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In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we are joined by Aurélien Mamou, SVP, Human Resources, Teva Global Operations at Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Aurélien shares his journey from global consulting to leading HR at Teva Pharmaceuticals. He reveals how empathy and inclusive leadership can transform company culture, and shares insights on strategic HR management to enhance efficiency and reduce costs.

Aurélien also delves into the importance of organizational development and the personal strategies he uses to maintain a growth mindset and continuous learning.

🎓 In this episode, Aurélien discusses:

1. Navigating the path from global consulting to HR leadership

2. The impact of empathy and inclusion on company culture

3. Strategies to enhance efficiency and reduce costs in HR

4. The significance of continuous learning and a growth mindset

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Chris Rainey 0:00

ralien Welcome to the show. How are you?

Aurélien Mamou 0:02

I'm good. Thank you, Chris, for having me. How are you?

Chris Rainey 0:04

I'm good. Are you coming to us from the office today? I'm assuming?

Aurélien Mamou 0:08

Yes, absolutely.

Chris Rainey 0:10

Nice. How often are you in now?

Aurélien Mamou 0:13

You know, I actually travel a lot. I'm calling you from one of our offices abroad. You know, I tend to travel 50% of my time. So really, it's hard to catch me in the same place. I'm really Yeah.

Chris Rainey 0:28

That's what happens when you're a global head of HR.

Aurélien Mamou 0:32

Absolutely, absolutely. That's a price to pay what your global head of HR. If you don't have all actually in my all it's a problem, because you want to connect with people in person. And yeah, and you to meet and you need to, you need to go and meet people. That's almost we

Chris Rainey 0:48

can get into that actually a little bit in the conversation. But before we do that, tell everyone a little bit more about your background, you know, your journey to the role you're in now.

Aurélien Mamou 0:57

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you mentioned you mentioned, global background. So I guess my background is definitely very global. So I was, I was born in France, and I spent the first time as part of my life and career in France. But I relocated to the US in my late 20s. So I've been really living and working in different places. But beyond you know, my personal experience, I've been really always working in global all my background, I studied business, before specialties specializing in HR. But I guess unlike many, I guess, a cheerleader. I knew early on that I wanted to work in HR. So to me, it was very clear in my mind or voice to the business, economics, marketing and everything, I really felt the sweet spot. For for for HR. And so early on in my career, I decided to do another round of studies in a child and specialize in HR. And if I simplify my career, I would say it has been three steps. So first step was in consulting, so I started to work in global consulting companies. The first one was wasI, we cannot sell. The second one was a group which became confetti. So I've really been kind of growing and learning in this global HR consulting environment. When I moved to more what I called, you know, HR Center of Excellence, kind of a corporate HR type of goal. I did a lot of companies then to to reward early on, and then I moved more to the softer side of HR, you know, talent, l&d, as well, as the first part has really been around HR business back now. So HR, this partner champion, you have at least has been my really my focus this past few years, which led me to my current whole of global head of HR fortiva global operation. To them. Amazing.

Chris Rainey 2:57

When you said you chose HR, earlier in the career, what it looks, I'm sure it looks completely different now. Right, from what you? So what what what have you seen transformed the most versus your perception that you had early on? versus the actual job that you do? Now?

Aurélien Mamou 3:17

It's a good question. Because it's said, You're absolutely right, HR D changed a lot. Actually, I know when I started to work in, in Kanban, I guess 15 plus years ago, the hole was barely existing in some organization. And I'm just mentioning this example, because you have it has been so much change in the HR function. But to reply to your question, actually, I feel like I kind of saw the potential of HR 2025 years ago, if it makes sense. And all of a sudden, you know, you know, we don't buy things out. But this is really, really minut, you know, I was studying business. And I really realized that HR is one of these kind of transversal function, when you can really look across an organization and you really have to, you will have the opportunity to influence the performance of organization who falls away organizational structure, how they work, how people are selected, and how they perform. So I really, to me, when I joined HR, I kind of set the bar high, you know, early on, but I didn't just want to come in and just do some tactical agile work, which some companies were definitely doing 2045 years ago. So I saw this potential and yeah, and this has led me to where I am today and and you want to have to save it. I think today, it's actually probably easier to be strategic contribution when it was 25 years ago.

Chris Rainey 4:38

We stuck with it. I kind of same thing. Like when I first made the decision sort of what 20 years now, people are like, Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you focusing your career in HR? And I was like, Trust me. Trust me. You can't see it now. But because I cook I was very lucky that I was having 1000s of conversations every month literally because I was selling to HR leaders all over the world and having In compensation, so I could see so many different perspectives and insights. And I was like, wow, like, this is the future, right? We're gonna have the CEO and CHR Oh, side by side, and people were like, You're crazy. Like, it's interesting because I was interviewing a CEO yesterday, and he was like, the most important relationship in my company is myself and my Chr. And it's nice to hear that from a CEO. Right? You wouldn't have heard that when we started. Five years ago, talking about the leadership side, I know something you're really passionate about is how sort of leading with humility transforms, sort of the leadership dynamics at an organization? Could you talk a little bit more about that? Because I know it's a passion of yours.

Aurélien Mamou 5:44

Yeah, no, thanks for asking. I think just to build on, on your previous question, and going to this one, you know, I think the reason why your child is taking more and more strategic importance that because you know, many CEOs and leaders understand that generally, what makes it different, its people and the leaders in particular, I think, if you hijack leaders, inside horror was saying, you know, all your problem going to disappear. Progressively, if you have the right leaders in the hole. And I think one, one key characteristic of leadership to me is indeed this, you know, this leadership leader leading with humility, or code itself, and leadership or inclusive leadership, so whatever you call it, but it's all about finding these leaders who are really going to really good to foster an environment where people are going to be themselves, they're going to feel like we're going to be part of a bigger topples, we're going to vigorously push themselves, as you know, I'm here to add value to you. I'm not going to be here, you know, to micromanage you, and I'm going to be here to really, really know that. I don't have all the answers, and I need you to give them to me. So that to me, is the best leadership you can find. And it's and it's not, it's not trivial to say that, you know, of course, we talk a lot about inclusive leadership, etc. But, but it's sometimes hard because business leader, a huge amount of pressure, and it's very easy to move into more of directing more than and to kind of forget that. So So yeah, for me, it's definitely a key characteristic of successful leadership, team leadership and leadership team.

Chris Rainey 7:27

Yeah, we hear a lot about inclusive leadership, Human Centered Leadership, etc. But practically, how are you delivering that in the organization and weaving it into the fabric of the business to culture, etc, practically breaking that down for our audience? What are you specifically doing to make that happen?

Aurélien Mamou 7:46

Yeah, at least I think it's a combination of it's a combination of many things. First of all, I in my current company, attiva, but was told to wait before, it has to be a clear, you know, leadership principle, you know, we have actually a holdout. new leadership principle, and this is one of them, you know, so in my previous company, I used to call it a team before self. Here, it's, it's called leading with humility. So I think it has to be everywhere, it has to, there has to be a strong statement from from the top of the organization, that this is what we expect our leaders to behave like, you know, from supervisor to, to senior leaders, I think it starts it starts there. Then after, it's about making sure but different we offer different opportunities to, to, to facilitate this kind of speak up culture already people think beheld, so are very tactical thing like your usual org health engagement survey that you can repeat. So really, people feel like they really upheld. And you can get an ongoing basis, as well, some more often that we do a lot of kind of workshop around the speaker culture, we want people to know that, that they can really come with feedback about what they see and ideas about things they want to do differently. So I think it's yeah, it's a series of guest hunger commitment from the company and kind of more, I would call HR tools, or HR ways to facilitate them for workshop surveys, etc. And the last thing I would say, which is very important is around it's making it clear is where you hire you evaluate your your leaders. It has to be it has to be very clear, you know, some time we've all had cases where we show this this person is performing extremely well, without his knowledge, we won't be able to do this and this but you know, his behavior is not so good. And he's not so humble, but that's okay. Because he's doing a lot for the company. And I think it's not okay in the long run. And we have to be we have to be strong about that. So it's also including, in our assessment, to performance ones, so type of concern environment, but to either link. That's

Chris Rainey 10:05

a good point, you get those high fliers the rainmakers in the company. In the past, companies often overlooked it and said, okay, but they make this much money for us, or they deliver this for us. And they kind of look the other way, as it were, but the ripple effect, and the message that you're sending, you know, is so toxic, like, so debit is so so damaging to the organization. And people don't really realize that, but now, I think most companies are really shifting their perspective on that as well. What about the do you link this back to how leaders are compensated? Or they review their performance reviews and stuff like that? Is that linked? Back to those things?

Aurélien Mamou 10:48

Yeah, performance review? For sure. As I was saying, I think to us, you know, I'm sure a lot of HR leaders will, will resonate with when we say, you know, we assess what and versus how. So that's, that's always very important has been very key in my, in my career as well, to make sure that performance management Well, yes, you have to deliver your KPIs and your objective onto hard power, but you really need to look at the software out. So well. Definitely ways to make it good embedded in our performance reviews.

Chris Rainey 11:22

Yeah, for sure. Especially now, as we become more distributed as a workforce, hybrid work, you know, gig economy, etc. It's even more important to have these these skills, right, these superpower skills, power skills, I like to call them rather than soft skills. Yes,

Aurélien Mamou 11:44

yes, absolutely. And it's an it's not so easy, because you know, when you are not in physically on people, and in person, it's not so easy to create with this kind of environment where people feel connected, etc. So, so leaders need to be need to be mindful of that, but absolutely believe it's possible, you know, even for, you know, virtual meeting, etc, you can, you can definitely still come across my vision, but also one of the reason why going back to what I was saying, but yeah, I think traveling is important when you work globally. Because you need that to to, you know, for other meetings, creating the settings or tone Yeah. of interaction. Yeah.

Chris Rainey 12:29

It's a big shift, though, right? So what what have you seen as being the biggest challenge in moving from a traditional sort of Command or Control, which is kind of I grew up in that era of leadership to a human centered approach? Like, what would you say is the biggest challenge?

Aurélien Mamou 12:49

I think the biggest challenges, but it's still, for, for some people, for some leaders to fully grasp, the importance of it is a challenge is a challenge. Because, you know, collaborating, and, again, creating this environment, when you really take the time to listen, is not is not, it's not easy, you know, the business is still hard. Things are still going very fast, obviously. But yeah, I think, two challenges there, I think it's about really making sure that leaders understand what they need to change. And I think to me, I look at it like, there's no choice, I feel like the, you know, now, if you look at the newer generations, the younger generation are asking for even more, and then five or 10 years ago, because we want to be seen as as individual, or they want to know whether they are part of a bigger purpose. And, and this, you know, commanding style, which we're discovering, I don't think can fly. So I think it's more and more, more and more obvious for leaders, but you see, you see cases where when you're struggling, I understand

Chris Rainey 13:57

in order to be successful as a leader as well, I think, and you've had to do this yourself, we spoke about where HR is to where it where it was to where we are now is the constant learning, growing, developing the growth mindset. Could you talk about what why is it so important? to constantly be learning and growing?

Aurélien Mamou 14:17

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. To me, it's worth it to people it's as a global as a learning is so so critical and, and finger shooting so fast, but you have to have this learning mindset. And, and to me really learning start with start with listening, you know, come back to what we're seeing. I mean, reading, listening and being aware of how things change, how they think how they change fast, is critical. As soon as I start seeing that very little learning or openness to learn about the filter feedback, I provide a lot to leaders our shipper to people that work with and, and you know, sometimes especially when you work in global environments, that's what I want to say because so that people can do is compare for us working in the US or Israel with the West headquarter or in or in France. So I can say, you know, to me, it's such a bad comparing the country, it's about always, you know, staying open about, you know, different ways of working different cultures. And it's everywhere, I don't feel like I'm using different type of skills. When I am in the US, or when I am, you know, in the UK, or in Italy, or in any country, it's to me, it's always the same. It's about it's about listening to people and accepting that, that you don't know everything you have to learn the way they work. And that's how that's how you pivot and how you adjust. So it's yeah, it's about really developing your, I guess, people who could do emotional intelligence, or are you learning, you know, IQ, but, yeah, that's, that's what I would say on this topic.

Chris Rainey 15:54

It's interesting, as part of what you just said, is in order to be successful, in that sense, you have to have a level of humility.

Aurélien Mamou 16:01

Yes. Because back to the humility, I guess, absolutely. Yeah.

Chris Rainey 16:04

So and that's not easy for many leaders, right?

Aurélien Mamou 16:07

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. It's so it's, it's always easier to, you know, to just keep doing the things, the way you used to do them. It's just just easier to feel like, Oh, I'm going to be myself. And I don't have to be default anywhere. But this is just a warm statement, you know, being yourself doesn't mean, you know, I guess not understanding who you are dealing with and what your audience is,

Chris Rainey 16:36

it's very different. Because we were kind of taught I was when you grew up that I mean, when you become a leader that you kind of like perceived that you have to have all the answers to everything, and you can't show any weakness, that you don't know all these things, right, where, in fact, it actually works against us, we have a less engaged team, less motivating, there's a lack of psychological safety, because we weren't willing to speak up. It does all of the opposite of what we're trying to achieve from my team by saying, Hey, I don't know, but what do you think, right? Or just being being vulnerable, actually unlocks a whole nother level of performance? From your team?

Aurélien Mamou 17:15

Yeah, you know, employees are much more probably likelihood of being fully engaged and highly performing you think is much higher when we see that the leader is, is vulnerable and is open with, I think people prefer to work for human being makes sense. That's just a whole lot of our, you know, our just someone who just so focused on goals and personal connection, I think it's it's very easy to say, but it's not always

Chris Rainey 17:46

I was speaking to Stephanie, who's the new chief HR officer at L'Oreal, in in New York, and she, she's now the chief HR officer, but never done a day of HR ever. So it came from within the business, jumped straight into the CHR OC, not a single game experience in HR. And I asked her during the podcast, like how are you? You know, like, how are you? How are you? How are you? Like, oh, you're getting on? Because obviously, it's a lot. And she's like, Chris, like, you know what, there's a lot of things I don't understand, I'm having to be very, like honest with my team and say, Hey, what do you mean by that? There's a lot of lot of technical terms in HR, a lot of acronyms, a lot of things. And she's like, well, I don't need to be an expert on all of those things. Because I haven't, that's why I have an amazing team. Right? And that's what it's all about. You want to hire people around you that are the experts at what they do. And even when, even sometimes when you disagree, it's important to say, I hired you for that reason you go and do it. Right. Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Aurélien Mamou 18:45

Anyway, so it's not about it's not about you know, having, you know, I was discussing with someone yesterday about that. So it's about having good relationship with people. It's about just, you know, having healthy, you know, healthy conflict, healthy dialogue. That's what it's all about, you know, because sometimes when you talk about collaboration, it's such a big kind of, you know, soften Yeah, everyone is getting along. And this is not about getting along. It's about it's about understanding. So it's important to, you know, to work together and to listen to all different voices. Yeah,

Chris Rainey 19:16

I had a member of my team that we hired come up to me, he's just new. And we were in a team meeting, and one of the team members said, I disagree with you, Chris. I think we should do this. And everyone agreed. And he and he, he was shocked to see in front of the whole room that the person told the CEO and founder that he's wrong. And I was like, I disagree with you, but go and do it. Right. Like, I trust you to do it. And he was like, I've never been in a company that someone can say to the CEO that you're wrong, and I was like, I was like, okay, I'd like it. There are still many companies out there where you just would never would do that. But also, also culturally. There's if you look at different cultures very you know, You're not going to challenge a CEO in various cultures it the nuances change, if that makes sense. Yeah,

Aurélien Mamou 20:08

absolutely. I think in some countries, it is harder. But I think as a, as a global principle, we have to, we have to be able to push back and my experience working with the best leaders I work with, and I supported, they always, always appreciated the feedback, you know, when this is usually the one of the thing they appreciate the most of our HR partner is when we actually receive like, to feedback, which make them feel differently. And I think as a cheerleader, we need to be we need to be comfortable with that. But it's what was the value we add, you know, to be this, to be with me all and, and to provide to provide this feedback. So

Chris Rainey 20:51

just when I was interviewing the guests that I mentioned the CEO on the show, he said one of the things he values the most in his relationship with his ch RO is that they challenge him. Yeah, and tell us a call and calls him out on his bullshit has he said, I was like, wow, okay. So, you guys, we have to have that relationship for this to work. If they feel like they can't come to me and challenge me, then this isn't gonna work. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. Yeah. But of course, it makes sense to do that. Yeah,

Aurélien Mamou 21:24

it does.

Chris Rainey 21:28

What about? We're talking about that? Where do you see hrs role in terms of do strategic influence? To help businesses make bold decisions? Where does HR sit? In? Yeah.

Aurélien Mamou 21:46

Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question, you know, to me, to me, when I really well really see a strategic contribution. So we talk about the importance of leadership, you know, what we can do to promote and develop, you know, the right type of leadership style. But the other aspect I see is about, you know, working on what would call organizational development, organizational effectiveness. And it goes back to your bold decision, I think what I see HR also playing an important an important role is when we start, when we start being engaged in the business about, you know, what I'm trying to, do, I need to, I need to, I need to just to work differently, I need to think about my, my organization differently, I need to change the culture. So this is where we can be, we can help them being bold, you know, who can say you see, you will be organized like that for three to five years? People are saying, what about if you kill, you know, half of the organization or a few odd, you know, a couple of big new departments, I think this is where we need them to be born and sometime for business, because, again, going back to the humanity, you know, of course, people developed some sort of routine, and they think this is the way it works. And but I think I really think that actually, any healthy organization, if the two years, we should shake, you know, the organization a little bit, sometimes it can be live, but sometimes you have to take a bold move, and just try something else. Because it's how you're going to potentially create more innovation. So to me, really, the border aspect is, is one that is on the asking question, but maybe seem a bit, you know, just crazy or disruptive at first, but but at least at least US Can you realize that some of these disruptive ideas that you have can actually lead to something cool for the organization and people Yeah,

Chris Rainey 23:37

it's interesting, because I went through an exercise, maybe like a year ago was showing where, rather than there's this temptation to add more. Whereas one of the things that we did is look at what are we currently doing? Forget about adding new tools, new technologies, new strategies, new things, we went back and just asked the question of why do we do it this way? To every, every single part of the business? And there was so many things to your point, it was like, Oh, just just because that's all how we've always done it. Is it the best way of doing it? No. Yes. Right. And we kind of just reassessed all of those processes, and technologies, all of it. And we were like, Wow, there's so much room for improvement here. Let's forget about anything else of adding any addition, let's just kind of rework what we've done. And that was a big, big wake up call for us. And a lot of innovation came out of that. A lot of the manual administrative stuff we kind of just got rid of, there just was no there was no need for it. It was taking people so much time to do certain things and certain tasks that we just replaced that with technology or AI or you know, so so many different things. We now have we now have saved hours and hours of editing for our editing team by using AI tools that can do in seconds what takes one for hours. And it cost us 40 pounds a month to do that, so it's unlocked all of that time by just taking a moment say, is there a better way of doing this? Yes. And taking the time. So, and it's hard. It's hard.

Aurélien Mamou 25:17

It's hard for sure. Usually the first quiz, the first answer was B. No, no, we're fine. And you have to ask, like two or three questions. Whenever you ask the same question support that? Or you can say, Are you sure you can we do that? And you realize

Chris Rainey 25:28

why the right, guys but why, but why do the why is the why is the probably the best one? And then they say this. But why are you keep going down? And you realize, I don't know why. We just we did it that way? Because someone did it that way, four years ago, and now we're still doing it. So yeah, I love this point. In order for HR leaders to be bold, what they need to demonstrate to the executive team, in your experience to become that trusted advisor to, you know, make that decision. How help guide that decision? Yeah,

Aurélien Mamou 26:04

yeah, it's a good, good question. He said to me, I think, I think it's important that my experience, at least has been but I'm always trying, you know, to be to be recognized and kind of keeping under control what needs to be kept under control, because let's be realistic, you know, at times as the business leader, we want to make sure that you know, you have a good composition strategy, where to your your, your pre attrition is, you know, moderate or low G engagement is, is quite good. You hire or relatively fast exit, you have succession plan, etc. So I think to me, it's harder to get to this place where you can be extremely bored and, and challenge a leader if you don't kind of put the basics and so the basic because all these cards are three, pretty easy to achieve. But I think you have to find this balance, I guess what we mean by advice of showing that you have is kind of distributed to really secure and do things consistently on all the essential of a chart because it's still extremely important and strategic. And when you can more easily move to this type of twist type of behavior, I think it's hard for you to have when you support a new leader, or on your first week to try to, you know, completely transform his organization, I think it's, it's a it's an easy, you have first to demonstrate that you understand, you know, the dynamics and, and also asked, yeah, that may sound obvious, but

Chris Rainey 27:28

you know, I've heard that before my mind. When I asked that question, a lot of leaders tell me, you know, Chris, when I go into a company, I spend the first maybe a year just setting foundations. Yeah, but to your point making, so I've got a solid foundation, the right people in the right roles. From a technology perspective, as well, before, before I before I focus on any real transformation, or change, that part of that foundation is also building relationships with the leaders globally. Literally, I talked to a leader that she was like, Chris, this whole year, I've been on a plane, traveling all over the world, building these strong alliances, and truly understanding the business and the leaders that operate with and they're setting the foundation. So when I do actually come with a, you know, a bold change, to our point earlier, they're engaged, a great Chris has got this, that, you know, this is what it means for me, they understand what it means for them individually, right, then they can start to have impact of meaningful change.

Aurélien Mamou 28:31

Yeah, it goes back to what we said, You got to listen, you have to learn the organization and the leader you you work with. And it's, it's always the same when you have to drive. When you want to drive a significant change, you really have to understand why people conform because if you don't understand the initially come, you can't bring them anywhere, you have to have this test. So you can find a way you know, to transform, there's no

Chris Rainey 28:53

quick way of doing so people feel like there's just try and fight. There's no shortcut. To us what I found after 700 episodes, there's no shortcut, even with digital technology, to doing that, it takes time to build those relationships and build the trust that you have to earn it as well. And, and by the way, you have to do all of that while still delivering on the day to day, which is resigned. And people don't really appreciate that because there's this sort of interesting thing where HR leaders are being pulled in two directions. They're pointing one direction that hey, we want you to be strategic and be a business partner, etc. And then this other one of hey, you need to do the administrative stuff, the payroll that order things, and it's like you're just getting pulled in two different directions. And a lot of times their departments are under staffed to be able to achieve both effectively if that makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah. What would you say? Really random question, but what would you say that keeps you up at night?

Aurélien Mamou 29:58

That's a good question. I think I guess depends. It's not like, it's the same thing, which is, has been keeping me up at night, you know, of course this past few years. But I think to me, it's always about, but it's often about you know, making sure that I go back to the leader I was, you know, that the leadership, the leaders and the leadership team are doing the right thing, you know, to engage our people because because really to meet, it will start to the other stop, you know, at the top, the very something is, you know, dysfunctional or something, which is not quite doing the right at the top, I know, it has deep repercussion everywhere. So, again, so this is certainly the top top leader of the organization, it's always kind of critical holes in the organization who have such an influence everywhere. So, I'm always going back to that, you know, when I start seeing, okay, something is off in this part of the organization, or we need to fix that, I go back to the leaders, okay, so I need to, I need to call this leader of tomorrow, and go to the root cause and understanding as a context of what's going on. So it usually is doing what could keep me up at night to your point is, is knowing that maybe various, one or several stakeholders, one who are going for challenging, but which service mindset is influencing a large portion of his organization? That makes sense? Yeah,

Chris Rainey 31:32

no, that makes sense. And yeah, you know, we've seen the data right around the web in terms of people leaving the organization, a lot of time, it's the relationship with a manager there. Right? So, so yeah, 100% makes make sense. And it's tough, right? That, and this, lets give some grace to those leaders, as well as those frontline managers hard right now. To be a manager or leader in any type of role, you're kind of dealing with delivering your own day to day, now you're in this hybrid environment, where you half your teams at home and half your teams in the office. And it's just, you're now having to talk about well being, you know, looking after the well being of your employees, you're talking about being vulnerable, you're talking about being cycled, creating psychological safety, all these things are being thrown at these leaders, and they're expected, and they're expected to perform all of those things and still do their own job, right? as well. So it's, it's so

Aurélien Mamou 32:37

vital to making sure we keep learning and going back to what we said that you you give them visa visa opportunities to learn, you know, you can learn full, like, you know, basic training, but I also love mentoring and coaching, you know, I'm really trying to scale to scale up, you know, this type of practices everywhere, because because because, you know, on every, everything is an on one being on psychological safety and all that, you know, so people just need to be reminded of the importance of that. And I think as a cheerleader, we have a role in making sure that we do provide the solution so we can easily and quickly and yeah,

Chris Rainey 33:16

or if it has all of the things we've been talking about, I don't know about you, but none of those topics are included in my training. When I became a manager, yeah, no one spoke to me about well, being psychological safety around di you know, all of the kind of critical things that we're talking about now, leading with empathy definitely wasn't there as a key part of my success as a leader, and now we're just expected to so if you're not learning, growing, developing, or if you're not investing in your managers, and then in their leadership in their coaching, then what do you expect? You know, they need your support?

Aurélien Mamou 33:49

Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, no, but I think it goes back to where we started, I think, when we said that we kind of felt that HR can play can play a very important role for organization, because I guess, well, not articulating 20 years ago, that well being would be so important. But I could feel that making sure that you know, people can really find this balance of really connecting and kind of personally and find this balance between who we are as individual and who we bring to work. It was there, I think maybe the world and the party. So

Chris Rainey 34:29

it's like it's almost like we've now found a language. It's a conversation, there's very different versions, like you talk about leading with empathy or what you what do you call it again, internally, you call a really cheap like, you know, Human Centered Leadership. There's so many. We didn't have that that didn't that there was no there was around there was people talking about 100% But it wasn't as common as it is now. I think the pandemic accelerated a lot of that to fit You know, all of a sudden, we all were level set, you know, We're all sorry, tougher at home, no matter your job title, you're all having the same challenges. We're all going through it together, we got a we got a view into each other's lives, literally through the camera, as well. And it kind of made people wake up and say, wow, we really need to take care of ourselves of our employees. And all of a sudden, everyone's talking about it. It was one of the silver linings of a horrible, horrible time, is the spotlight. There's been shine on this on this on these topics.

Aurélien Mamou 35:40

Definitely shows something like this happen, you know, and we will have no choice but to that, because we have to offer more we had to we just do it, you know, we just do it. And, and that's, that's what's I think what Mitch was one of the lesson, but sometimes people are resist, resist change, you know, they say, oh, we can't do that and say, What about tomorrow, you have to work from home? What are you going to do? That's exactly what happened with COVID? You know? So I think it's a good, good lesson from that perspective. It's one of the silver lining.

Chris Rainey 36:08

All right, before I let you go, what are your parting advice for like the HR leaders of tomorrow, that are gonna be sitting in your seat one day? What do you wish someone told you? That you know, now?

Aurélien Mamou 36:24

Yeah, no, it's a good it's a good question. I should have thought about that, actually. Now, listen, I think I've I think, to me, it's really about don't don't underestimate, you know, the influence you can have on company performance.

Don't don't look at your whole as support function are sometimes used to condition single unit channels to function and look like this. Well, I think really, really? Yeah, Texas stage, you know, on on your own. When you're sit as a table, you know, we've leaders really, really push for that, because there will always be a part of our own, which is, you know, somehow somehow promotional, let's say, but there is also big room for strategic insights, or really, really five for that. And as we discussed during this discussion, yes, at the end of the day, as a leader, it wasn't just yours, we'd appreciate that. Yeah. If you find if you find the spot, so yeah, my advice. Amazing.

Chris Rainey 37:30

Well, listen, I'm glad we finally managed to connect and have you on the show. I appreciate you sharing your journey. Make sure we take care of yourself, because you're traveling so much. So make sure you take care of us.

Aurélien Mamou 37:40

Yes, yes. Maybe this could have been my advice as well. Because I think sometimes as a cheerleader we we give a lot to ourselves, but it's important to take care of yourself. But another very important advice. Yeah,

Chris Rainey 37:52

I was literally last night at a wellbeing event for CHR OHS. It's called people flow. It's Abigail, who's the chief HR officer of Chief People Officer of Tom Ford fashion. And we did a an event last night with 60, Chief people, officers, and it was all around HR wellbeing and taking care of themselves. And there's really nice to see everyone there and take a moment to say, you know, we're here for each other because normally, there's not many people who does HR go to exactly when they have when they have a challenge. So I thought that would be a good piece of advice for everyone listening and take care of yourself first, as well. But listen, I appreciate you coming on the show. And I wish you all the best until next week. Thanks so much. Absolutely.

Aurélien Mamou 38:34

Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me.

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