Matt McGuire Talks Relationships

In this episode of Let’s Talk Talent, host Mark Epp engages in a conversation with Talent Plus’s Vice President of Client Experience Matt McGuire.

Talent Plus recognizes, engages, accelerates, and leads talent, talent strategies and talent planning across organizations.

They chat about:

• How following your purpose and letting it drive your day forward ties directly to taking care of your team and creating a positive culture.
• Why organizations that lead with relationship, service and empowerment are the ones that are successful with their interactions.
• Why an individualized strength-based approach is the best way to develop talent.

Contact us today to learn more about how we predict performance and maximize human potentiality. Let’s Talk Talent!

Transcript

Mark Epp:

Joining us today is Matt McGuire, Vice President of Client Experience at Talent Plus. Matt, welcome to the Let's Talk Talent podcast. Really glad you're here. Just to begin, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Matt McGuire:

Well, Mark, thank you for that warm introduction. As you said, my name's Matt McGuire, Vice President of Client Experience here at Talent Plus and happy to be here with you this afternoon. A little bit about myself. I'm a married man of about 15 years, and grateful to have three amazing young ones. A 16 year old, a 14 year old, and a 12 year old, and my wife and I Meredith reside in Arizona where we've been for a little over 10 years. And just love that state and love the community of friends and family that we have there. 

Professionally speaking, I'm proud to be a member of the Talent Plus team. I've been here for about six months following a very, very long career in healthcare. And my career began at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) where I was selected into a leadership development program almost 25 years ago at this standpoint, which is hard to believe. And that's where my first introduction to Talent Plus actually initiated. And that was through an interview that I completed in a dorm room in college as part of my selection process into CTCA. And just very blessed to have had Talent Plus a part of my life for so long and grateful to be here now.

Mark Epp:

Excellent. You know, said Matt, you've only been here at Talent Plus for six months, but sitting across the table now with you, it feels like you're already a Talent Plus staple. It feels so great to have you here, and I know and excited to learn more about your background and really what brought you here, so excited about it. 

You know, I heard a quote from you and that quote is this, you said, “Each day I'm focused, energized and excited to make a profound impact for my clients.” Now hearing that and thinking about it, there's a significant personal aspiration in that statement. So how does following your purpose, something that's really valuable and highly important to you, how does that contribute to how you get up every single day when you hit the ground running in the morning, how does that drive of purpose really help you drive your day forward?

Matt McGuire:

Thank you, Mark and you're going to catch me in kind of a personal moment just around that quote. And as I had mentioned, worked at Cancer Treatment Centers of America for quite a long time and what was in my mind when I said that brings me back to an interaction that I had with a patient while I was working at CTCA. And it was not long after I had become the CEO of our Arizona facility when I befriended a patient of ours, and over time, as her care progressed, I'd make a point to see her. Oftentimes we'd grab lunch and it had been sometime between visits and I was alerted that she was an inpatient for us this time instead of receiving outpatient care. 

So her cancer had unfortunately had progressed and she asked to see me and I went upstairs to see her. She always had this gaze, like when she looked at you, she was staring right through you. And when I came in, she said, Matt, come here. And I walked over and she took my hand and she said to me, “It's probably my last visit.” And she said, “I just want you to make me a promise.” And I said, “Anything.” She said, “This team has taken such unbelievable care of me. Promise to me right here and now that you're going to continue to take care of them the way that they've taken care of me.” 

Mark, it was a moment where everything that I had heard about leadership and everything that I knew about culture management came to a head at that moment. Where, here's this woman very, very ill who was taking the time to make sure that our team was taken care of and asking me to take accountability for that. And it was exceptionally powerful because that's why I get up, Mark as a leader, and when the opportunity came to come to Talent Plus, I view it as my opportunity now to fulfill that promise, not directly in healthcare, but in terms of my work with organizations and in my work with leaders to ensure that they're creating a culture, that they're working with people in a way that whether it's taking care of cancer patients or if it's serving a guest at a hotel or serving a client in a retail store, that there's nothing separating that person in that moment culturally or management induced obstacles that they've got to navigate around. 

But it's between that person and that person that they're impacting. We're selecting the people to do that. We're selecting the leaders that put them in the positions to that, and it's powerful work for me. So that statement that you read is exactly why I get up every day and why I'm grateful to be an associate here at Talent Plus.

Mark Epp:

Matt, what a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that with us. Thinking about that story, how does acting on this value help make the world a better place?

Matt McGuire:

There's a number of facets to it that you can take from that one example, and I think at the top of the list, I put the power of relationships. The team being in a place, and here's perhaps another principle of being empowered to take care of a patient in that way, in that moment, having the right people there to take care of her. I think organizations that lead with relationship, that lead with service, that lead with empowerment are ultimately going to produce those types of interactions that can be life changing as they were for me.

Mark Epp:

There are great lessons here that you've just shared with us, Matt, which is the power of relationship. The power of helping others be empowered and our opportunity to care. 

Thinking along those lines, Matt, what do you think is the best way to develop talent within an organization?

Matt McGuire:

It's a great question Mark, and I think the best way to develop talent is individualized strength-based approach where we have a very, very deep understanding of what an individual does naturally and does to a level of greatness that you cannot teach. And the individual and the organization find ways to help that individual use those talents and strengths to further the purpose of an organization within the particular role that they're in. 

And within that broad landscape is a tremendous amount of opportunity to be creative, to be mindful that through people, there's no one way to solve a problem. That it's the people's energy and uniqueness that will lead you down a path to solving a particular problem, need, or solution in a way that if you're overly descriptive of, “You’ve got to do it this way, that way, whatever”, it's not going to be fulfilled to a level of greatness that you or I couldn't foresee. Right now. 

I'm also a big believer in process where there should be a core minimum of expectations around how the predictable is managed. So that those talents can really come into play to humanize and make those relationship opportunities truly exceptional. And that's where the individual uniqueness can come in, in terms of development.

Mark Epp:

So, as we think about our audience, walking away from today's interview, what three actions would you recommend our listeners take immediately that would contribute to them achieving their vision, to achieving their mission? What actions would you suggest that our listeners could take away right now?

Matt McGuire:

I think to start when I'm working with our clients, and especially early on in our journey and relationship with them, they ask the question, “where do we start?” And I believe more often than not, I have the same answer. And that answer is, “you start with your people leaders.” When they think about their task for the day, where do they place empowering, leading their people to successful days on their list? 

And if it's not one or two, fires may happen, right? Crises may occur, but if it's not one or two on a repeatable basis in someone's mind, that's a problem. You've heard of me say it in our daily Formation. Part of my mission as a Talent Plus associate is to give everyone a good boss. And to me, good bosses bring that mindset around the importance that they put on people and the importance they put on empowering those people to success. 

So having an honest dialogue with your people around where are we? Let's look back over the last week. Have we done that as an organization? Have we done that as a department? I think by simply raising the awareness of that can move organizations tremendously towards their purpose, towards their mission. So that would be step one, the power of people, the power of people leadership.

Once that's there, then you can move into a lot of what we've discussed around managing to strengths, putting people in positions where their strengths can flourish. They do that through powerful relationships. They do that when they're doing things that they are naturally good at. And when that is in place, mountains start to move, progress starts to happen in ways that you can't begin to imagine. 

And the final thing, and I put it last because to me people and strengths are very much beyond, but you can't understand where you're getting if you're not measuring it. And so how are you measuring the impact that your organization is making through people? Are you moving the quality numbers? Are you moving the patient satisfaction numbers? Are you moving the growth numbers? And I know that over time, through that type of focus on people and the prioritization to managing to strengths, that the measures that are important to you as a business are going to move from the direction that you want them to.

Mark Epp:

Matt, you shared a benefit, and I just want quote you on what you just said. You said, “When you manage to strengths, mountains start to move to places that you can't even imagine could happen.” That just gave me goosebumps. So, thanks for that. Cause that's what we want for our organizations. We want to be able to move to that place we can't even conceive of today. You also mentioned, you said simply doing this, I believe that today more than ever, simplicity is key to implementing these ideas. How simple is that approach? How does that work?

Matt McGuire:

It's simple but not easy, Mark. And that's the thing, it's simple but not easy. It is simple to say that people are important. It is simple to say that I can manage to strengths. I can recognize what people are good at, but it's not easy to have the discipline and dedication to do that each and every day. And that's where that awareness piece, is just so fundamentally important as us as humans and who we are as it is, as people that are trying to build organizations. 

You have to have that awareness. And that's why I put that measurement piece in, that explanation of, it's people, it's strengths and its measurement. Because if you don't have a yardstick, you're going to get lost. And I just ask that organizations make sure that that's part of your mind think, of your discipline.

Mark Epp:

Matt, thank you so much. World class. Being world class at anything isn't easy. But to your point, it takes that discipline, it takes that mindset. And beginning our day, every single day with that's what we're going to do. We're going to focus on people, we're going to help them use their strengths to get better and better. 

And I began this conversation by you sharing with our listeners, you've only been officially here at Talent Plus for six months, and how I said that it feels like having you across the table has been a staple at Talent Plus. So Matt, thank you so very much for your comments and really leading us along this journey today. Thank you so much. 

Matt McGuire: 

Thank you, Mark.