Episode 5. Career Development Systems with Stephanie Turner and Larissa Pyer

Episode Description

What does it actually take to build systems that support people’s development – not just in theory, but in practice?

In this episode, Hannah sits down with Stephanie Turner and Larissa Pyer, colleagues at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and co-founders of Better Together, to explore what human-centered career development actually looks like as a system. They get into the defaults that no longer serve people – linear pathways, under-equipped managers, programs that generate great intentions and zero follow-through – and what to build instead. That includes a case for mentorship as a constellation rather than relying on one-to-one relationships, the difference between shared language and shared understanding, and why scaffolding (not prescription) is the design principle organizations keep getting wrong.

If you are interested in building systems that are truly effective at helping people grow, there’s a lot here to take back to your team. 

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Notes, References & Resources

Better Together — The business Stephanie and Larissa recently co-founded, grounded in the belief that the most effective career development happens at the intersection of structure, reflection, honest conversation, and genuine connection. → Better Together on LinkedIn

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth — Where both guests work; one of the world’s leading MBA programs, founded in 1900 as the first graduate school of management in the United States.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) — The design philosophy underlying Stephanie and Larissa’s approach to career systems. Emphasizes empathy, problem framing, and iterative prototyping over prescriptive solutions. Popularized by IDEO and Stanford’s d.school. → https://dschool.stanford.edu/tools/human-centered-design-integrative-design-exploration

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) 2024 Annual Conference session on generativity (and mentoring) → Musselman, R., Deller, J., & Hastings, L. (2025, April). Mind the gap: Generativity bridging older worker reciprocity for newer employees [Symposium]. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, United States.

CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) — Gallup’s strengths-based assessment identifying 34 talent themes under four dimensions. Mentioned as an example of an assessment tool organizations can use to create shared self-awareness across teams.

DISC Assessment — A widely used behavioral assessment tool based on four styles: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). Some versions use bird archetypes (Eagle, Parrot, Dove, Owl) to make the styles more memorable. Mentioned as an example of an organizational baseline tool for shared understanding.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) — One of the most widely recognized personality inventory tools, categorizing people into 16 types based on four dimensions. Mentioned in discussion as a tool used in some organizations’ for individual or culture development purposes. Editor’s Note: Though a well-known tool, the MBTI can serve a purpose for self-reflection and self-awareness; however, it is widely criticized in the scientific community for lack of reliability and validity evidence – as such, the MBTI cannot be recommended for organizational decision making purposes (diagnostic or predictive).

Stephanie Turner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-szkutak-turner/

Larissa Pyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larissa-pyer/

Better Together on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bettertogethercoaching/

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Music: “Feel Good (Instrumental Version)” by PØW via Epidemic Sound

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Episode Transcript

Hannah (00:08)
Hey, y’all. Welcome to Office Hours at the Alignment Lab, where we explore what it really takes to align values, strategy, and behavior at work. I’m Hannah Yung-Boxdell, an organizational psychology practitioner, strategist, and systems architect. In Office Hours, we take an honest look at the human side of work and offer practical takeaways for evaluating what matters, what doesn’t, and how to focus our attentions accordingly. Whether you’re mid-career or in the executive suite,

The things you’ll hear about in Office Hours can build careers and organizations that are effective, resilient, and aligned with what matters most to you.

Hannah (00:48)
Today we are talking about career development from a systems lens with our guests, Stephanie Turner and Larissa Pyer. So a little bit about our guests. Stephanie is an Associate Director of Career Services at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and co-founder of Better Together.

she has deep experience in MBA career strategy, employer engagement, and advising students through career decisions. Stephanie brings a systems level view of recruiting alongside a practical human centered approach to helping individuals and institutions navigate change. And Larissa is the director of Tuck Compass at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and the other co-founder of Better Together.

Larissa has over a decade of experience leading career services operations and designing reflective values driven programs in higher education. Her work bridges strategy and facilitation, where she helps individuals and institutions create space for intentional self and career exploration. And together, Larissa and Stephanie bring complementary strengths in career strategy, facilitation and relationship building.

which has been shaped by years of close collaboration in MBA career services. So Better Together reflects their shared belief that the most effective career development happens at the intersection of structure and reflection, where thoughtful strategy, honest conversation, and genuine connection create lasting impact. Stephanie and Larissa, welcome to Office Hours.

Stephanie (02:26)
Thank so much for having us. We’re so excited.

Larissa (02:27)
Yeah, thank you, Hannah.

We’re excited to be here.

Hannah (02:29)
Yeah, and I’m feeling really excited having read your introduction because so much of it, I’m like, yes, yes. So let’s get into it. Career development is a pretty wide ranging subject. so today we’re breaking it down to talk about this from a systems level perspective. But first I’ve been asking all of my guests of this mini series,

the following question, which is when it comes to career development, there’s often a lot of debate around where the responsibility sits. And that could be with the employee, the manager, or the organization. So briefly, since I know we have a lot to get into, what are your views on this?

Stephanie (03:06)
Ha ha.

I’ll let you take it, Larissa.

Larissa (03:12)
Yeah, sure. I think we’re pretty synced up in how we feel and the answer is kind of all of the above. I think all of those parties share a responsibility in career development. But I think ultimately it also going back to kind of the human focus, the human centered design focus that we take, it goes back to the individual employees desires, motivations and intentions around their own career development.

If the individual is intending to make a career pivot and wants to go into something vastly different than they’re already doing, then obviously they shouldn’t expect their current employer to be providing that opportunity for career development. But I think generally, yeah, I think it’s a, I guess, three-way

Hannah (03:52)
Yeah, yeah, we’re at a T intersection. So you both have years of experience in career services, as well as in higher education settings, both of which on their own actually serve as a bridge between individuals and institutions. So from your time working in those spaces, what is something that you think that organizations tend to overlook?

Stephanie (04:16)
Yeah, so we’ve both worked in higher ed for a long time and so one thing that we noticed not only in higher ed but in a lot of organizations is around how organizations generally don’t make really clear career pathways internally for people that come in to the organization. So some of them do and they do a great job but generally speaking like in higher ed for example if you come in at lower level positions you don’t always know the best path forward if you want to

have development and improvement and all of those fun things. So visibility, I think, is a big thing. Understanding where employees want to develop so that you can better understand what path they should be on if there is one there for them or if there can be one created. I think also that one of the big ones to the previous question is

that while the employee, manager, and organization are all kind of in it together to figure out whose responsibility it is, that oftentimes managers aren’t very well equipped to help with career coaching to get to that development side of things either. And so that might be around training, that might be around knowledge, or just general practice within a company or organization. There’s a lot there.

Hannah (05:36)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I completely agree with you just having worked in organizations, right? That that’s definitely a ⁓ common, I don’t want to say pitfall, but just struggle area that a lot of managers feel that they have. And, you know, you kind of mentioned pathways. just from my experience, right, some organizations do this really well, and some don’t. But I feel like that’s definitely a tension area where

even if something is supposed to be maybe the individual is driving the direction that they want to go. If they don’t have a clear understanding of what pathways are available that can be a real struggle point a tension point between, the individual and their managers and even like higher level, leaders just.

having a hard time getting on the same page, think, with regard to that.

Stephanie (06:24)
Correct. And I think what happens is it leads to people feeling like they have to leave an organization in order to have development. And that costs both sides.

Larissa (06:35)
Yeah, I mean, I’ll just piggyback a little bit. It’s sort of understandable because in many organizations, especially large organizations, departments tend to be very siloed. And so there’s often not great ⁓ cross organization communication or understanding of opportunities. But I think that’s one of the I mean, we know that today, career progression is not linear, right? Far from it. But

I think organizations still sometimes kind of default to that. And that is a little bit of a misstep on their part because that’s not what it looks like in reality for people, at least not anymore. So helping them to understand what are the various pathways, not only internally to their department, but also across the organization. Where else could they grow without having to, as Stephanie said, take an outside role and leave the company?

Hannah (07:26)
Right, right. Just creating like more visibility of internal opportunities and realities.

So, you two actually just recently started a business together that is largely focused on helping individuals and organizations navigate these very conversations and situations. Can you share a little bit about your approach to this work?

Larissa (07:52)
Yeah, absolutely. So we’re still in the very early stages of our launching our business. Our approach is grounded in, you know, human centered design. So empathizing, fully understanding, framing the problem or where people are stuck before then kind of helping to iterate prototype for a solution or a path forward. But really with a goal of kind of small incremental steps.

Stephanie (07:56)
Ha

Larissa (08:19)
Again, in that human centered design pathway of what is something small that we can try out, see if it worked, get some data, some feedback, and then build on that momentum, right? Or learn from that, adjust as we go forward.

Stephanie (08:34)
Yeah, and really the heart of what we’re trying to do is pretty simple. It’s around the fact that most people aren’t struggling from lack of ambition or ability It’s just that they might not have the space or the language, which I think we’ll talk about, or support to make sense of the careers that they’re either building or that they would like to build and the systems that they need to have in place in order to do that.

Hannah (08:58)
Yeah, and I’m really curious to hear about this like, okay, where’s some small incremental steps we can make to our systems. I’m really interested to get into that. And love hearing human centered design coming up here. So often though people say, in organizations, oh, we need better systems.

but they don’t actually define what they mean by that. And honestly, there’s a lot of different way you can interpret what someone might be referring to when they say something like that. So what does creating systems that support development actually mean and look like in practice?

Larissa (09:43)
So my initial reaction to that question is structure without being overly prescriptive about that, right? I would call that scaffolding. So creating support mechanisms, but then allowing for flexibility within that. Also communication or even education, right, across the organization of that scaffolding.

the resources and the supports that are available. And then another big piece would be continuity and some level of follow-up or accountability. I think that’s oftentimes where things fail or fall apart. Intentions are really good going into it, but then nobody’s closing the loop, nobody’s checking in to make sure that things are still progressing. And all of that is left on the employee.

And then the employee is like, well, guess if they don’t care about it, why should I care about it? Right. Or if they don’t care about it, maybe they just don’t care about me.

Hannah (10:44)
Yes, yeah.

completely just love everything you’re just saying. And I mean, I completely agree. Like the scaffolding, just needing some structure without it being so prescriptive, right? I think that is like such a trap that so many people fall into. And often why some organizations, I’ve seen shying away like, well, we don’t want to create of a structure that it’ll…

Stephanie (10:50)
[Laughs]

Hannah (11:12)
it’ll make it so people can’t be adaptable or find their own path or create it. But having something, you know, kind of to bring a little bit of, you know, structure for lack of a better word to the process. then the language, you know, creating some shared understanding around what that is and communicating that out. I think it’s really easy to kind of want to skip that step.

And then accountability if like, yeah, that’s as often than not just kind of missing. okay, so but yeah.

Larissa (11:45)
I feel like that’s something that we’ve all experienced, right? Probably in

some way in our job is like some good intentions, like, yes, let’s do this. I want you to do this, whatever. And then nothing really, you go to a workshop or a seminar, do some training and then your manager’s like, okay, you did that great. You’re right. Exactly. And then there’s nothing really comes of it. Right. And that is

Stephanie (12:02)
Nothing.

Hannah (12:05)
Right. You’ve got a spiral bound like packet, you know, on a shelf collecting dust and — yeah, me too.

Larissa (12:13)
Exactly, Yeah.

Stephanie (12:15)
We have lots of those.

Hannah (12:19)
Okay, so speaking then of kind of some of these systems, I’m loving what you’re putting out there. What are some examples of maybe some systems or some practices even that you’ve seen have a really positive impact on people’s actual career development process?

Stephanie (12:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, and so both Laris[sa] and I have been working in Career Services and in higher ed for a really long time. And we work with a lot of students and career path trajectories are all over the place. And so I think what resonates with both of us is prototyping. I’m going to bring that back. And so in career development, prototyping is this idea of experimenting in like small, low risk ways rather than waiting for perfect clarity.

you instead start to ask people to decide, not decide their next big move, but like what little steps that they could take to test out possibilities. That could be through conversations with people you know, or people that you don’t know. It could be short projects. could be collaborations, new ways of working, new ways of communicating, any of those things, and prototyping itself.

shifts the pressure from in career development specifically from the pressure and prediction to learning and action. And so you’re essentially seeing what works, what doesn’t work, what you like, what you don’t like in like small doses. We’ve been reading a lot lately and one of the best quotes lately has been set the bar low and then jump over it.

And so that’s essentially what prototyping is. It’s setting your bar really low, trying something out. If you hate it, move on. If you love it, keep pushing. Another example of a practice is around mentorship. And Larissa is going to talk a little bit about some really cool mentorship that she has been working with. But generally speaking, in the Career Services space, we see a lot of mentorship. So we’re

constantly evolving what this looks like and it can be whatever you want it to be. So we have peer-to-peer mentorship. It’s like Larissa and I mentor each other all the time, but like the students also mentor each other. It can be professional employer mentorship if it’s bigger and broader in organizations, things like that. It can be advisor led models like we do within career services. We have career coaches that talk through

lots of possibilities and things that you could possibly do with your life. What do you want to be when you grow up? Those types of questions, which we’re all still asking ourselves, I think. And it’s really this idea of not just having one person. like mentorship seems like it’s just one person. But I think as a system, it’s a network of support. And it can be as many people as you want it to be. And it should be probably a few.

Hannah (14:56)
For sure.

Stephanie (15:15)
and kind of branching from there. But I’m going to let Larissa talk a little bit about some cool alumni peer mentorship that she works with.

Larissa (15:26)
Yeah, so what this can look like in practice and with some scaffolding around it to bring back another word that we recently used is a program that I implemented in my job at Tuck through Tuck Compass, which is, we call it the Personal Board of Advisors Program.

But basically it is, it’s essentially a personal board of directors, right? The concept is not new. But what we do is we put the framework around it. And basically the idea is that we, Tuck Compass, help students through a variety of workshops, resources. We facilitate some of the connections as part of their personal board.

but we leave a lot of it up to them to decide because it is supposed to be personal. So we help them understand why are you here? What are your values that are driving your decisions? What are your goals? And then backing into, do you have people around your proverbial board table that are helping you move forward in each of those goal areas? We pair them up with an alum.

and a personal leadership coach as part of the program. So those are kind of two people that are on their board that we assign, but then it’s up to them to sort of fill out the rest of their board with the goal of making sure that they’re getting a variety of input, that they have diversity and are including diverse perspectives, and that all of these relationships can help them move forward in some way.

Right, so you could think of it as a constellation of mentors, but really giving them, I mean, at the heart of it, it’s teaching them how to build long-term relationships, honestly. And giving them some support, helping them find people in a new organization that they’re just joining, right? So we’re setting them up with a couple key people to help them at this transitional time in their life, right? Which would be similar for an employer that’s implementing this type of program too.

but then also shepherding them along the way. We have periodic workshops that we check in. We send them check-in emails. We’re like, this is where you should be at. Here are some resources that might be timely based on where you’re at in the calendar year or your employee cycle or whatever, right? So you can imagine it would be very easy to translate something similar to a different organizational structure, but really helping people understand how to cultivate and build long-term relationships. I think that’s a…

really important skill set that’s becoming harder. Technology has made it more difficult. We’ve seen that in our students. And the advent of AI and the explosion of AI is not going to make that any easier, but all the more reason to have that kind human to human connection.

So yes, I’ve talked a long time about this. What else can I say?

Stephanie (18:05)
Yeah.

Hannah (18:05)
Yeah, this is I’m so glad.

Stephanie (18:07)
Yeah.

Hannah (18:08)
I’m so glad that you’re bringing up mentorship because this is this was kind of like the first thing I was thinking about like when I was thinking of the spirit of the question OK. Where do we even start first? I subscribe to the whole idea of like having a personal board of mentors and like that’s something that I’ve been trying in my on my own life, like to to build out

you know, part of me was like, can I attend your class? [laughs]

Stephanie (18:30)
Yes!

I’m saying yes for her.

Larissa (18:31)
I have to tell you,

many of the alums who sign up to participate and be matched with a student also tell me that they’re using the materials for themselves.

Hannah (18:43)
Amazing. Okay, okay, okay. So putting that aside, A, I just, love that idea. And I think it’s, you know, it’s, the idea has been around for a while. So some people are familiar with it, but a lot of times when people, you know, talk about mentors The assumption is still kind of there that it’s like, it’s two people. And a lot of times there’s assumptions about like age and level, you know, that you’re at, which is like,

not necessarily – we can get into – I have other thoughts about that but um

Larissa (19:11)
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right,

though. I think that is the kind of stereotype, right? Societal stereotype is like, it’s someone quote, older and wiser, right? And it’s a singular one-to-one relationship.

Hannah (19:15)
kind of prevailing.

Right, right.

Right. And, but I love the way you’re talking about, you know, I’ve been in different organizations that have their own kind of approach to mentor programs But it really is about kind of creating relationships between like maybe two people at one time. And there’s some support workshops I’ve seen, you know, in some mentor programs and

Usually that support though looks like conversation stuff. It’s not support about how you as an individual might approach building out your own board, which I think is really when we’re talking about creating the systems of support, know, naturally mentorship kind of comes up as something that organizations can do, individuals can do on their own, but…

building the support for that process in and of itself rather than like a here’s one time that you’ll go through this program and then we support that one program basically. So I’m loving hearing about the support and workshops materials that you’re providing people.

Larissa (20:27)
very

much a kind of teach them to fish sort of system, right? And the idea is that these are skills that they will then continue to grow with well beyond their time here, right, at Tuck. But there again, it’s also a structure that could be easily like tweaked and adapted to other organizations. And I think it is something that’s really needed. I mean,

Hannah (20:29)
Yeah.

Stephanie (20:30)
Hahaha.

Larissa (20:51)
you were right in saying that the concept of a personal board of directors has been around for a long time, but I think many people just don’t even have an idea of how to approach that. And so this is really helping them be strategic, helping them structure that for themselves, giving them that scaffolding, the framework around it, providing the touch points and the accountability along the way to kind of get the ball rolling. And then what we see, like what I see in Tuck Compass is that most of the time we have a really high number of

first year students, so the MBA is a two year program, so we have a really high number of first year students that participate, and a meaningfully smaller number of second years, and to me that just means that they kind of got what they needed out of the first year and they’re just gonna keep running with it.

Stephanie (21:37)
to kind of piggyback on all this too is even if it’s not a structured program offered by an organization, think even individually back to this like who’s responsible question, like as an employee, like it’s super strategic of you, like maybe you’re assigned a person that is your sponsor or your mentor in your company. Okay, that’s one person they’re going to help you there. But then thinking about

these people as different like mentor role slots to fill. I’m bring out my nerd and you know, video game this a little bit. But like you have the advocacy person, like the person that’s gonna sponsor you in everything that you wanna do in some way, or form. You’re gonna have the coach that’s really there to help with your development to push you. The person that works with you as like a connector.

So they’re going to help you continue networking past the point of your personal board or your mentorship circle. And then there’s also normally this role of the person that will challenge you. like, it’s great to be comfortable. We all love that. It feels so nice and warm. ⁓ But you should always have somebody in your corner that says, OK, yeah, but.

Where are you going to go with this? How are you going to take it further and challenge not only what you are physically doing or mentally doing, but also some of your values, maybe push your thinking forward, challenge you and debate with you so that you know you can do things more than anything.

Hannah (23:16)
Yeah, I think the idea at the of heart of the board of mentors idea.

or constellation of mentors. I love that too, actually. And I think it’s just easier to say. Like I think of it as a board, but it’s easy. It’s a hard thing to say. Like “board of advisors” roles off the tongue but not “board of mentors.” Anyway, the idea at the heart of it to me is, look, you don’t need one person to be the one person to you in like for all aspects, for all your needs. So it’s okay, know, like farm that out, right?

and kind of cast a wide net. Speaking of, going a little off book here just because of what we’re talking about. one of the things that I learned a few years ago I was at a conference, and I attended a session that was specifically about generativity, which was the passing on of the legacy like within an organization and the role that like using mentoring.

and mentorship as a way to catalyze that process of creating generativity within organizations, right? So passing on the legacy and the ownership of the success of the organization to the next generation. And the role that mentorship played and the fact that they had, it was a symposium, so was a bunch of researchers who had kind of looked at this question in different ways. And one of the things that I took away from that was that, well,

The earlier you get people involved in mentorship, the more that grows over time. And actually the earlier you get people involved as being mentors, right? Because people, when you, when you’re learning something you develop more and more mastery and you’re kind of at a higher level, you forget what it was to be at an earlier point, right? And so you actually need to have levels.

like if you think about like mentoring as like a longer kind of process, you can cross section it, right? you need people at those different levels interacting with other people at each of those levels, right? And so I’m curious, you you’ve mentioned this program the one at Tuck being, geared towards, ⁓ the students in a two year program. So maybe there’s not so much of that, but it’s something that

You know, I’ve encouraged, organizations that I’ve been in to consider that in their process and in the way that they approach mentorship. I don’t know if you were nodding out earlier when I was talking about generativity. So curious to hear any thoughts on that.

Stephanie (25:36)
Yeah.

there are some companies that do stuff like that really well, We as Employee Relations in my current role, we talk to a lot of companies that do like leadership development programming. Like it’s a whole program and a student will go into that full time and then inevitably pick one of those places to work in the long run. So they go through rotations within the company.

learn everything that they can about being a leader within that company. They normally do a rotation in operations and one in finance and so on and so forth depending on the company structure. But with that they do get mentors because they need to be up to speed in those roles pretty quickly and their turnaround time is six months to a year in those roles before they have to inevitably like they do three or four of them and then pick something. And so I think there are some organizations that have that built in to certain types of roles.

but maybe not even throughout the whole company. And I find it really interesting because to this point of like, you need somebody at all levels I’m just always intrigued by where they use their resources for development and where they don’t. And so some of them are good at it. Some of them are not to the point of this whole conversation. But I think there’s, if you’re doing it in one…

of the organization. It shouldn’t be too hard to branch it further. That’s kind of where I’m going here. But I’ll let Larissa pop in.

Larissa (27:01)
Yeah, no, I was just going to say even within our like kind of smaller scale program, we absolutely encourage the students participating to take a broad lens of who they’re incorporating, right? So we encourage them to include a peer, right? Whether that’s a classmate or somebody in their second year, but somebody that’s close into them.

and we also then layer in additional opportunities to be matched with additional alums. So we pair them with an alum at the start, but then after about six months into the program, halfway through, we offer them an opportunity to be matched with someone else. And they can then specify what they’re looking for in that next match, different from what they had with their first person, right? So maybe the first person that they got matched with is somebody that’s five years out of business school.

I’ve had many people come back and say, I want somebody that’s a lot further out in their career, right? I want somebody that can provide me a lot more long range perspective or vice versa. Maybe they got somebody, maybe they got matched with like someone that is had a really long career and is now retired and they want somebody that’s a little closer in, or maybe they’ve in that six months decided that they’re gonna take a different career trajectory. And so they wanna talk to somebody or start a relationship with someone that’s in a very different career path.

than they initially thought they were gonna go in. And or they have a plan, they have a longer range plan of like, okay, this isn’t gonna be what I do right after I graduate, but I know that in 10 years, I wanna be in this, I wanna pivot to this industry or I wanna be in this role. And they want somebody that’s done that, right? Or somebody that’s there.

Hannah (28:39)
Yes, I, okay, that’s a great point because it’s like actually people at different points want a longer or shorter view. You know, maybe they actually don’t necessarily need as much tactical help in doing what they’re doing, but they’re actually hoping for the benefit of more wisdom and perspective, that they might be able to get from someone who’s, been, is, is further along.

That’s great. I wanted to respond to the part about rotational, But first, what you were talking about kind of makes me wonder, like how much work you facilitating this? I’m just curious about like how much time does it take to facilitate something like this? know, that, yeah.

Larissa (29:18)
this type of program? ⁓

Well, I was running it myself. It’s fairly resource intensive. It requires somebody at certain periods of the cycle, right? Because it is, at least for us, and I would assume even in an organization, it’s gonna be somewhat cyclical. As new people are onboarded, you start a new cohort together, right? So at certain times, it is,

basically 90 % of what I’m doing. It’s somewhat resource intensive. Yeah, And it takes it takes a good amount of follow up, especially to make sure that people are connecting with each other initially, and that they’re kind of getting off on the right foot. And the the matching process, which I thoroughly enjoy, and probably take a little bit too much to heart. But ⁓ that that part is very time consuming. But ⁓

Hannah (30:06)
That was the part that I was thinking.

Larissa (30:08)
Yes, yeah,

Stephanie (30:08)
Yeah,

Larissa (30:09)
for sure. But once you… I will say once you get… So when I started in this role, Tuck Compass was a brand new initiative and this program had only ever existed in a pilot form before on a very small scale. So when we launched, I was creating it from scratch and turning it into a full-fledged program that we were onboarding 150 plus students into in the first year. It has grown since then.

Stephanie (30:10)
we’re also very type A. perfect.

Larissa (30:33)
That was a lot of work and I spent a lot of time getting that started. We have tweaked things over the years and made small changes, right? Again, this whole like kind of prototype, iterate, learn as you go mentality, but it’s much easier. Like once you’ve got the initial framework kind of set, the lift becomes less.

So I will say, I think it’s absolutely worth the initial investment that organizations might have to make to put something like this in place.

Stephanie (31:06)
And I think that for companies and organizations that want to implement something similarly to Larissa’s point, like it could be in a cohort format, like she’s running it, or it could be more ad hoc, which would move the burden slightly and be like one off, two off, where you just have a running list of people that have volunteered to be mentors. Like it has to be a volunteer situation. everybody has to want to do it. I do think that

for companies like we should be asking employees if they want to be part of the program and show them what it could offer as well because

I am so introverted I would still say yes to this. And so I think that it could be drafted out and the foundations could be laid in a way where even bigger companies that want to try it out could do it pretty easily as long as they have a good structure kind of set before.

Hannah (32:01)
Yeah. Yeah. And, know, it’s, occurs to me that you’re an organization, but you’re also this institution that, is, you know, some of your mentors are alum, right? So they’re outside your institution technically. And so there’s an opportunity also for, you know, when I think about organizations, like, well, there’s a few options. So it’s like, you can run a cohort based program, you could, you could start with an ad hoc.

rolling program to kind of maybe reduce the lift a little bit, or you might be able to tap into, you know, a collective in terms of like professional society, organizations, or even work with other, organizations in your niche and in your area and try and approach it that way in terms of kind of accessing that pool,

There are options.

Stephanie (32:48)
There are a lot of options and I think that as for anybody that’s listening that is looking for more career development personally, bringing up like other organizations is also super important. like Hannah and I are part of SIOP [Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology] and so they have mentor programs throughout a bunch of the different volunteer groups and I think we’re trying to streamline some of that. We’ll see how that goes this year. But other professional organizations do similar things and so finding somebody to be your person within

The function that you work in too is just another resource for you to have and add

Hannah (33:23)
Yeah, yeah. We could probably just keep talking about mentorship, but…

Larissa (33:27)
We could keep talking about this, but yeah.

Stephanie (33:28)
Hahaha!

Larissa (33:29)
I’m already thinking, I’m like, you know, with all these great AI tools, I bet I could take this and make it into like a different format so that it could be a standalone thing where you do it at your own pace, right? Like for employee use, that kind of thing. ⁓ Yeah. I digress. We could tangent. We could tangent, but we shall not.

Hannah (33:42)
Right, right. Right.

there’s other questions that I have to ask for you. So we’ll put a pin in it for now.

You had mentioned a couple of times language. how important is shared language when it comes to developing development or developing systems for development? And like, what happens if that…

shared lexicon doesn’t exist.

Stephanie (34:14)
Yeah, we have talked about this and I think the importance here is around clarity and communication and that’s really the most important part. You’re asking the question of what does this mean to you? And you can ask that at all stages and it’s important for everybody to be on the same page.

And so as an employee, what are you going to gain out of it? What do you want out of it as a company? What do you want out of it as a manager? Are you equipped to provide these things? And so I think that for development, which even in and of itself has transitioned from job search to career development, even in the past, you know, 10 years or so.

⁓ It’s just super important to understand what that means as an individual and your own intent behind it and how you put that out into the world and then what you take in as well.

Larissa (35:22)
Yeah, and actually I’m going to build on that a little bit. As you were just talking, Steph, I was thinking about it and I was like, it feels more to me that shared language is less important than shared understanding. I did a little workshop community conversation type lunch session last week that talked about leading and how to adapt your communication style as a leader. ⁓

to meet people where they’re at and for understanding and impact, right? And so you’re dealing with many different populations of people potentially. You don’t know someone’s background necessarily. You’ve got cultural, racial, ethnic layers. You’ve got neurodivergency thrown in there, probably too, right? Like any number of things that might color how someone’s.

understands your communication. And so I do think it’s less about language, shared language in the sense of let’s all use the same words, but more about shared understanding are the words that I’m using and how you understand them the same. Right.

Stephanie (36:24)
Do they mean the same thing to you as they do to me?

Hannah (36:27)
Okay, so yes,

there’s like, there can be an underlying assumption from the speaker’s point that people know what they’re talking about. And so, and, and the onus often for, for people, whether it’s direct reports or employees, whoever to like, just understand, like the person with less power means to just understand what the person with more authority or power.

Larissa (36:37)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Hannah (36:51)
is saying and just kind of like figure out what they mean and communicate in that way. it sounds like you’re you were at a lunch and you’re talking about well what do you mean like are you communicating with intention to be understood? And so when it comes to that or even for like say listeners who aren’t sure if they’re if they’re communicating in that way.

⁓ what practices or maybe even a starting point would you recommend?

Larissa (37:17)
Yeah, so like one of, from a systems perspective, one of the things that comes to mind that feels easy, and I think a lot of organizations probably already do it or have something like it in practice is like using some sort of shared assessment tool, right, as a baseline for shared understanding across the organization. So, you know, along with your…

employee onboarding, everybody takes whatever assessment it is. Maybe it’s MBTI, maybe it’s CliftonStrengths, right? Whatever assessment tool that the organization has decided meets their needs. Maybe it’s an internal tool that they came up with. And then using that for self-awareness and understanding, but also awareness as a baseline across the institution or the organization. You could even put things in your email signature. I’ve seen people put their

like little ENTJ acronyms or whatever from their assessments in their email signatures for inter-organizational emails. So I think that’s one kind of low-hanging fruit way to do it from a systems perspective.

Stephanie (38:18)
Yeah, it gives you it gives the company and everybody within it kind of this universal starting point. Like, here’s where we’re at. We can do what we’re going to do with this when it comes time. There’s great examples of companies that are already doing this. There is a consulting firm that comes to campus and once they bring in their full time cohort, they have them do Myers-Briggs. And that becomes part of their training and mentorship.

Hannah (38:18)
Yeah.

Stephanie (38:45)
as they start their journey in that firm, which I think is so much fun.

Hannah (38:52)
Yes, I’m having…

Stephanie (38:56)
You’re good.

Hannah (38:57)
⁓

I, I’m just having like multiple thoughts and I, the first being you’re talking about practices and collective norms around making more visible the shared kind of baseline and whatever that starting point is. I’ve definitely heard about people using, DISC and like their email signatures or I haven’t actually done DISC You know, I’ll just admit to that. Like I’ve never done the DISC assessment, but like, I guess there’s something about birds or or something and people are describing it. Okay, you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Stephanie (39:25)
it let me be clear

Larissa (39:26)
No, I don’t either.

Stephanie (39:27)
I know what you’re talking about I have done DISC and I sent this is gonna tangent us slightly I sent my description like this is who you are to Larissa and she was like this is so you I was like I feel so seen that it’s terrifying

Larissa (39:41)
It was shockingly accurate.

Hannah (39:44)
Okay, well that’s like maybe a plus one to take this. You mentioned Clifton Strengths Finder and I enjoy that assessment. And I’ll just say hearing Myers-Briggs and MBTI, as like my I-O side, just like I have a reaction. And I know, but I also have to like give the caveat that’s like, okay, like from the Myers-Briggs.

Stephanie (39:46)
plug.

I know.

Me too, I also do.

Hannah (40:11)
Personality assessment, you know it’s been around a long time. A lot of people know it I think I did it in like elementary school like that’s how you know entrenched it is and I’ll just mention this because I know I’m have to mention it either now or in like after we end up recording. So I’ll just say,

The main complaint is that it doesn’t stand up to the same kind of reliability or validity points. But as a tool for self-awareness, which is what you’re talking about, to get people to kind of see themselves and to start interacting with a process of self-reflection and self-discovery and self-awareness, that’s okay.

Stephanie (40:31)
correct.

as baseline.

Hannah (40:49)
You know, if it helps people with doing that, then like, okay. And so we can, just, I feel like for my I-O people out there who are just gonna like, their hackles would be like raised immediately. I had to say it.

Stephanie (41:00)
⁓ I know.

Larissa (41:00)
I’m

aware. I’m aware.

Stephanie (41:02)
She has to deal with me doing stuff like this all the time, so she’s used to it.

Hannah (41:09)
But overall, like that’s at the heart of what you’re talking about. It’s not just, you know, let me define what I’m saying in the moment. It’s this general creation, I guess we’re getting kind of into culture and development and norms around these other practices. And like there’s ways that we can passively engage in practices that can help create a shared understanding.

passively and actively, you know, kind all the time.

Okay, amazing.

We have – we mentioned earlier, know, AI has come up a couple of times, the current moment that we’re in, like we’ve collectively, we’ve just been navigating a period of extreme transition in the last few years, including the fact that like the speed of change itself is increasing.

But many old maxims persist, right? We even touched on one earlier about like how we conceive of mentorship and what that is. But what shifts, if any, you think people might need to make in terms of their thinking or their mindsets around this topic and systems of support?

Stephanie (42:20)
So, AI aside for this moment, I think that for systems around any type of career development, whether it’s a personal system or a company system, I think that people should really understand that the whole premise is you’re going to get what you put in and you don’t have to put in a lot.

Hannah (42:23)
Yeah.

Stephanie (42:47)
to get something out of it generally. However, the more you do exponentially, the more you get out of it. So like the more mentors that you have, the more conversations that you have are only going to grow and better you as an employee, as an individual on your career journey, whatever path you’re on or want to be on. It won’t be handed to you.

I think that that is kind of the biggest like mindset thing that we want to portray here. As far as around systems of AI, I continue to be stuck in between this. It’s going to be really great and it’s absolutely horrible. Please get rid of it. Language learning models have been around forever. We just now have the server capacity to do something with it.

And so I think that everybody is.. It’s very visible and I think that it is going to provide us a lot of opportunity to iterate and prototype individually more than we probably should. I think that there is still a really important need to use people and have it be really human centric.

Like you want to have peers talk to you. You want to have other sponsors in various forms. You want to volunteer. You want to talk to people. You want to network. Like those things I feel like are just going to start to get a little bit more lost the more we implement use of AI because I can just ask chat GPT like what should I do in this situation and it will give me six options.

And that’s great, but they don’t know me. It doesn’t know me. It can be a sounding board. But I don’t think it has my best interest at heart, whereas if I talk to Larissa about something or you, Hannah, you have a very different way of coming at me in my question and my goals than AI would. And so that’s where I’m kind of stuck. I think it’s a very cool thing to happen in our time, but I

hope that we don’t lose sight of how important it is to still have that personal connection with other people.

Hannah (45:11)
Yeah, I just want to jump in. I’m resonating with what you’re saying of you’re talking about mentorship and relationships right between people and what you get out of mentorships and relationship with people. It’s mentorship is about relationships. Actually, it’s not about your to do list. It’s not about what you’re doing next. And so there’s an

energy and like I want my introverts out there to hear this as as if you mentioned your introvert. I’m an introvert for sure, which you know with the podcast. So, hey. But interacting with people and sharing like sharing what you’re going through and being open to feedback and just the interaction between like you and somebody else or even multiple somebody else’s sometimes like

there’s an energy that comes with that, that can’t be at least, like can’t really be duplicated, at least not yet, you know, so yeah, who knows.

Stephanie (46:04)
Not yet, who knows, but not yet.

No, and it’s just to me there’s also this like sense of sometimes you just want somebody to listen and hear you out and have those feelings with you and just to be in your feelings and in career development there’s a lot of feelings.

Larissa (46:27)
Oh boy.

Stephanie (46:29)
There’s a lot of ups and downs. Career is a huge part of people’s lives. so there’s a lot of just deep rooted things that sometimes you just need to talk about. And having relationships is the most important part of that. Is somebody to be a sounding board. They don’t even have to give advice. They don’t have to coach you. They just have to be there for you. Be like, this was great or this was not great. And just be a presence, I guess.

Larissa (46:57)
Yeah, I’ll just add that careers are a really big part of people’s lives, but people also have lives outside of their jobs. And we show up as a whole person. You don’t get to pack that part up and put it away when you walk through the doors to your office, right? And so those work relationships, those connections are as much a support for the

person as they are for the organization.

Hannah (47:28)
Yeah, yeah, I’m loving that the…

the human is coming into our conversation here, right? The feelings, the, you know, I guess this is when you’re talking about human centric design, you have to have room for the person. And that’s not to say, you know, to your point, or so it’s like not necessarily to say that you’re wearing your heart on your sleeve at work and you’re telling everybody, but like the fact that you are a person with feelings. And I think a lot of us have.

you know, compartmentalized, code switched, you know, we’ve fallen into those habits of having to kind of bisect ourselves. so there’s challenges there, just like in and of just that. But then also, you know, if you’re right. so, right. And so finding like the balance between, what you’re talking about, like just

Stephanie (48:09)
Yeah.

Larissa (48:11)
But nobody wants to have to do that, right?

Hannah (48:18)
the role that work plays in our lives and in our identities, especially here in the United States, it’s like so dominant. so, when you’re trying to do something like career development, there’s typically a lot of kind of self-development and reflection in that if you’re doing it intentionally, and especially if you’re really getting into like values-based development where you’re trying to align

the way you show up in the world with your actual values, right? There’s a lot of feelings and I can just speak for my own, Like sometimes I just get, I’m impatient with it. Like I’m just kind of like, I don’t have time for these feelings. And it’s like, sometimes that’s not even a conscious thought, right? But it’s there. Like I realize I’m like,

Stephanie (48:55)
Ha

Hannah (49:00)
why can’t I just get this done? Like, it should only take so much time, you know, but that’s the, that’s the nature of it. And also like the nature of learning sometimes is that you have to go through these periods. And so, yeah, I guess that’s a very long way of saying like plus one. Yeah, I agree with what you’re talking about, both of you.

Stephanie (49:16)
And this could be a whole ‘nother conversation.

Hannah (49:20)
Yeah, I can invite you

Larissa (49:20)
Yeah,

Hannah (49:21)
back and we can talk about this. Okay, so there’s a few questions that I always like to get to, but I have one more that I just, to wrap up this part of our conversation. So if each of you were to make one suggestion for, organizational leaders who want to just invest in systems or a culture that will support the intentional development of employees.

Larissa (49:22)
that’s right. That’s right.

Hannah (49:50)
What would it be?

Stephanie (49:51)
I think that my suggestion for organizations would be to set the bar low, jump over it. Because doing something small and prototyping it and seeing what works and seeing what doesn’t work and iterating, like everybody wants to do this big programmatic thing. And to Larissa’s earlier points, like it can’t be prescriptive

like it has to have room to grow and change and so in any way to start as a pilot, start small with a handful of people, figure out what works, doesn’t, and then grow it from there. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated.

Hannah (50:38)
Don’t be perfectionists, organizations is what…

Stephanie (50:41)
If it doesn’t work, still learning. Like it hasn’t failed, you’ve learned something.

Hannah (50:44)
Yeah, yeah, it’s still progress if you’re still going.

Larissa (50:48)
Yeah, I guess kind of building on that, I would recommend that organizations give employees space to experiment. Space to…

try different things out for themselves, right? I think that a lot of people are curious about what opportunities exist within their current organization. And so maybe that looks like job shadowing somebody in a different department for a day, right? I think that would be like to Steph’s point of like something that’s like low hanging fruit.

Something that’s easy to do and implement, but just make those opportunities available and let employees experiment a little bit and try things out for themselves. Give them that freedom and flexibility and also give them a bit of a nudge to do it. That this is an important part of your personal and professional growth is to be learning, be curious about what your colleagues are up to.

I think that that would be what I would recommend.

Hannah (51:53)
I love that. Give people a little breathing room and encourage them to take it, you know, to, Fantastic.

Larissa (51:58)
Yeah,

Hannah (52:02)
Okay. So before we wrap up, ⁓ I want to switch gears just for a minute. I have three questions that I like to ask every guest who comes through the podcast about their own values. Ready? Okay. So first question.

what’s one value of yours that shapes how you make decisions?

Stephanie (52:24)
Go first, Larissa.

Larissa (52:26)
my, one of my values that absolutely shows up in decision making moments is authenticity. I always show up as my whole self unapologetically. I do wear my heart on my sleeve. and sometimes that is a good thing. I’m incredibly passionate. and sometimes even when I fully understand why a decision has to be made, if I

not super happy about it, then I will make sure that I am, it’s known what issues I have with that decision. Not that I’m not supportive. I will absolutely be supportive as long as I understand and appreciate why the decision is being made. Right? As long as I feel heard, but I will be hurt.

Hannah (53:10)
Yeah, I love that. I’m authenticity is like guiding the way that you move through the world. What about you, Stephanie?

Stephanie (53:18)
Yeah, and I feel like we’ve touched on this a little bit, both of us are in our own values as we’ve ⁓ Mine is around curiosity. So I…

Hannah (53:26)
Hmm.

Stephanie (53:30)
have loved being part of the education system. I work in higher education. I have gone to a lot of school. I love school. I love learning new things. I’m always curious about what could happen if in my day-to-day decision-making it’s around somebody bringing you something and then asking 10 questions about how it’s going to be used, why they want to use it, what purpose does it serve.

And so everything that I do is really around this question of like, what if, and being curious about not only what’s happening to me, but the world around me also.

Hannah (54:06)
Awesome. Curiosity, that one, yeah, that one comes up a lot for me too. Okay, second question. Can you share something in your career or your life that’s changed once you’ve aligned it more closely with one of your values or multiple…

Larissa (54:26)
Sure. So one of my values is achievement. I am very type A high achiever. And reframing what that looks like as a mom, as a parent, balancing work with family, adjusting to giving less than 100 % at work. I was one of those people who always gave 120 % to everything I did. And if I wasn’t giving 120%, I was failing.

Hannah (54:30)
Yeah

Larissa (54:55)
in my own mind, my self-worth was very much tied up in that for me. But really, since I’ve become a mom, realizing that I can’t be giving 100, more than 100%, or even 100 % at work, because I still need to have something left when I get home for my husband and my children. And so adjusting to giving less of myself,

and really aligning that more closely with my values and honestly still feeling really good about the work that I’m doing. It does not feel like a failure to me anymore. I think there was a time in my life where I would absolutely be like, my gosh, that I’m doing a terrible job. ⁓ That’s not actually the reality. Nobody here would say, nobody at my job would say, Larissa’s doing a terrible job, right? But yeah, kind of coming around to that and aligning that more closely.

has absolutely shifted things for me.

Hannah (55:48)
So would you say, just as a follow up to that, would you say you’ve aligned it more closely with, like you align it more closely with balance or you’ve you basically shifted some of the achievement to be like, I need to achieve at home.

Larissa (56:00)
Absolutely.

Yes, I have shifted my perception of achievement. That is how I’ve framed it for myself, is reframing what achievement looks like and means in my life. It has up until that point, it had been very much about in school, getting the A, right? Getting the good grades, getting the high marks at work, getting the good reviews, getting the job done, running a flawless event, right? Getting

great feedback on a workshop, kind of more tangible, impactful items. And now it’s a lot less about that.

Hannah (56:37)
And I know that’s just gonna resonate with so many people because that’s, I don’t have kids, but I do have pets. That’s about the closest I get, but I have, a lot of people in my life are in a similar boat and having to kind of redraw the lines a little bit. It’s not to say that those things don’t still matter to you. They are still driving a lot, but where.

where the balance is, where fulcrum is, however you want to think about it. What about you, Stephanie?

Stephanie (57:03)
Yeah, so I…

am to Larissa’s point about achievement, we’re not so different. And so my job, as of a few months ago, has been very heavy handed in the operations logistics side of Career Services. I run the calendar. I do all of the planning. I bring companies to campus and all that stuff.

Hannah (57:09)
[Laugh]

Stephanie (57:29)
Really thinking about what I wanted out of my day and trying to be more open and curious around kind of the bigger picture has inevitably led me to experiment a little bit more. And so this year I will also be coaching in Career Services because that fills the So.

of being more open to this experimentation, having conversations, saying yes to more things, even if I’m uncomfortable, just so that I can try it and see. Decisions now feel less finite almost, and their permission for me to learn and grow versus just like this is what I’m doing, this is how I have to get from point A to point B, and I’m really finding what energizes me.

More than I thought I ever would.

Hannah (58:25)
That’s fantastic. And congratulations on that. ⁓ So what part of what thing kind of led you just curious like led you to that opening?

Stephanie (58:28)
Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

so my partner and I are, we don’t have kids. We have lots of pets. It’s a menagerie over here. And we are always like trying to like one up each other. It’s a game we play. She laughs cause yeah. and, ⁓ so for a while it was just finding the bigger and better thing and,

That was exhausting. I had done a few interviews with other institutions. And in conversations with one of them, I realized it’s not what I wanted.

So I decided to kind of just open up with the people that I work closely with about what I actually wanted to get out of the job that I was doing.

And that’s pretty much what just opened the floodgates. And since then, it’s just been like, do you want to do this? Yes. Do you want to do this? Yes. Sure. OK. Lots of things, lots of opportunities. And if they don’t come to fruition, cool. They’re just another arm on the tree.

Hannah (59:41)
Amazing. So I’m hearing an echo of kind of what Larissa was talking about earlier in terms of just authenticity and bringing your self, you know, kind of opening up, you know, at work and about what you, you’re not quite, you’re not quite getting your cup filled, you know, amazing. Sure. You know, but we change.

Stephanie (59:49)
yes.

Yeah, it might have at one point, but we grow and change. So

Yep.

Hannah (1:00:08)
Okay. So last question. And both of you kind of have talked about this, so I hope this isn’t too redundant, butwhat’s one thing that you’re currently experimenting with or maybe reconsidering in life or work?

Stephanie (1:00:14)
⁓ Not really considering experimenting with, ⁓ everything that Better Together is going to be doing. Better Together is an experiment and we’re both excited about it and excited about the possibility of working more closely together and that’s we’re just better together so we’re going to continue to do that and grow it and see what comes of it and if nothing comes of it that’s fine too.

Hannah (1:00:20)
Right

Larissa (1:00:37)
I just want to say Better Together also came out of me saying out loud something that had only ever existed in my head or something that Steph and I had only ever joked about. And to Steph’s point of being willing to say some of the things that maybe even aren’t fully thought out in your head or that you’ve kind of dismissed for yourself, there’s a lot of power in that. So anyone that’s listening that has something that’s been kicking around,

I really encourage you to try sharing that with someone. It will change your life.

Hannah (1:01:12)
Yes, thank you for saying that. What an amazing note to end on. I just, completely agree. You know, I’m in a similar process, right now. And that resonates a hundred percent, know, bringing it out and saying it out loud. It’s so scary, but it’s so exciting and invigorating too, to just be going through it. So I can’t wait to continue seeing, how you’re doing and what you’re building. I’m sure it’ll be great.

So thank you both so much Stephanie, Larissa for coming on and being willing to talk to me and just sharing all your insights. for listeners who wanna connect with you or follow your work better together, where can they find you?

Larissa (1:01:53)
So right now we have a LinkedIn page, a business LinkedIn page, Better Together. And you’re also welcome to follow us individually on LinkedIn. We are working on standing up a website and all of that. Again, this is very much in its infancy, ⁓ but definitely follow our individual pages, connect with us on LinkedIn, and follow the Better Together page for updates of what we’re up to and potential ways to engage going forward.

Hannah (1:02:16)
Fantastic. Oh go ahead.

Stephanie (1:02:17)
And just message us, reach out. We would love to talk about things. We like talking. So we like to talk about things, ideas, frameworks, models. We love every second of it. just reach out and tell us what you’re thinking.

Larissa (1:02:23)
in case you couldn’t tell.

Hannah (1:02:33)
[Laughs]
I love a fellow nerd.

Larissa (1:02:34)
I just want to say thank you so much for having us. This was really fun. Yeah, love the conversation. So thanks so much.

Stephanie (1:02:34)
I’m excited for you. Yeah, this

Hannah (1:02:37)
You both as well. Oh, fantastic.

Stephanie (1:02:41)
It was a pleasure. Thank you so much again, Hannah.

Hannah (1:02:44)
That was Stephanie Turner and Larissa Pyer. And as I think you can tell, we had a fun time.

One of my favorite parts of the conversation was hearing about the ways that Larissa has designed the supports for the Tuck Compass mentoring program. It wasn’t completely focused on that one program in particular, or I mean it was, but it wasn’t only about the program itself, right? But how to go about building out your own board or constellation of mentors.

I just think that’s so valuable because as someone who has, you know, really wanted to build out a board of mentors themselves, there have been periods where I’ve I’ve struggled with, how to how to actually do that. Also, the discussion that we had about shared understanding rather than simply shared language.

And the types of both active and passive activities that can help foster that kind of collective shared understanding, right? Organizational choices, such as using personality inventories and then support norms around that to passively share some of that information, say in email signatures.

So norms are the bones of culture, ⁓ the scaffolding, if you will, right? There’s that word again.

And I love discussing norms because it brings them to the forefront of strategy, of awareness. And generally norms are unwritten, uncodified expectations and behavior patterns. I mean, sometimes they’re intentional, but often they aren’t.

And so if you’d be more interested in hearing more about this, more about norms, let me know. What norms do you have in your workplace? Are they supportive? Good, bad, ugly, I’d really like to hear from you.

And as always, what resonated in this episode? Please let me know if you can. Office Hours is still in its wee infancy as a podcast. so drop me a message or comment. I guess I said that backwards. So drop me a comment or send me a message at officehours at alignmentlab dot online.

Finally, if you appreciated this conversation or it reminded you of someone who might, please share it with them. And please subscribe and rate the podcast on either Spotify or now Apple Podcasts. I would really appreciate it and I think you will too.

Until next time, stay curious.