Larry Sternberg Talks Genuine Interactions

In the final podcast episode of Let's Talk Talent Season One, host Mark Epp has a conversation with Larry Sternberg, Talent Plus Fellow and Board Member.

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

In this episode, they discuss: 

• Sternberg's past days in the hospitality industry and how he hired the best talent for a new hotel in an unconventional way.
• Why emotional rehiring is so effective for team morale. 
• How kind gestures and positive attitudes make a huge difference in people's lives. 

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

Transcript

Mark Epp:

It's my pleasure to welcome to Let's Talk Talent Larry Sternberg, a longtime friend at one time, my manager and an individual who I admire and am inspired by every day, Larry. Welcome to Let's Talk Talent.

Larry Sternberg:

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here.

Mark Epp:

Larry, you know, our business relationship goes back almost 20 years and in that time, you've played important leadership roles at Talent Plus as well as many other things. You've been Manager of Implementation and Leadership Consultants here, President of Talent Plus, and now as a Talent Plus Fellow and Board Member. Thinking of all these roles, Larry, what role has been most satisfying for you?

Larry Sternberg:

The role where I was directly in charge of about 30 Consultants, most of whom were road warriors, each of those individuals making a big difference in the lives of our clients and their employees.

Mark Epp:

You graduated from law school and then went into hospitality. So prior to joining Talent Plus in 1999, you held several leadership roles in luxury hotel companies. So tell us about that journey and how those experiences brought you to Talent Plus.

Larry Sternberg:

Well, I'm going to tell you about the specific turning point that brought me to Talent Plus. I was Vice President of Human Resources for a small hotel company called the Portman Hotel Company, owned by John Portman, who, if our listeners don't know John Portman and you have visited San Francisco. He designed and built Embarcadero Center. If you’ve visited Los Angeles, the LA Plaza Hotel, if you visited the Detroit, what used to be the Detroit Plaza Hotel and is now the headquarters of General Motors and I can keep naming things around the country. 

So in any event, we were opening a hotel in San Francisco, I was the VP of Human Resources and he said to the team of executives, I want this to be different. I don't just want the architecture to be different. I want the experience to be different. And I needed to find people who had the best customer relations skills, as good as the best waiter or concierge you know, and who like the clean toilets every day and do that with excellence as well. And I realized that the traditional way of deciding who we were going to hire, which is people fill out applications, you do interviews, you check references, that's what it is in the hotel business for hourly employees. That wasn't going to cut it, that wasn't going to find us people who fit the description I just articulated. And so I was worried and I started asking a lot of people I knew in the industry, listen, I need a different way to decide who we're going to hire here. This is not going to do it. 

I was also doing consulting while I was the VP of HR for this company. I was revenue producing. And one of my clients said, “You need to talk to these people in Lincoln, Nebraska. They can help you.” And so I called them at the time, the company was called Selection Research Incorporated, and I said, “Here's my dilemma, can you help me?” And they say, “We can help you and let me tell you why. We don't care about their experience, we don't care about their training. We will be able to tell you, number one, people can do this job with excellence and number two, whether they will like to do it.” And I said, “If you can prove that to me, we're going to do business.” And so we hired 350 people for the opening of that hotel, which was called at the time, the Portman Hotel in San Francisco. The results, they were life changing for me because we hired people that we would never have hired using traditional methods instead of scientific selection methods.

Mark Epp:

Larry, you wrote what I think is a very important book, it's called Managing to Make a Difference. It's a practical inspiring book that I actually believe has even more relevance today than when it was published a few years back. Today's managers are undergoing unprecedented challenges with the pandemic, the Great Resignation, employees being more stressed out probably than ever that we could possibly imagine. So what do you recommend managers to do today to emotionally rehire their teams?

Larry Sternberg:

That's a great question and let's talk about what emotional rehiring is. Emotional rehiring occurs when I have communicated to a person, one person to another, how valuable you are on this team and that I am grateful to have you as a member of the team and that I'm thankful to be associated with you. That's emotional rehiring and this can happen at any time, but there's a number of ways to do it. The easiest, least costly in terms of resources is to do it verbally, to just say it to somebody. And there there's not a strict formula, but when you do this, you need to tell the person something like this, “Mark, I have always admired your positive stance and your proactive commitment to making a positive difference in the lives of the people you encounter just as you go about your day. And I want you to know that I am proud to be your friend and I am grateful to have you on the team. And Talent Plus is lucky to have you here making a difference in our lives and in the lives of our clients.” 

That's emotional rehiring. And that took me about 25 seconds, I would bet. I wasn't timing it, but that would be my bet. So you can do that verbally, you can do it through a note and we have it Talent Plus these little note cards called Five Star Cards, they’re I don't know, 4x6 approximately, so they're not big 8.5x11 sheets of paper. And you can write that down, but you have to say specifically what it is about that person, they did something, or they have this gift or this talent or this commitment or this determination, whatever it is. Then you call it out. You answer the question, “So what?” So what? Which is one of the most important questions in life is so what? So you're like this, so what? Then you answer that question, what difference does it make? And then you say, I'm grateful you're here. I'm glad you're here. Whatever the phrase is, you pick in that moment.

Mark Epp: 

I've heard you say that what you do is help managers and leaders make a lasting positive difference in the lives of their employees why is that important to you, Larry? 

Larry Sternberg:

You know my college roommate asked me that. He lives in Athens and we haven't seen each other since 1975 and he asked me the same question and I don't really know it just is some people like chocolate, some people like vanilla some people it's important to create just so happens that that gives me a great deal of satisfaction I think it makes me feel like I'm contributing value to people in the world

Mark Epp: 

There's a ripple effect I would suggest as well. Because you do connect with people genuinely and you don't let people just walk by without some kind of connection. I think that makes a difference in their lives and the lives of others along the way as well.

Larry Sternberg:

You never know what kind of a gesture is going make a difference. Can I tell you a story? So I was at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington D.C.. So happened I was staying on the top floor and I was getting in the elevator early in the morning and start my day. I got in the elevator and a gentleman got in the elevator with me, complete stranger, didn't even acknowledge my existence. We got down a couple of floors, another guest got on the elevator and the guest said, “Good morning.” This guy went, “Ugh!” And we got all the way down to the ground floor and it just so happened there was a Ritz-Carlton employee cleaning up right around the elevators and this person smiled and said, good morning to this gentleman and me and the gentleman said, “Good morning.” Gentleman's walking out the front door and so was I, but I was behind him. And the doorman opened the door, gave him a warm smile and said, “Good morning, sir!” And at this point this gentleman smiled and said, “Good morning.” 

I don't know what our listeners believe, but one of the things I believe is that attitude makes a difference. And those employees changed that guy's attitude from the time he got on that elevator until the time he walked out. Now he was in Washington D.C., and I don't know what he was there to do, might have been to get funding for a hospital in your community listeners. I don't know what he was there to do, but this is what I do know. We made it more likely that he was going to accomplish whatever he was there to do in Washington D.C. because you never know what kind of a gesture is going to make a difference in someone's life.

Mark Epp:

Larry, what three things would you want our listeners to do right now to accomplish their mission critical goal?

Larry Sternberg:

First of all, this is before the one thing. I'm going to assume that they know what their mission critical goal is. And so given that they know what the goal is, what are the one or two things that they need to focus on, which will move them the farthest and the fastest toward accomplishing that goal? One or two things. 

Number two, who do I need to enlist? Who has the right talent in the right places to help me accomplish that goal? And number three is what do those people need from me in order to be at their best, every single day?

Mark Epp:

CEO’s that I'm talking to today are concerned about our economy, they’re concerned about a potential recession. Everything you've talked about today is valid, it has proof in terms of your experience and what we've been able to show through our analysis and research. Do these things that you've talked about today and you're encouraging our listeners to do, contribute to their return on investment, contribute to helping them achieve their financial goals as well, Larry?

 Larry Sternberg:

Absolutely. I mean, you know it's people who achieve the financial outcomes of any organization. And so where did I learn these things? Where did Talent Plus learn these things? We learned these things from highly successful CEO’s and Four-Star Generals and other people who are very, very significant leaders in the world. It's not that we sat in a room and made these things up. We learned these from these highly successful leaders. 

So whether it's a recession or whether it's not a recession, you still want the best people. You still want to be clear about what your mission critical goals are in a recession. Those mission critical goals might be a little different than if they're not in a recession. If a company, for instance, is on the brink of bankruptcy, your mission critical goal may be to avoid bankruptcy, or it may be to go into that bankruptcy. But my point is that might be a different goal than if you are Flush and you're Apple and you've got all this hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cash and you need to know how to invest it, the goals might be different, but the underlying principles that you still want the right people in the right roles, you still want to help those people succeed, find out what they need. And you still want to help those people grow, because people will stay in an environment where they're growing and they know they're cared about.

Mark Epp:

Larry Sternberg, thank you so much for our time together on Let's Talk Talent. deeply appreciate all your comments and being with us today. Thank you so very much.

Larry Sternberg:

It's my pleasure and thanks for the opportunity. I enjoy. Always enjoy the conversation with you, Mark.