How AI is Closing Skill Gaps in the Workplace
In today’s episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Andrea Illes, Global Head of People at Nokia, to discuss how HR leaders are navigating transformation, driving innovation, and balancing empathy with accountability in the workplace.
Andrea shares how Nokia’s My Growth Portal is empowering employees to take control of their careers, how AI and technology are reshaping HR, and why fostering resilience and authenticity is key for leadership success in today’s rapidly changing landscape.
🎓 In this episode, Andrea discusses:
How AI is transforming skill mapping and identifying workforce gaps
Building resilience and authenticity in leaders to navigate constant change
How AI is streamlining HR processes and enhancing employee experiences
The importance of fostering a coaching and mentoring culture in organizations
How Nokia’s My Growth Portal is revolutionizing talent mobility and skills development
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Chris Rainey 0:00
Hey, Andrea, welcome to the show. How are you? Hi, Chris. I'm very good. And you I'm good. I feel like every time I speak to you, I feel like I'm in your well being retreat. Like your background, your background. So like, Zen, is that by design? Keep it this way at home? Yeah, I wish my background was my one's just chaos behind me home like I wish it was organized. And, yeah, it's not as good. I really need
Andrea Illes 0:28
this space to be for me, there and support me as well, you know, in my well as well, because I have a busy life as you can imagine, and you too. And therefore, it's always good to have a calm environment around love.
Chris Rainey 0:43
It possible, as much as it can be, yeah, it can never be fully Did you work from home, full time now? Or, like, hybrid? Like, what's the current setup?
Andrea Illes 0:50
It's hybrid. It's hybrid. I'm actually in a very lucky situation, because the companies allows you to kind of choose, as you wish, okay to work. So I'm going into the office time to time. Most of the time I try to network there, you know, keep the relationship with my local teams. But I'm also in a global position, working a lot with the US and India as well. So therefore my working hours are just, you know, very different to to the normal working hours. And therefore I'm, I prefer to work from home as well a lot. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 1:29
you'd only be sitting in the office waiting to speak to someone on the East Coast, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, especially any with a global role like it makes it makes complete sense
Andrea Illes 1:46
overall, is very, is very supportive of, you know, the leaders and the employees deciding how they're going to work with each other and what's the best way for them to work. And I'm a single mom. Think we were, you know, just waiting on that at some point. And for me, it's really easy to integrate my work and my life into the days.
Chris Rainey 2:09
Yeah, and that goes to show that you know it, because I'm not talking for you. But if you didn't have that flexibility, you probably wouldn't be at a company like Nokia, right? Or, yeah, probably so it is something which is super important, and you're you're missing out on a huge pool of talent if you don't have that, and you're definitely going to lose
Andrea Illes 2:32
people Absolutely, I agree so much with you, because, you know, it's important to be also in the office. Time to time, relationships are important, but having this flexibility that you decide and and, you know, you can really design your work day. That's that's a huge plus.
Chris Rainey 2:51
Yeah, I know we didn't plan on asking this, but it just came to mind, like, what would you say is, like, the biggest challenge of, of being, you know, a global head of people, not in a global organizations, whilst balance, balancing that as a single mom,
Andrea Illes 3:05
Oh God, it's, it's probably that that you are on your own, okay, you can, you know, hire some help, but, but actually, you are on your own. So if something is happening, then I need to jump, usually, and need to find a solution for that very, very quickly. But on the other hand, I have to say, also, you know, the colleagues are very understanding. So if there is a possibility to move some of the meetings because of that, then, then that's that's possible in my role, at least, you know, and, and sometimes also, you know, you need to wake up very early in the morning. But also you are having late evening, course. So that can be kind of a stretch, but I think it's manageable if you are, if you are thinking about, you know, trying to do it in a way that you are also giving yourself some some time off in some of the evenings, and the colleagues are also, you know, cooperating with that. And then that's also manageable. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 4:08
I love that, like I told you before my mom. My mom raised us four kids on her own, and I don't even know how she did it, even to this day, but creating boundaries and systems and the support system around you, like you've done is you have to do that, right? But no matter how much you do that, like you said, you might be up late, but you're still getting up at 7am when you're when you're when your kid wakes up, right, like, and that's
Andrea Illes 4:36
take her to school. So that's, that's, that's a must have, but it's also teaches you to kind of, you know, build structures. I do think that I changed a lot as a leader. For example, when I became a mom, I became far more structured, far more focused. I, you know, I tried to be very efficient. With my time, I try to look for simplicity and trying to see, you know, how I can do things more efficiently and more simple? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 5:09
well, let's face it, like you kind of have to, right, like, in order for it to be sustainable and not burn out, and that you do have that quality time, it doesn't just happen. Yeah, like I said to my wife all the time, like, you know, we have to schedule most of what we do in our lives and create structure which other people may seem too rigid. Like, oh, you scheduled date night. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, Well, we're busy, so like, if we don't be intentional about making that time, we just won't. And we've had that, you know, in our relationship before, where we've It's been months, and we haven't really spent that much quality time, because she's building her business. I'm doing what I'm doing of HR leaders. We've got us, you know, six year old daughter, Robin, and it just things just don't happen, right? So definitely, yeah, I love that. I love that. So currently Global Head of people at Nokia, but give one a bit of the background to the role and so your current focus areas, and then
Andrea Illes 6:02
we can jump. So I'm working in one of the business groups called Cloud and network services, and I'm the Global Head of HR for the product and the engineering unit. It's approximately 6000 people across the across the board. Very interesting times, going through some transformations. You know, new product lines, the way we are working is going to be changing as well. So it's really exciting, but also very kind of, you know, rapid work times, long working hours because of that. But as as you just said, before you know, if you are not busy, then it makes you wonder what you're going to do, what's going to come next. It is extremely important that we are staying focused on our agenda and what we want to accomplish.
Chris Rainey 7:00
It must be really interested being also specifically looking after that business unit that's under such heavy disruption and innovation and change. So you're looking after that specific group that are probably going through one of the biggest transformations in the history, since the internet. And
Andrea Illes 7:21
I really love that because so actually, beginning of last year, I changed from a corporate roles. I was managing Europe people experience function, which is all the country hrs and the and also the Europe shared services, actually, and then, so So David, that switch, I'm much, much closer to the business and the core of what we are doing at Nokia, so, and I'm extremely passionate about, you know, seeing people grow in their position as a leader, as you know, as their HR manager making sure that that they really, you know, bring the best out of themselves. But at the same time, I'm also, I really like to, as I mentioned before, like to strive for simplicity, looking at things, how we can do things differently, how we can become more efficient. And I think this, role is really allowing me to kind of practice both, yeah,
Chris Rainey 8:24
I know you're both on a HR and an AI transformation journey in the same time, which you kind of can't, kind of have to be where we are now, firstly, what sort of the level of maturity of The organization right now, in terms of AI adoption.
Andrea Illes 8:43
I think being a technology company, we should be at the forefront. I think we can still do more. There are specific areas, partially in HR as well, but those are in the business where AI is, you know, leading the way, but in other areas, we still have a lot to a lot to do and transform.
Chris Rainey 9:06
Where are you seeing like when you chat with a team, the biggest opportunities in HR for AI to really add value,
Andrea Illes 9:16
I think one of the area which I really would like to highlight, and this is also kind of, you know, connected to the to the growth one that we introduced about one and a half years ago, or my growth portal, skills portal, which is connected to our talent marketplace. And here we are focusing very much currently on skill development and mapping the skills across the organization, where AI can be a very useful tool. Actually, currently, we are more relying on machine learning, but AI is also coming into the equation,
Chris Rainey 9:53
yeah, tell everyone a little bit more about Nokia my growth portal, because I think you're super interested in what you're doing there. Yeah. So.
Andrea Illes 10:01
So we are a huge organization in 130 countries, so more than 80,000 people, as you can imagine, and there are numerous career opportunities across the whole organization. We also have an internal talent marketplace, but quite often people were just not aware of opportunities which are out there. So we did created the migrant portal, which is actually a space which brings the individual together with the opportunities. So based on your interest, based on your profile, you are getting daily recommendations for jobs which might be out there inside the company. So why would you go anywhere else if you have this opportunity internally, and if you are fine tuning your skills profiles, there is we also have a skill hub inside of my growth portal, and therefore the skill hub is actually taking information from your career with Nokia, so your CV, your learning opportunities, which you were taken up, and any other jobs, or any jobs which you were doing throughout your career with the company, and then it creates your skills profile based on that. You can also add skills because you might did a certification which was outside of the company, and then you can add those skills to the to your own skills profile. And with that, you can actually enhance even more the this search engine and this recommendation to yourself, but it's also giving your manager, actually quite good overview of what kind of skills are available in his or her team.
Chris Rainey 11:54
Wow, probably good to explain to everyone that you built this in house, right? Yes, this is in So, before we go further, why the decision to build, as opposed to buy or borrow? Yeah, I think
Andrea Illes 12:09
it was, it was a, it was a long, long conversation around that. And, you know, the decision took some, some time to take whether it should be built internally or external, but we have the expertise in house. So being a technology firm, it's actually, it's quite kind of given, and also, because it's a huge company, so it might makes more sense for us to to build this type of solutions, instead of going out to the market and buying it. Yeah, I would, you know, there are very good solutions out there. So if any small companies would be, you know, aspiring for something like this, I think it's still worth to buy a solution which is really suiting their needs, yeah.
Chris Rainey 12:53
How do you manage the skills taxonomy? Because if you're letting people add skills to their profiles, you may end up getting 5000 different so
Andrea Illes 13:05
this, this is something which is we, which we are having as a focus projects building the skills taxonomy and also defining the critical skills, and also, you know, trying to close the skill gap, because every organization is facing that, and everyone is having it. So I wouldn't say we are there yet, and it's working perfectly currently. You can, mainly, you know, choose skills from a drop down list. Okay, of course, you can also add there a few, but this needs to be validated. Okay,
Chris Rainey 13:39
that's the way. Okay, glad you added that part. Otherwise it just becomes so at least, the very least you have now you're controlling it via his and then if you have some added, you can get someone to verify exactly. Okay, great. Okay, exactly, yeah. Otherwise, it could get very crazy. Are you like scraping, sort of sentiment analysis within the portal in any way,
Andrea Illes 14:04
what we are currently doing is really to you know, the managers are only reviewing whether the skills, yeah, yeah, at the right level. We are not, not able to identify differently currently. So nice.
Chris Rainey 14:25
So how many people at the moment do you have within the talent marketplace,
Andrea Illes 14:31
the adoption rate? Well, the talent marketplace
Chris Rainey 14:34
is that the same thing.
Andrea Illes 14:38
It's two different actually, okay, areas. So my growth portal is about, I was actually just checking the last two days the the data, it's 60% take up rate. Nice, yeah, and it's like, I have to say, really slow down the attrition significantly for us. Because. Everyone is having much more opportunities at hand. So it's really good, you know, to have a discussion with your line manager about your career, what you would like to achieve, and so on. I think these are very, very important conversations still today, and we are also putting a lot of energy into ensuring that managers are understanding how to have these conversations. But at the same time, we also want to make sure that our employees are having a very easy to use tool at their hands, which is helping them to, you know, find the next opportunity. Plus, I was actually also just recently thinking about that that, you know, sometimes we hear about that women are probably less likely to apply for some opportunities where there are not like 100% match with this. You are actually avoiding this, or you are actually helping them to see that there are opportunities out out there, which they might not yet be ready for, but based on their profile, this could be very interesting ones to start with. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 16:10
I love that. I definitely think it's a step in the right direction to do that. And the way you communicate, my growth port, I'm sure you communicate in that way as well that, hey, we're not expecting the finished article, that you have to have all these things. The whole point is it's a development opportunity, exactly.
Andrea Illes 16:27
And, you know, and more and more people are using the more and more information we are also getting about our employees. I think there was a study done. Sorry, I don't know exactly the dates when there was a post out there saying that LinkedIn probably knows more about your employees than your own company. So this is something we try to build in house to understand also our workforce fully. And also, you know, we also try to understand what kind of skills we might need in the future, what kind of skills we might need leaders to be successful. So currently, in the in the project which I was just mentioning, which is not yet finished, so it's still in the development phase, we are also, you know, talking about collecting information from the performance evaluation, which are talking about more the human skills, you know, and how those human skills are relating to job success. Yes, yeah, but it is very early stages yet to talk about, but something which we definitely are, you know, starting to review and look at, I think
Chris Rainey 17:42
that's going to become, it's good to hear you doing that, because that's going to become more and more important, right? As technology starts to take on some of those tasks or skills, the power skills, human skills, soft skills, whatever you want to call them, they're going to become ever more important exactly as we start to replace some of the manual work, and some of the other skills can be done by AI as well. So I think if companies are not prioritizing those power skills, because if you look at the challenges companies are facing, it isn't the technology, it's the it's the culture, it's the transformation, it's the it's the human element, always, which is the which is the main thing the technology does what it does as well. So we need to help develop and prepare our managers and our leaders with those skills to be able to do that. So I'm glad that you mentioned, obviously the job opportunities that service. But how are you connecting learning opportunities within my growth port.
Andrea Illes 18:41
Oh, yeah, that that's also a feature of my growth portal, because if you are actually feeding in the information what kind of next steps you would like to do in your career, then this actually coming up with with tailor made learning paths and and training recommendations. We are having a huge learning portal also internally. So there is access to, you know, courses which you would be able to to take up. Okay,
Chris Rainey 19:13
and is that for external partners that you've plug can you plug in, like a LinkedIn learning into that and stuff like that, there
Andrea Illes 19:19
is LinkedIn learning. There are some external partners. So I also like, you know, sometimes you just get a book recommendation. So we also
Chris Rainey 19:30
exactly
Andrea Illes 19:32
yeah, because sometimes it's really good to read the book about it. Why not? Yeah. So there are external partners, and we are able to plug them in. Is
Chris Rainey 19:40
it, is it connected to, like an LMS as well, or is that your own LMS? Again, you built, do you have cornerstone? Yeah, okay, so is that part powered by cornerstone and then plugged into your Exactly? Cool. It's just interesting to understand like how, yeah, right, especially because you built that part your. Self, it's always, it's always difficult. No, it's not difficult. It's very everything's achievable, but you have to very thoughtful about how that affects the user experience and the journey. Because you can, just because you can plug all these things in, doesn't mean it
Andrea Illes 20:15
doesn't mean that people are going to like it. And I also think, you know, when we first launched it, everyone was so excited. We thought, Oh, it's just gonna, you know, you just don't even need to marketing it internally. It's going to happen overnight, like magic. Everyone is gonna love it. And it wasn't the case, of
Chris Rainey 20:37
course, not exactly.
Andrea Illes 20:41
You needed to put lots of effort into it, you know, making people aware of that, that this is happening, and we are still doing it time to time. You know, it's a 60% adoption rate is already very good, but it can be more, but it's a journey, as you mentioned. Yes, there's
Chris Rainey 20:58
no end date, more and more exactly,
Andrea Illes 21:03
development, sorry, just feature development is also something which you need to always fine tune, yeah.
Chris Rainey 21:10
Well, on that point, then my next question was, how do you are you in the team? Or are you working on embedding generative AI into my growth portal so that you can start to have smart, you know, co pilots, or the ability to create customized learning pathways, all of these amazing capabilities that we can leverage generative AI for. So
Andrea Illes 21:31
again, this is, this is part of the critical skills program, actually, how to stay the portal. So we are not there yet, but there are already, you know, a project built on this, how to make it work and what would be the best way. Currently, what we were doing is less of the Gen AI path, but more of, you know, thinking about how we are enhancing skills internally even further and how we are also getting to know the skills of our employees. And we, on our internal talent market, launched gigs. So besides job rotations, now there are gigs. So we have our own gig economy actually internally, and here, you know, people can apply for part time roles, just maybe one day a week or four hours a week, little gigs, which they would be able to participate in a completely different department, next to their day to day activities. So they if they want to enhance their skill, or they want to find out whether you know a new career or a new career path would be interesting for them, then they just apply for the gigs, they try it out, and they can still go back to their old job, doing doing previous role. They don't need to switch immediately. And it's also, so it's a very beneficial for the employees. It's also very, very good for the company, because it's really enables more agile way of working for the employees. It's also, you know, building more connections between teams, but also between, you know, employees itself and they are also finding out more and more about the skills of our employees this way.
Chris Rainey 23:30
What are some of the interesting insights that you and the team have taken away from that so far,
Andrea Illes 23:37
we did a six months trial for piloting before launching it. And during this pilot, there was a huge interest, five times more than the gigs which were hosted.
Chris Rainey 23:52
Wow, so there was five times more interested in the gig focus, exactly. Wow. That shows the the eagerness for growth and development for people, right? Yeah. And I'm sure, if you measured like, if you measured those people, like, a year from now, I looked at the retention
Andrea Illes 24:14
of those, I'm sure it's going to be gonna measure, I
Chris Rainey 24:20
know, yeah, it's gonna be way higher. But the one of the things that I've seen companies have problems with this, and I love to understand how you approached it. I applied for a gig opportunity. How do you navigate that with their manager, and then, because they're like, Hey, you're taking all my talent away. Like, um,
Andrea Illes 24:42
I think so. So so far, our experience is very positive. Actually, managers are less worried about the gig opportunities, because it's not about taking away talent. It's not about, you know, giving them away for full time for. For X months, but it's really just a few hours in a week which we are talking about, and therefore they are very willing to support the employees in most of the cases. I'm not saying that there was no any occasion when a manager said no to it, but either it has been a conversation with the employee that, you know, this gig can happen, or something similar can happen later, or, you know, or there was an understanding, there was some shifts in the you know, when the opportunity is going to start to just to accommodate the request of the of the hosting manager.
Chris Rainey 25:41
So who's the approver in this process? Is it they then it kind of gets flagged to the manager and then they make a decision? Or is there? Yeah,
Andrea Illes 25:51
the HR team is not involved. We are trying to give for responsibility, but also accountability of the managers.
Chris Rainey 25:58
So then have a conversation with that individual one, yeah? But if you know, we are only
Andrea Illes 26:02
coming into the equation if there is a question mark or if there is an issue,
Chris Rainey 26:08
yeah, again, it's back to empowering, right? This isn't the job of HR.
Andrea Illes 26:15
And I think you know, our slogan is, open, fearless, empowered. So these are essential. We are trying to kind of live up to it.
Chris Rainey 26:25
Yeah. What are some of the other things that we haven't spoken about that we should know about in terms of the current work, or things that we I've missed when it comes to quiet growth pool?
Andrea Illes 26:37
Hmm, I think we covered actually, most of it, I would say, yeah,
Chris Rainey 26:44
for this year, looking ahead, then what's the priorities, obviously ongoing regarding what we discussed. But what, what are some of the things that you're really excited about,
Andrea Illes 26:53
exactly the critical skills, one you also would like to, you know, besides just my growth portal, but also it's kind of related to that, as well leadership development further. So to take it to the next step, we are, you know, designing leaders journeys. Last year we launched a technical career path, for example. So for people who doesn't want to become line managers, then what kind of career paths are out there? How they can progress further. What opportunities are there. We would like to extend it even further in different professions, just to see, you know, what else we might have out there.
Chris Rainey 27:32
What would be an example of some of the technical career paths that you identified well
Andrea Illes 27:37
you might, you might want to become, instead of a leader of big teams, a technical expert and maybe a globally recognized technical expert. And then what are the steps you need to take? What are the learnings you need to you need to have to get there, what kind of, maybe external speaking opportunities you need to take up on? So there are a lot of recommendations along the way, how you will be able to achieve that and how to get there. Yeah, obviously, it's not the same for everyone, but at least kind of having, it's almost like having a coach on your side, you know, helping you to to decide what might be the next
Chris Rainey 28:18
step. Yeah, because you don't want to reta, you need to retain that talent, right? Because these are people that probably been with your business for some time, have incredible wealth of knowledge and networks in the business, but don't want to be a leader, a director, a manager. Don't want to just focus in on that, being an expert in that one area, and most companies, which is, I'm sure, why you're doing it, don't have a career path, right for those individuals, and they end up forcing themselves almost to become a leader or a manager so they could get their next, you know, salary increase or so. I think, personally, even for me, in my previous companies, when I was in I was a very high performing enterprise sales executive. I didn't really want to be a manager or a director I ended up becoming, but if they had a career path for me to go down, that need to be focused on a very highly technical sales, you know, era, and I do definitely would love to do speaking and training for others in the business and whatever that may look like, I think I would have been really excited about that opportunity. So I'm glad you're doing that, because, again, that's another retention tool as well. And also you retain that wealth of knowledge, it doesn't lead to business
Andrea Illes 29:31
exactly, and not everyone is leadership material. So not everyone is going to become a good leader, and we need to, you know, accept that, but they might be amazing technical people, yeah, and we nearly need to utilize their their strengths, actually, yeah.
Chris Rainey 29:50
Personally, as as there's so much change happening and you're, you're having to personally Up skill and re skill, what are some of the ways that you're you. Up skilling yourself personally. What do you find that works, especially with AI and stuff like that coming out, like, how do you stay up to date with all these changes?
Andrea Illes 30:08
I'm actually so passionate about learning myself. So I do. We are having so and we are having so many learning opportunities, also internally at the company. So there are AI courses which we are able to just participate on. There are, you know, just, just opportunities to attend some webinars as well, internally and also externally. So I do, I do go on a lot of conferences myself as a speaker, but sometimes also just to attend and listen to and understand. I do study always something. It's like, you know, I'm a little bit of a junk, you know, studying junkie or growth myself, because I just, I just love learning about new technology, new ways of working. Think right now it's also, you know, culture is also on our mind, whether we need to renew that. And then, you know, cultural transformations, business transformations. One thing is very important, in my view, is that we need to be stay open minded and always open for new learning and changes. Think changes, change is constant here, and I also love to mentor. Actually, I'm quite often signing up on mentoring relationships, because I'm learning so much from mentoring myself. Yeah, so just talking to younger generation, you know, talking to other colleagues, maybe from other units, also internally, but also externally. You know, I'm sometimes working with NGOs, and I'm, I'm being part of a mentoring program, and that that's always a learning opportunity for me. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 32:05
it's interesting when we when we coach or teach, we get so much more like back ourselves, right? Because it kind of like ingrains it in yourself as you're like, I always anything I ever taught of like, is it further ingraining it in your opinion, yourself? And sometimes, and sometimes you catch yourself going, am I even practicing what I preach right now as well? So it's a good reflection moment as well.
Andrea Illes 32:35
And I think also we are lucky, because Nokia is having this coaching and mentoring culture. Actually, you also, by a micro portal, are able to find a coach for yourself, for yourself, because we are having a requisition, or a list of people inside of the tool, so we are really encouraging and also or coaching and mentoring department, is very much focusing on training as many leaders as possible to become coaches, so that we really embed this, this coaching style of leadership, inside the
Chris Rainey 33:15
company. I was wondering with a random question, but I heard this the other day, and I've been thinking about it personally, and I want to ask you it, if you knew you couldn't fail, what would you do?
Interesting, this could be, I know I heard it, and it kind of I had the same reaction as you. It just took me back for a second. And this could be personal, you know, it could be professional. You know, if you knew you couldn't fail, what would you
Andrea Illes 33:49
do? No, I'm not. I'm never approaching anything from the from failing. I always think everything is gonna just go fine. We're the same. I was just thinking, I don't know. I mean, if I want to do something, I just go and do it.
Chris Rainey 34:08
That's not normal. I mean, I mean in a good way. I mean, like, I'm like that, like my co founders, very much, calculated and thoughtful. And I'm kind of like you. My reaction is, normally, I don't even think about it through that lens. I just go and do it, and I fail anyway, and I learned, but I don't see it as a failure. I see it as you know, you have to put the reps, you have to fail forward, you have to learn. So I don't even see it through the same lens, but most people, and that's why I think that question went viral. I think it went viral on LinkedIn and a few other platforms where it was like an entrepreneur sharing that, and he was like, this is a question you should always ask yourself. And one of the things you realize is when you answer that question, 99% of the time, you can do it. It's just, it's just you have that fear of failure to hold most people back. But if you can overcome that and approach everything through that for a different lens of. Failure is a positive, then it changes it personally for me, it changed my life, like looking it through that lens, like, who am I to start this podcast. I've never worked a day in HR in my entire life, right? And I've interviewed 1000 HR leaders, all right? And people listen, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people right as well. But the reaction from everyone when I said I was going to start it, they were like, who's going to listen to you? Right? Like you're going to fail, you know? So you just kind of just have to ignore that and do it anyway, and
Andrea Illes 35:34
then, and then, what happens if you fail? I think it's if you never fail you also don't learn. And think the people who are the more successful, probably in their life, are the people who failed
Chris Rainey 35:46
all the time, literally, like
Andrea Illes 35:48
exactly you need. You need to fail, to build this resilience and be wanting to go after your dreams and what you want to achieve. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 35:57
I know like not to break the bubble for anyone listening, but no one cares about your failures. People are so concerned that people will see them fail or or the perceived perception of it, that then the truth is, no one's paying that much attention that you fail to you.
Andrea Illes 36:19
I mean, I'm saying to myself, when I ever have this, you know, little thing in my mind, like, but what will people say like, you are not that important?
Chris Rainey 36:29
Yeah, it's so true. Like people think everyone's watching and caring. No one cares. I had someone messaged me on LinkedIn the other day, and they were like, congratulations on your meteoric success and rise right? Because we gained over 100,000 followers in December. So it was pretty is pretty crazy. Like my profile quadrupled in modern night, in size. And I was like, in my first reaction was meteoric. If you call 10 years and 1000 podcasts meteoric that there was no like, no one. And again, it's perfect example that that person didn't see the 10 years of failure, the 10 years of learning and growth. They were like, Oh, amazing, overnight success, yeah. And this is someone who follows me that I know, right? And and so no one really sees that, and no one pays attention. So the the question you should be asking yourself is, what is the cost of me not doing it exactly?
Andrea Illes 37:27
Exactly? That's that's a very good point, because if you are not doing it, then you just gave up immediately.
Chris Rainey 37:34
Yeah, you'll just be exactly where you were yesterday, exactly, at least if I know I tried something, I failed, I learned something. Not doing it, you just wake up the same place that you already was right
Andrea Illes 37:45
exactly then and then, if you imagine yourself in 10 years time, do you still want to be at the same place?
Chris Rainey 37:51
Yeah, well, I can tell you right now, from interviewing 1000 of your peers and speaking to them every day, you will not survive long in HR. It's impossible. If you look at when, from when I started doing this 20 years ago, the skills and competencies required to be a HR leader, and also the functional expertise and just everything you will not you know, those HR leaders that are really thriving right now are the ones that have the growth mindset, that are constantly disrupting themselves. They're seeking discomfort, they're failing forward. They encourage it with their teams. They set boundaries right to be able to do that. You
Andrea Illes 38:28
need to have the strategic mindset as well, because I do see it more and more important. So you are responsible for, you know, helping leaders to create the culture, you know, making sure that the right leaders are at the right place. But you also need to have the strategic mindset to to be able to work with them and advise them in the direction 100%
Chris Rainey 38:54
and then that. And that has that, and the way that has been done has also evolved, yes, right, you know, and we're moving more and more of the ownership of a lot of these things you talk about to the business. HR shouldn't own culture. Shouldn't own well being Shouldn't you know, development, it should be those leaders, those managers, who everyone's responsibility in your organization. And that's a huge change from the traditional where we started, exactly where leaders were really relying on HR to do all of this stuff they were talking about, you know. So what it means to be a leader and a manager has completely changed.
Andrea Illes 39:29
It's completely changed. It's such a small so it's a much bigger responsibility, man, yeah, you Yeah. I
Chris Rainey 39:36
wasn't, you know, I wasn't having conversations 15 years ago when I became a manager about well being No, right, like,
Andrea Illes 39:46
high on the list right now, really talking about, and would like to understand,
Chris Rainey 39:50
no one said, you know, one of the key competencies during my manager training was leading with empathy. Yeah. So all of these things bring the. Members, yeah, exactly, all of those things. Or, you know, resilience, right, like that is now something we need to develop, because there's a constant change, so we have to constantly be doing that. But anyway, I feel like that's perfect way to end the show before I let you go. Like, is there any parting HR advice? Or, you know, sorry, advice you would give to sort of those HR leaders of tomorrow. They'll be sitting in your seat one day, and then we'll say goodbye. Oh, okay,
Andrea Illes 40:27
hmm, it's, it's a good question. I'm not sure it's just for the HR leaders, but, but overall, so I think if you have a unique talent and and if you, if you are unique in your way, then, then, then, never give this up, like, turn it into, into something meaningful, and make sure that you are, you know, changing the way you work and use it. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 41:01
I love that. I feel like for so many years, people that I know and me myself earlier tried to conform to what I thought people wanted to see from me and their behaviors and what would help get me ahead. But is exhausting to do that, and when you lean into being yourself and and the things that really give you energy, right, it kind of it lights a different type of fire underneath you as well. But you have to be willing to walk away sometimes from situations that don't do that for you, which can be a little bit scary to do that as well, but I love that, like be your true, authentic self and find organizations, an organization and team that that fits you and appreciates your diversity of thought perspective and what you bring to the table.
Andrea Illes 41:57
Yeah, very best.
Chris Rainey 42:01
I mean, I was only saying because I've not many people say that advice, but it's really good advice that people don't really talk about as much, because there's so many people I've even met in my career like that. I may, after many years, I kind of finally discovered who they really were, and then I realized they kind of had this sort of work persona that they kind of were bringing to the table, like one of my good friends, I always say, like, you have like work Colin. And friend Colin, because he kind of feels like, feel like he has to exhausting, yeah, you know, we speak about often. I think many people do that because they and this an unfortunate it's unfortunate, and it's up to companies also help create that environment where people feel like they psychologically safe to be able to be who they are, and, you know, be themselves as well. Where can people connect with you if they want to reach out and say hi? Um,
Andrea Illes 42:56
via LinkedIn, yeah, I think that's always a really good way to do so. So feel free to connect with me, and I will try to get back to you as quickly as possible.
Chris Rainey 43:05
Yeah. Now I apologize in advance for all the messages.
Andrea Illes 43:12
Have a meaningful discussion
Chris Rainey 43:14
then, yeah, Chris, what have you done as well? But I appreciate you taking the time out. I'm glad we managed to connect, and congrats to you and the team on the journey so far. I know it's a journey, not a destination, and I wish you all the best until next week.
Andrea Illes 43:29
Yeah, thank you very much, and thank you very much for inviting me. It was really, really enjoyable. So thank you. It's not just very professional, but also are making it very enjoyable.
Chris Rainey 43:40
You've got to have fun. If you can't have fun, then what's what's exactly, exactly can't take last too serious. Thank you so much. So much.