the bug, that's it.
Rosa:
Yes. Yeah. I am trying to change that though. Those of us that are in human resources, we are now trying to be more deliberate about making transit a choice for people. So many people stumble into transit and we want this to be a choice for people now, college graduates. We want them to choose transit as a career because you can make a career out of transit. We don't just have jobs, we have careers for people. So we're trying to make it a deliberate choice for people now.
Carol:
Well, I love that you have an internship program. I know not every transit agency does have an internship program, and I think that's such a... Have you found that to be a really good opportunity to educate and inform and get people to see transit as that choice?
Rosa:
Absolutely. We actually have a pretty robust internship program every summer. We hire between 30 and sometimes up to 50 interns at DART, and they range from high school to college graduates. Some of them even are finishing their PhDs. And so we are trying to start a pipeline of talent into DART. So many of them, if they're finishing their college graduates, they often start their first year at DART right after they graduate college. So we're trying to create this pipeline of talent so that they know you can graduate college and then step right into a career at DART.
Carol:
Oh, that's incredible. That's incredible. How long has that been going on?
Rosa:
Oh, it predates me. We just highlighted our interns last year as part of APTA's National Transit Career Day. We have interns who started as interns and have been at DART for 20 plus years and are now AVPs and senior managers. So the internship program at DART has been around for over 20 years.
Carol:
That's exciting. That's so exciting. So for you, you've worked in city government, you've worked in mid-size agencies in Corpus Christi and San Antonio at VIA, and now at DART, and every one of those places has kind of a different feel, a different element. There's some through lines, some similarities, but I'm curious, how has being in those different places shaped you, shaped your leadership, and what have you learned from each that really helped to inform the type of leader that you are today?
Rosa:
Sure, sure. I feel like each one of them has helped me grow up just a little bit more. One of the things I tell people all the time is that it's really a privilege to be able to work in human resources, and I don't take it for granted. Some people tell me, "How do you work in human resources? It's so stressful and the job is different every day." I tell them it's because I love what I do. You get to work with people and working with people I think is just so humbling, but it's the best part of my job.
Each of the positions I've held over the years, each of the agencies I've worked with has taught me something different because the people are different at every agency. I feel like every agency has taught me how to be a better leader. I've been also very fortunate in that I've had some great mentors along the way. Every agency I worked at, I've had great bosses, great supervisors, great CEOs that also have imparted just these kind of nuggets of knowledge, each one with a different leadership style, and I always try to glean a little bit off of each leader. I just feel really honored that I've been able to have that experience at each of those agencies, and I take the people and that knowledge with me onto the next position that I take with me.
Carol:
Yeah, I think that's so powerful. One of the fundamental pillars, there's three pillars in our People-Forward Leadership framework that I talk a lot about on the podcast. One of them is leader awareness. The whole thing about leader awareness is the ability for leaders to be self-reflective, to actually to spend time learning and getting that feedback and then reflecting that back within their leadership. It sounds like what you said around learning from each place that you were at, every leader, every mentor, that you've been engaged in that kind of reflective feedback process of getting information and seeing how that can level up or elevate or iterate your leadership to a new level, and then you bring that into a new place and get something back and then put it back in there, which is exactly one of the scariest things for me is leaders who think they know everything and that are stuck there. But the most powerful to me are the ones who are always engaged in that reflective process, and it sounds like that's a core element of how you have developed and grown in your own leadership.
Rosa:
Yes. I was also fortunate enough in Corpus Christi, at Corpus Christi RTA, and I told my CEO at that agency, I told him he was crazy. He let me... I'm an HR person, and one day our operations person resigned, and so I asked him, "What do you want to do? Do you want me to recruit for the position? Do you want me to repost it?" He was like, "No, I want you to go and lead our operations department." I said, "You're crazy. I don't know anything about buses or schedules." He said, "Rosa, the hardest part about operations is leading the people, and you lead people really well." He said, "About 10 to 15% is the technical part, and I can teach you that. As long as you can lead the people, you'll be fine." He said, "Go try it. Try it, and if you don't like it, then we'll recruit for it." So I did. I went down there and I tried operations, and guess what? I loved it.
Carol:
Wow.
Rosa:
I actually took a break from HR and I spent about nine years, I guess, in transit operations, and it taught me even more about people because these are frontline workers, bus operators, paratransit operators, dispatchers, maintenance personnel, and I thought I knew all about people. No, you really learn about people when you're in operations. I, again, feel very privileged that I had a mentor who believed in me enough to say, "I'm taking you out of your comfort zone," and it's true, you learn more about yourself when you're uncomfortable. Took me out of my comfort zone, put me in this position of operations and said, "Go. I'm right here. I got your back, but go and try this." I did some operations in Corpus Christi. I did some operations in San Antonio, and it was so much fun. I really, really enjoyed it.
Carol:
Wow. What an incredible opportunity. I mean, one, to have a leader who is so in tuned into your skill sets that saw an opportunity and helped you reframe it as an opportunity and not something completely different, but really showing that how your skillsets can really make a difference, but also what a great experience as someone who's leading a transit organization. I mean, the operations is the heart of it. And so to have the experience of digging in there and connecting and leading those people, I'm sure just makes you that much more valuable as an HR person within the organization as well.
Rosa:
I think so. That's why when I came to DART, and you've read the article, and we had this whole big catastrophe on we're short on bus operators, it's right after COVID, there's this labor shortage, we have this new bus redesign, how are we going to fill all these vacancies? I really feel like I was the right person to lead that effort because I had the operations background, I had the HR expertise, and those two things together was what got us through where we could get to 100% fully staffed at a time when many agencies across the country were grappling with hiring CDL operators. So I just felt like all those things together was what got us through that really difficult time.
Carol:
Wow, wow. Yeah, and I want to take you back to that because I know DART had a hiring freeze that lasted more than 18 months, and you talked about the open positions, mostly in operations and things of that nature. So as a leader, I'm curious about when the pressure is high like that, and the stakes are high and they're real, what keeps you grounded in your values instead of reacting to the fire? I mean, how opportune to have the experience in operations to bring that over and to speak that language and know an understanding of that area. But when other things pop up, what keeps you grounded in your values so that it's not reactive, but you definitely can be proactive and move an organization calmly through any kind of struggle or transition?
Rosa:
Yeah. I think that, one, I think that I have learned a lot of hard lessons over my many, many years of experience, and I think that I have the personality where I've kind of watched things unfold over the years, and I've watched how other people have reacted, and I know enough to see, "Oh, I don't like how that went down," and I know how I feel when I watch others react in a certain way, and so I know what works and what doesn't work. But also, I was brought up a certain way. I was raised by my grandparents who were the kindest, most loving people on the face of the planet, and even on my hardest days, if I brought home a bad grade or I thought I was going to get in trouble, they never ever reacted in a negative way, ever. It made me want to be a better person because I knew I was never going to be met with hostility or angry words or anything like that, and so that always worked for me, and so I've tried to be that way with my teams and the people around me.
I just have never found that negative anything works to get a positive response out of people. And so my teams will tell you that when they do something wrong, they get much more grace out of me by coming in my office and admitting they've made a mistake, and then right after saying, "But this is how we're going to correct it, and this is how we're going to ensure that it doesn't happen again." That knocks the wind right out of my sails, and I'm like, "All right, cool. Let's proceed with correcting it and making sure it doesn't happen again." My golden rule is just don't let me get blindsided, right? Come into my office early and tell me where the mistake is and how we're going to go about fixing it, because I can always do damage control with whoever I need to do damage control with, but make me aware and let's figure out how to fix it.
Yelling and screaming and getting mad at people never fixes anything ever. So my team is very, very good about communicating, and as long as they communicate, everything's all good. I think my family has always grounded me, that's how I was raised. And so in harsh times or stressful times, you'll never see me running around like a crazy person. It's always, "All right, how are we going to move forward? What's our plan?" I'm very organized and structured, and that's always worked really well for me.
Carol:
Yeah, I think that's so important. I love what you shared about, one, watching other people and knowing what you want to take in or not, but it's so important from my perspective for leaders to be grounded in something, to have a sense of a value structure that they can rely on and lean into so that when things are moving like a whirlwind around them, they have something to latch onto. I love what you shared about your grandparents and just the calm and the resolve, and we can handle anything together, just bring it to me and be honest. Having those kinds of grounding things I think helps a team when you're building what I call an empowered ecosystem of a team of people who are out there implementing goals and visions and things of that nature for the organization. It's important for them to be grounded in something as well.
I love what you shared about just having your grandparents' upbringing just ground you and how you use that for your leadership as well and what your teams know. One of the things that did stick with me in your story is that you and your team could see the bus redesign was rolling out faster than the workforce could support it, and you had to go to the board and slow down something that they had already voted for. And that's a hard call to make when you have to weigh what's right for your people against the business need. How do you make that decision and how do you bring the board along with you when you're making those type of big decisions?
Rosa:
Yeah, that was a really difficult time back then, and there was so much visibility on my team. I remember, and I'll tell you a story at the end that really, I think, earned a lot of credibility back with my team, but during that time, every month, I specifically was in front of the board and they were asking, "Where are we? Where are we? We've got this many vacancies. Where are you and your team on filling them?" We knew, but how do you tell your board you're rolling something out that we're not equipped to fulfill? I don't know if it was in the story or not, I don't remember, but the original deadline they put on us was something like January... I may get the years wrong, January 2021, we're going to roll out this bus redesign, and we knew there was no way we were going to make that deadline, and every month we were in front of the board reporting on it, and sure enough, we actually didn't meet the deadline.
And if you ask me, "When is the time that you tried to meet something and you failed?" I would tell you, "Bus redesign." I had to get in front of the board and say, "We didn't make it." They rolled out the service anyway, and we had all these kinds of missed trips and this and that, whatever. My team was so hard on themselves, and I said, "We're not going to quit. We're going to keep going. What can we do different?" And that's when we changed our plans, and we tried some new things, we got innovative, and then we met the deadline, and then we got fully staffed, and even though we got beat up by the board a couple of times and we got scolded, when we finally met our goal, and we were fully staffed, and we did everything we said we were going to do, I took my entire team to a board meeting.
When I presented and I said, "We've met our goal, we are 100% fully staffed, which almost no other agency across this country can say we did everything we said we were going to do." I said, "And by the way, behind me is my entire team who has been working around the clock to get this done, and I want them to stand and be recognized."
The entire board stood up, and they gave them a round of applause, and they gave my team a standing ovation, and my team was so happy because no team had been recognized like that in front of the board of directors before, but I felt like there had been so much pressure on them for so long, for over a year, that they deserved some recognition and just some awareness that all their hard work had paid off, and they didn't know I was going to do that. The board didn't know I was going to do that. The team didn't know I was going to do that, but yeah, they got some recognition, but it was a hard time, but I was never dishonest with the board. All along the way, I was always very honest with them. I told them what was working, what wasn't working, why we weren't meeting deadlines, what we needed to do to get there.
If I needed more resources, I told them. I think that when you're in a difficult situation like that, your board will be okay as long as you're honest along the way, as long as you tell them exactly what's going on and you're honest with them along the way.
Carol:
Yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds like you were definitely that way, that transparency in your leadership with the board as well as with your team, but also being honest, but being supportive of your team, letting them know of what we have in front of us, but we're not going to give up, giving credit to your team and then celebrating the success. I mean, what a great formula for not only building trust and credibility with your board, but with your team as well.
Rosa:
Yes, yes. And those are some hard steps along the way, but again, the board and my team kept saying, "Are we in trouble? Are you going to be in trouble?" I was like, "No, we're just going to get up there and we're going to be honest, and it is what it is, right?" So it was fine, and it ended up being fine.
Carol:
Yeah, it worked out pretty well, so that's perfect.
Rosa:
Yeah, it did.
Carol:
Now, speaking of building trust across the organization, when Nadine Lee came in as CEO, one of the first things she did was move HR to report directly to her, and you said that's when everything really took off because the rest of the agency knew that HR and this with the CEO's backing, in your words, brought everyone to the table, which was really kind of fantastic and ahead of the game. So I'm curious, how do you continue... What you just shared was a great example, but what are some of the other ways that you continue to build trust across functions and personalities and priorities so people can actually execute together, especially when HR is asking operations and finance and the board to change how things have maybe been done or the way they want to do things?
Rosa:
Yes, so that was definitely a great first step because I think in many organizations, and I certainly have been part of organizations where HR is way down in the organizational structure, and we make it work. So when Nadine elevated us up in the organizational structure, that was a great first step. But I think that in order to build trust, one of the things that I've always done, which has worked very well for me, is I always try to be an active listener. Every department has different needs, so what operations needs might be different than what finance needs or what procurement needs, and so I cannot treat them all the same. I think that that's what's made me a very effective CHRO is I have an open door. I'm not somebody who sits in my office with a closed door and doesn't ever make time for anybody.
My peers know that if they need to come and talk to me and they need five minutes because they have a fire today and they just, "Rosa, I need to talk to you because I've got this emergency," then I always have an open door. They can come in, they can sit down. They joke all the time that I need a couch in my office because there's usually a line at my door of people that need to see me for whatever the emergency of the day is.
Carol:
Some people with a sign that says therapist is in.
Rosa:
Yeah, but I make time for them. I'm a very good listener, and I know that I cannot be like a blanket approach with everybody. I've learned over the years that my personality adjusts according to whatever person I'm dealing with. And there's so many personality styles on my leadership team, and so I know that I have to be one person with my chief of police and another person with my CFO and another person depending on who I'm dealing with. But that builds trust, right?
Carol:
Yeah. It lets them know that you see them.
Rosa:
Yes. And they know they can come to me for whatever their needs are that particular day, whether it's a simple conversation over a policy or it's a very complex conversation about a personnel matter. I'm here, I'm going to talk to them, I'm going to guide them through whatever they need that particular day.
Carol:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and now there's new leadership coming, right?
Rosa:
Yeah.
Carol:
You have Nathaniel Ford Sr. coming on officially October 26th as the new CEO. So I know it's been exciting news and buzz all around in the industry. What exciting things do you see coming down the pike with this new leadership?
Rosa:
We are super excited. If anyone has followed the recruitment process for him, it was a very unique process. Our service area cities wanted a very open and transparent process, so that was new for me as a CHRO. We actually had a very kind of long, very transparent process and the end process was-
Carol:
Yeah, because You were in the middle of it.
Rosa:
Yes, yes, yes. Right in the middle. And the end result was we now have Mr. Nathaniel Ford coming at the end of October. I've already had a couple conversations with him, and I know I'm going to be super busy. One of the things that he is known for is for being very innovative and forward-thinking, and admittedly so, DART has not always been on the forefront of innovation. So we are very excited to have him on board and we're looking forward to him coming and bringing all of that innovation to DART. He already has talked to me about employee engagement, so I'm excited about that. He is very centered on our frontline employees and how he can engage them and bring our employee engagement scores up. So that's something that we're really looking forward to.
Carol:
Nice.
Rosa:
He's asked a lot about our employee culture, so he's very interested in our employee culture as well. So yeah, lots of exciting things coming, especially to the HR area.
Carol:
Yeah, that's exciting. That's exciting. I'm curious around AI in this, and I don't know if you saw the recent scuttlebutt that's been out there around HR, what's going to happen in the next decade to us with the use of AI. So I don't know if that's making things better or worse in terms of people trying to think about and the fear that people already have with AI rather. But HR is one of the first places that AI can show up in an organization with screening, scheduling, workforce analytics, training, employee engagement surveys, and transit workers are watching it closely because a lot of people are asking whether technology is coming for them, coming from their jobs, now coming for them. So as AI is reshaping how teams work, how are you keeping people and not just technology at the center of those decisions when it comes to decisions you're making at DART?
Rosa:
Yeah, so this discussion, and we've had it a couple of times already in our team meetings, because I think just like you said, employees are... It's kind of a double-edged sword. They're excited about what AI can help them with in their jobs, especially those that have just started dabbling with AI. They'll use it for a little bit and they're like, "Wow, this can make me so much more efficient. It can shave some time off of some of the functions that I perform." But then when they really start playing with it, they're like, "Wait, is this going to take my job? Is this going to lead to some outsourcing of functions?" And the conversations we've had so far is around we will always need somebody to review the work that comes out of AI. And we've gone through just a couple of exercises where they'll put something into AI and it'll spit it out and it doesn't make complete sense.
And so we've had just some initial conversations. Here at DART, we've not fully embraced AI yet. We're just at the very beginnings of it. We still need some more governance around it. We still need some more parameters around it. And so I think the initial conversations with at least my employee group is that there will always be a human factor to AI. It only knows what you tell it to know, and so we will always need somebody to review it and to look over it. And so nobody get too scared just yet. Where we really are seeing a lot of AI is in our talent area. We're really going to have to figure out, we're seeing a lot of the resumes and applications and we can tell when somebody has really doctored using the AI feature. We're actually even thinking we're going to have to do something with virtual interviews and things like that.
And so we'll have to dig into that some more. But yeah, that question is becoming more and more like, is it dangerous or is it helpful? I don't know. It's been really interesting. So I'm very curious as to how this is going to move forward in the future.
Carol:
Yeah. One of the things that when we work with organizations who are thinking about it, we always talk about that the first conversation is who are we with it? And as you said, having something like, listen, nothing moves without a human, there's always a human touch or a human connection is such an important framing for AI because one of the things that brings up a lot of fear and lack of trust and safety is just not understanding who are we with this tool and what's the intention of the tool and what's going to change with the tool? And sometimes just having that conversation and being clear about those questions with your team is just as valuable as that next level of governance and structure and things of that nature. It's just really understanding who are we with AI. And so I love that you're starting off off the board saying, listen, regardless of what we do with it, one thing is clear, humans will always be in the loop with it. So that's a great framing. And I'm sure that's appeasing a lot of fear for a lot of people.
Rosa:
Yeah.
Carol:
Now you've built DART's post-pandemic strategy around retention as much as hiring. And you've said that the goal is for your employees to know they're safe and secure at DART with real opportunities to grow. We talked a little bit about this with the internship and the pathway and pipelines that you're building to really building a strong workforce. When it comes to things like psychological safety, what does that look like in practice as you're building that pipeline where people are feeling that safety and that trust as they're moving through the organization?
Rosa:
Yeah, so I think that with my team, again, I lean in on my experiences growing up in HR, what my leaders, my previous leaders, what that looked and felt like for me. And I think back to the environments that I felt really good in and the environments I didn't feel so good in. And I've tried to mimic that leadership for my team, especially here at DART. I've got a great team at DART. I've got over 40 employees on my current team. And so, one of the things that I think that we do really well is we have these monthly HR team meetings and we begin every meeting with a quick check-in. And I'm probably way too transparent with my team, but we'll start with a check-in and I'll ask everybody like, "Hey, how's everybody doing today? How's everybody feeling?" And I kind of know every month, what are the things that are weighing heavy on people?
If we had a board meeting where they were talking about budget cuts or if there was a discussion on potential reduction in force or something, I know that's weighing heavy on my team. When our CEO, Nadine Lee, resigned, that was weighing heavy on the team because there had not been any messaging put out. And so we'll do a check-in and I'll say, "Okay, what's on everybody's mind? What's the elephant in the room? What do you all need to talk about?" And we've gotten to a space where everybody's pretty comfortable just discussing whatever the topic is that's on their minds. And so somebody will raise a hand and say, "What's going on with reduction in force? What's going on with budget cuts? Are we in danger? Do we need to start looking for other jobs? Or what's the talk on 100% back in office?" Or whatever the topic is.
And I am very transparent with my team. I don't hide things from them. I will tell them whatever the scuttlebutt is at our leadership meetings or at the board meetings, I share with my team because what I don't want is I don't want them hearing information for the first time in the break rooms or at the water cooler. I want them to hear it from me, from their CHRO. So they get information from me. They're not going to get it from a teammate in another department.
Carol:
That's so foundational. I mean, that's what psychological safety is that open, honest transparency. And so yeah, that's fantastic.
Rosa:
Yeah. And what I noticed the very first time we did this is there's always one or two people that don't speak up. And so what we added was kind of an anonymous suggestion box in our department. So for those people that don't speak up in the team meetings, they can always drop a note or something in that box. And I haven't had very many people use it. Every once in a while, somebody will leave a note in there and then I'll read it and I'll address it at our next team meeting. But for the most part, people will use that time to speak up and we'll talk, we'll have a little venting session for a few minutes and then I'll ask, "Everybody good? Anything else? No. Okay, take a deep breath and let's move on." And so we do that at the beginning of every HR team meeting, and I give everybody a chance to just talk about whatever's weighing heavy with them.
Carol:
Yeah, that's great. Just taking that pulse check to see where people are and giving them space to just speak what they have to share. I think some leaders are afraid to ask people those questions because the belief is that as the leader, if they tell me, I'm going to have to solve all their problems, and that's not what it's about. That doesn't sound like the dynamic you're creating. You're just creating space for people to share openly what's going on for them and for you openly to share what's happening as much as you can with no promises or commitment, but just creating that space of safety to just be able to dialogue with each other. And I think that's so powerful that you do that.
Rosa:
Yeah. And even if there have been times that people will get into a little bit of a heated discussion, and that's okay too. It's not meant to be a time where we all have to agree on everything. At the end of it, people still can... We shake hands, we... Okay, and we move on. It's not where people are upset because one person didn't agree with somebody else's opinion. They know I have an open door. Anybody can come and see me, anybody. You don't have to go through a chain of command to get to the CHRO. They can come and see me. "Hey, I want to talk about what we discussed in the HRT meeting. "Cool, come on in, let's talk about it." So it's not anything that you're going to be looked at sideways because you said something during that time in our HR team meeting. It's a time for anybody to say whatever they want to say and it's okay. Yeah.
Carol:
So I have to ask, how long did it take for you to foster that? Because I'm sure even though you have the suggestion box and people, like you say now, barely use it because I'm sure now they're used to being able to feel comfortable and free and safe to speak up. But for people listening thinking, "Man, I would like to try that," but are a little bit afraid of opening Pandora's box, if you will, how long did it take for you to calibrate that to a place where you all can have those real raw conversations, but it not be disruptive to let's focus on now let's move on, as you said, listen to the work and let's move on. No hard feelings, let's keep it moving.
Rosa:
Oh, it took a while. don't think I walked in on day one and that happened. No, it took a while. And I don't know if I told you this, but I started at DART in March of 2020.
Carol:
Oh, wow.
Rosa:
So I started March of 2020. I was probably working here for three weeks, and then we were all sent home to work remote for 18 months.
Carol:
Wow.
Rosa:
And so the dynamics of me and my team were very difficult for quite some time because I didn't know them. We got to know each other over Microsoft Teams, and so I didn't develop a relationship with them. And then we were brought back. I was one of the first teams or one of the first directors who brought their team back in office full-time, and they didn't like me for that because they were like, "Everyone else is still working remote. Why are we in the office?" But it was a decision. When you talk about hard decisions that you make for your team versus the agency, it was the best decision for the agency at the time. They needed us and we weren't here. So it was a hard time. Probably my first three years here at DART, I've been here seven now, were difficult with my team.
So I would say it took me a good three, three and a half years before I developed the kind of relationship where they finally looked at me and said, "Okay, she's not going to ask us to do anything that she wouldn't do. If she's going to ask us to do something, she's going to do it too. We can trust her." And it took me a good while to develop that kind of relationship with my team.
Carol:
Rosa, thank you so much for sharing that because I think people think that it's a quick overnight or once I started, it's all going to be great. And so I love to hear the real deal that it takes a moment, but I think the important piece of this is that you didn't give up. You didn't try it and say, "Oh, it doesn't work," or, "My team doesn't like me," or, "My team's just not going to get there." I mean, you didn't give up on them. You actually continued to invest in building that culture and relationship with your team, and now you have something amazing. I think that's the most important piece of it, is that you commit and you keep proving to your people that your word is your word and that what you say is real and that your commitment is a real commitment.
And because as someone said in another interview that I had that trust is built in drops but lost in buckets, I think that was the phrase. I thought, "Wow, that is so true." It's the drips that you have to commit to because people are watching and you definitely prove that.
Rosa:
Yes, yes. It's very much earned, and it took a while to earn it. The other thing is that at DART, we have such tenured employees. I came into a group of people that had been together for a really long time, and I was an outsider, and I understood that, and I respected that, and I knew that I had to take a while to earn their trust, and I was okay with that. I was okay with that.
Carol:
Yeah. Now, you advise HR leaders across the country to keep pushing when nothing seems to be working, and this is a prime example of what we just talked about. And you've always been candid that DART's early efforts like marketing to CDL drivers during the hiring freeze didn't move the needle. When something breaks or goes sideways, what do you do to turn it into a learning opportunity as opposed to fear or blame or silence?
Rosa:
I learned early on at DART that, and we laugh about this now, but in my early years, our HR team was audited, I don't know, four times or something in my first couple of years. It became an inside joke with my team that we're going to treat everything like we're being audited. Again, they know that, and they learned early on that when something broke or something went wrong, my stance on it was, let's not go ballistic. Let's instead figure out where did we go wrong, how can we backtrack and fix it, and how do we ensure that it's not going to happen again? Now we add, because if we get audited and they look back at this mistake, they're going to check not just that one mistake, but they're going to check the whole batch of people. So let's audit ourselves and make sure we have SOPs, let's make sure that all our processes are good.
I think I've started to create this culture now around my team of when something breaks or something doesn't go well, they're coming to me early on and they're coming and saying, "Okay, this broke, but here's how we fixed it. Here's how we ensured it's not going to happen again, and by the way, here's an SOP we did so that if I'm not here tomorrow and it breaks, here's how the next person knows how to fix it. And if we were to get audited, here's how we went back and we ensured that everything else in this place is not broken or nothing went wrong there either."
I'm really proud of this system that is in place now. That was not the case seven years ago, and we've learned this the hard way because we've been through a couple of audits in front of the board where it's been really bad. They found one broken thing and then it's like, "Oh my gosh, there's 10 broken things."
Carol:
Yeah, it's a domino effect.
Rosa:
10 broken things behind it. So we've learned the hard way, but now we've got a system. We've got a system and they all know it. It's the perks of being here seven years now that we've learned to put a system in place. I don't worry too much when somebody comes in my office and says, "Hey, we ran across something that's broken," and they know too. No one's coming in here going, "Oh my gosh, something went sideways," because we have a system for fixing it.
Carol:
Yeah, that's great. Such a great learning opportunity. My last question is, you said the mistake most agencies make is thinking a bigger base salary or bigger benefits will solve the talent problem, and your response to them is always, "Okay, but what else?" Which I love. If you could leave leaders listening with one shift, one practice, or one mindset to be more people forward as they're thinking about really supporting their talent and retaining their talent and building those pipelines and things of that nature, what would it be?
Rosa:
That's a really good, good question. I think the way that I would answer that is thinking back to how I've grown as a leader, I think that when I was a young leader, I thought that the way I could be a good leader is just staying on people and making sure that I was telling everybody what to do. I think that what I would tell people now is that your responsibility, you have to change your mindset. The one change in your mindset is that a good leader doesn't just tell people what to do. They have to understand that their responsibility is to be a resource to that employee, right?
Carol:
Wow.
Rosa:
Because now when I think about my employees and I see that they're struggling, it's not about finger pointing and saying, "Well, what is that employee doing wrong?" Now, I finger point to myself and I think, "What am I not providing? What resources am I not providing to that employee? What are they lacking that they're not able to keep up with their workload? Do they not have the tools that they need? Do they not have... What is it that they're missing?" And I think that's what good leaders do, is they first look at what resources are the employees lacking that they're not able to keep up with whatever it is that they need to do. And that's what good leaders, that's the mindset they should be in. Leaders are supposed to be the resources that the employee needs, not just the person that's doling out work and directions on what to do.
I think that so many leaders in their early stages think that that's what a leader's supposed to do is just do this, do that, and they need to shift that mindset to more of what does the employee need from me to be able to be the best versions of themselves? So if I could leave a leader with anything, it would be that, is take a look at yourself and see how you can be a better resources to your employee, because that's what they need from us. They need us to be the best resources for them.
Carol:
I think that is so fantastic. I think about what people talk about when there's one finger pointing, there's three pointing back. So it's like the one thing you're telling them, I always think what are the three things that you should be telling yourself that maybe you need to correct or fix or provide a resource for that can help them be better? And that sounds very similar. I love that. It's not about telling them what to do, but being the resource to make sure that they can be successful.
Rosa:
Yeah. I will say, and I tell this to all the interns too that I mentor, I've been doing this job for 30 years, so I will say for anybody listening and that's just starting in their career, find a career that you absolutely have a passion for because you're going to be doing it for a long, long time. I still wake up every morning with a passion for what I do. If you don't absolutely love what you do, you're going to be miserable. So find a career that you absolutely have a passion for so that you can get up every day and continue to love it just like I do.
Carol:
Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that.
Rosa:
Yeah, absolutely.
Carol:
What you've shown us today is that a people strategy is only as strong as a leader willing to think about, to listen, as you talked about earlier, to make sure that you show up in a way that they can hear and that they can see you, that they put in the work and that they don't give up early, but they show the trust and demonstrate the stability for their people so that they can trust them. That they're open, that they're honest, that they're transparent as much as they possibly can be, and they create a space for people to grow and thrive within the organization. I thank you for those lessons that you share with us today, Rosa.
Rosa:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It was a pleasure.
Carol:
Listen, to everyone listening, if this conversation gave you something you can use, share it with the leader who needs to hear it. You can learn more about peopleforwardleadership@thriveaxisgroup.com or reach out to us directly at hello@thriveaxisgroup.com and learn more how we can support your leadership development or training with your employees to be more people forward. Until next time, keep leading people forward, and I'll see you soon.
