Kate Rath, Luis Vides & Rafael Tinoco on Building a Culture of Collaboration (Encore) | Ep #117

Wendy (00:01):

Welcome to Building Better Managers. I am your host, Wendy Hanson, and I am delighted to have you with me today to learn from some wonderful guests who are going to share their information and their brilliance and their experiences around management and leadership and building great teams in organizations. I am also the co-founder of New Level Work, so check us out new level work.com. Thanks for tuning in.

Announcer (00:30):

Welcome to Building Better Managers. We're thrilled to bring you an encore presentation of one of our most impactful episodes. This conversation remains especially relevant today and we're excited to share it with you. Again, whether it's your first time tuning in or you're revisiting this standout episode, we're sure it will spark new insights to help you grow as a leader. Let's get started.

Wendy (00:51):

Welcome everyone. We are so happy to have you here today. We get to talk to some team members inside a Better Manager. Have you ever had a bad customer experience? It could have been in a store buying online or as an HR and l and d leader buying professional services to develop your team. You just couldn't get what you needed and you didn't feel supported. We know at Better Manager that working together with our partners to provide coaching and group training to help people thrive at work is our mission. Today, you'll meet three members of the team and get a sense of customer success at Better Manager. So let me tell you who we are lucky enough to talk to today. Kate Rath, she's our VP of customer Success at Better Manager and has been here almost since we were born. Her career has spanned leadership development, international public health, work, communications, and the arts.

(01:53):

Kate holds a Master of Science in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and then we have on her team Luis Vides. Luis is a customer success manager based in Honduras with over 12 years of experience in various industries, including call center, BPO, real Estate Outsourcing and Leadership Development with a diverse background spanning roles as a corporate trainer, senior trainer, training manager, recruiting manager, property manager, account manager, solutions architect, and customer success manager. Luis brings a wealth of experience and a very well-rounded set of skills to work. Luis is committed to driving growth, delivering exceptional results, and making a positive impact in every endeavor. And then we have Rafael Tinoco. Rafael is a dedicated professional driven by a genuine passion for driving customer success. We see that all the day when we're on calls with him with a background in business and finance. Rafael has served as a key account manager and customer success manager contributing to the growth and positive outcomes of multiple startup ventures. Rafael leverages his skills and experience to contribute to the success and advancement of the organizations both within the realm of customer success and beyond. So welcome to you all. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm going to start with Kate. Kate, what excites you about working at Better Manager and the larger mission that we have to help people thrive at work?

Kate (03:36):

It's great to be here, Wendy. Thanks so much for having us. Like a lot of people, I've had jobs that I've really loved at organizations I respect a lot, but sometimes I'd run into that situation where you have the technical skills, you're doing okay, but you run into that stereotypical bad boss or a management team that just is sort of demoralizing to the culture that you're working in. And I always thought, why does it have to be this way? Why do we have to go into a work setting with intelligent people where everyone has gifts to give? And you'd see people walk out sort of demoralized, not wanting to bring their whole self, not wanting to use their voice. And the first time I came to Better Manager, there was the team and they started talking about what was possible in a workplace. How can we bring empathy?

(04:23):

How can we teach managers the skills they need to really help people to develop? How do we lift up the people that we work with so they can be successful? And that idea that I wouldn't see my partner come home complaining about their boss, I wouldn't hear my friend say, I think I have to look for another job. My boss is so awful. You hear it pretty frequently. And this idea that we could give managers the tools they need to be successful, to really support people so we could hear their voice, they could bring their authentic self to work so they could go home at the end of the day and not bring that negativity back into their family life was just this exciting idea to me that we could have that kind of reach, that we could really make an impact in people's lives.

Wendy (05:08):

Yeah, it is so true, Kate, that people leave managers not companies. And so that's the thing that at Better Manager, we're trying to make sure. Luis, tell us what excites you about working for Better Manager?

Luis (05:22):

Well, I would have to say Wendy, that it's our services. And it's because in the past life I delivered l and d trainings, I also trained leaders on how to coach effectively. So I know how powerful that can be, and I'm a true believer of our offerings and a true evangelist, and I know that we can actually help everyone and anyone thrive at work.

Wendy (05:50):

That's great. That's great. And Rafael, what about you?

Rafael (05:54):

Hi, Wendy. For me personally, it's the manager team. The culture here is incredible. We're all super collaborative. We want to help each other out and we feel that we can have an impact at an organization level with what we're doing. And I love that feeling.

Wendy (06:10):

Well, the three of you have done such an amazing job because you connect so closely with sales and you just make sure that things go if there's any problems. So it's really been a great gift for us to be able to have a team like yours and Kate for people that don't quite know what customer success is. And as an organization, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Kate (06:34):

Yeah, definitely. I think sometimes people don't know what customer success is and how I see customer success is really our job is to make sure the customers working with Better Manager are getting the most value out of the work we do together. And so one of the things we talk about a lot as a team is how do we make sure we're aligned with what the customer wants because they're unique, right? Every company's not suffering from the exact same pain points. Some are going through an acquisition, some just want to make sure their new managers are empowered. Some want to make sure their executives can really coalesce as a team. So the needs are really varied. When we're working with a company and our customer success managers, one of their primary goals is to understand what's the company looking for in terms of their goals and objectives and making sure that we deliver on that outcome.

(07:26):

I was just thinking about one of my favorite examples of our work with our customers. We had started working with a big international organization and they wanted to roll out a yearlong leadership journey to their managers who were new managers and middle managers. And we spent months meeting with them designing how can we use the curriculum we have; how can we match it with our coaching services, our group coaching services, our 360 surveys into this journey for their managers, and we are doing programs for people in North America and Europe and also in the Ukraine. And Luis was their customer success manager. And when the conflict broke out in the Ukraine, we were on the phone with them right away, not just asking, how do we continue to implement this, but what do you need? How do you support the people that are in the Ukraine and what can we do to help?

(08:18):

And that was an ongoing conversation. Do they want this kind of training? Will it help them? What timing should we have? And we paused that work for a long time, stayed in close contact with the team, and when we went back and re-implemented it, we had the highest attendance out of any group we worked with in that company. We had great feedback, and I think it just showed that level of connection we had to the company to really understanding where they were and really delivering on results that could be impactful at the right time. So I love that example of just that partnership working together.

Wendy (08:56):

I love that too because it shows that it's just not about us getting business, it's about us caring about people, and you all demonstrated that so well and to know that we were more interested in how can we help in any way than them doing business. And I'm sure it made a big impact. So thank you for that. Kate, when you started this, we said, yeah, put together a CS team from the ground up. And how did you begin to do that and connect to Better Managers purpose and everything when you first started the team?

Kate (09:30):

Well, when we were first starting early days, as you mentioned, I've been here since sort of close to the inception of Better Manager. And one of the things we all wanted to do was be able to be more proactive with our customers and not just reactive to their needs. And when I was thinking about building a customer success team, I thought, what are the profiles of people I needed as you start to build the team? And also what are the best practices in customer success? And I think one of the lessons I've learned at Better Manager is you don't know what you don't know and then don't be scared to admit it and go learn it. And I wasn't scared. I did go learn and I had the support of the internal team of Better Manager to go do that. So I read, I watched videos, I followed leaders and Customer to Success to see what are they doing and how can we replicate it, but with a special Better Manager stamp.

(10:22):

So when I was looking to hire, I did look for empathy, a high level of emotional intelligence. I wasn't just looking for a background in account management. And I think that really brought to life sort of the Better Manager ethos of we put our customers first because we really genuinely care about the outcomes. We want them to be able to see impact in the work that they do. We want their employees to feel the impact of our work, and it's not just lip service. We want to make sure we can deliver on that. So it was a really exciting time building the framework and the foundation. And then once the team came and we were building together, it got even more exciting. Then you have the voices from the team really lifting up that work, making it better, refining it, telling me what they were learning, talking to customers. So then it became really a collaboration.

Wendy (11:11):

Yeah. Oh, that's great. And it certainly has, you've done such a great job of moving it along over these years and it's so successful. Now, Luis, could you describe to us what is the role of a customer success manager at Better Manager? And a Better Manager part is important because as Kate just said, it may not be like other companies do it, so I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Luis (11:37):

Yes, absolutely. So we are the customer's strategic and supportive partners throughout the length of our partnerships. From the onboarding process, we're going to make sure to close all the gaps by becoming a bridge between our clients and all of the Better Manager teams to make sure that their goals and objectives are accomplished. And as well, once a program is implemented, we will have a walkthrough session where we're going to show them their Insights dashboard, which shows them the data about their Better Manager engagement. But we also have frequent check-ins where we're going to meet with them and review the insights, the data, the feedback, and help them out in any way that we can. And for our larger programs that we deliver, we have a program debrief meeting where we're going to share results and trends in order for our clients to take informed decisions on the next steps for their ongoing staff development.

Wendy (12:45):

And you use all the tools so well at Better Manager to show them the dashboard and show them the feedback. We want to make sure that that's out there and that's just so important to people because we're working on a big ROI study now, return on investment so we can help companies see if we invest in some of these things, it's really going to make a difference to the people that we serve, and we're going to be moving up the skills of all of our managers. So the work you do is so important towards that as we go into the future.

Kate (13:17):

Wendy? Sorry, I just would add in that one of the things I think about for the customer success managers, they wear a lot of hats. They're project managers, they make the onboarding smooth and easy. That's what I would say. They sort of extend that learning and development or whoever we're working with and just make it easy to get into the programs, track them, get information, but also the other thing they do for us as a company is they bring the customer's voice back to us. So it's a critical role they play where they can really give us insights, what's working, what's not, what could we do better? So I think as a Better Manager believes in this cycle of feedback, they also really help educate the rest of us on what else do we need to do for us programmatically with our product, with our approach to the people we work with. And so they bring a lot to the organization and they also keep a lot of plates spinning at the same time.

Wendy (14:08):

Yes, that's such a good point, Kate. Yeah, thanks for putting that in there. And I don't think we understand exactly what people do during a day in any of our roles, but I think Rafael can kind of give us what's a day in the life of being a customer success manager.

Rafael (14:27):

So we pretty much spend a hundred percent of our time actively thinking about our clients or our customers or meeting with them or just actively thinking of being great partners for them. So we know what their needs are, what their challenges are, how can we help them. We meet with several people throughout the day, which also entails internal meetings because not a day goes by in which we don't meet with the sales team or the programs team or the product team because as Kate mentioned, we need to bring the voice of the customer back to the company and what their struggles are and what they want to achieve. So pretty much a hundred percent of our day, we're actively thinking about all of our customers.

Wendy (15:07):

And I see that in action all the time. And one of the pieces of our culture is about being collaborative. And when you talk about making sure that you meet with sales and you meet with product and you meet with anybody in coaching, it makes such a big difference. And Rafael, what surprised you when you first started at Better Manager?

Rafael (15:27):

Something that was a great surprise when we started was how much we really practice what we preach here at Better Manager. We did different programs like disc, like Clifton strengths, just to really get to know each other better and to understand how can we work as a team better and more efficiently. And we also all worked with a personal one-on-one coach, and that was an incredible experience. So when we say that our mission is to help everyone thrive at work, it's not only an external mission, but an internal mission as well.

Wendy (15:57):

I love that you get coaching from a Better Manager team member because then you can speak to that experience, you know what it is. And I don't think in many companies, everybody has that opportunity. And Kate, you've worked so hard with your team developing such a strong culture and doing such fun things too. Can you talk a little bit about that and your management philosophy?

Kate (16:22):

We do have a lot of fun, which Better Manager is a hundred percent remote. So actually having fun is hard to figure out sometimes. So early days, Rafael was mentioning, we first started from a place of how do we come to trust one another? We're in different countries, we haven't met face-to-face ever, and we're a really coalesced team. But that started with first, let's do values exercises. Who are we? Who are you? How do you want people to work with you? When we did the Clifton Strengths finder, what are Rafael's strengths I should know about as a manager versus Luis? And they come with different strengths to the team, and I value that. And so I can give them, both of them own different projects for our team that are based in the strengths that they have. And in that way, they really thrive at those jobs naturally good at them.

(17:11):

But I learned that from doing Clifton StrengthsFinder. And I'd say the other thing that I really believed strongly in early in creating the team was how do we create transparency? And also how do we build this idea that feedback is welcome? So the CSMs are now currently in a process where they're watching each other's calls, giving each other feedback, they're reading each other's notes saying, what could they be doing better? And they are asking for feedback from one another, and I'm not even in that loop. I don't need to be. They can give each other feedback, talk about how they handle things. So they've built a feedback loop internally themselves. And also I wanted to be on a team where I wasn't building it by myself. So I think there's this mistake if I'm going to lead a team, I have to do everything on my own.

(17:58):

The ideas have to come from me and then I'm going to implement them. My belief is the team can come up with ideas, we'll discuss them and then we'll build it together. I do keep my eye on the strategic vision of customer success. I recently went to a conference out there just to see what are people doing. What are we missing? What more could we be thinking about? But I knew I would bring those ideas back to the team and we'd discuss them and figure out what makes sense to us, what do we want to do next to push this forward? And so that's been a real gift of having a team to work with for me. And then the fun, I mean, I think I might have to turn this over to Luis and Rafael. I mean, they really brought the fun and it is so much fun. And I think once you have that fun together, when a mistake’s made, you come to somebody else and say, oh gosh, I did this. Could you help me? There's no fear of not having that connection, so I'll turn it over to them. But I've loved that they've helped to build a really fun culture in this team.

Wendy (18:55):

Yeah, it's a fun culture and I hear so much about the trust because, and this is what we coach managers about all the time. If you know the people on your team, well them personally, you're much more able to be able to help them move forward. And also the things that you say, Kate about delegation, it's like you don't have to, being a leader doesn't mean everything. Being a leader means you help people move ahead. And that's the beauty of it. And unfortunately, some managers still don't have that. They think, oh my God, I'm supposed to know everything. But the best thing a leader can say is, I don't know. Let's figure this out.

Kate (19:34):

And they often have great, I mean, they bring great ideas and you miss out if you don't have that. We also do professional development every quarter of the year, and they pick those goals and we check in and see if they're working on 'em and how I can support them so they can also see growth in their role over time, which I also find fun because you see them put new challenges in front of themselves, and that's part of our professional development trainings we do here at Better Manager. How do you encourage people to keep growing in the roles they have today? And that's also been a fun part of our work together.

Wendy (20:05):

Yeah. So when you hear about this culture, when you experience this culture, Rafael and Luis, how does it impact your day-to-day? Rafael, will you start us on that one?

Rafael (20:17):

Sure. And I'll follow up with what Kate mentioned about transparency. I really do feel that that radical transparency that we have within the team has brought us to a culture of excellence because if we ever make a mistake, if something doesn't go as planned, we feel comfortable bringing it back to the team and not passing the blame onto someone else, not sugarcoating the situation. We really feel, and we know that mistakes are allowed, it happens, and we appreciate the feedback that we'll get. And I feel that trust that Kate really focused on building when she was putting the team together, brought us to this space where we feel invited to talk about our struggles and to really improve and constantly improve our process, the way we work, the way we interact with one another with customers. So definitely that transparency.

Wendy (21:05):

Yeah, transparency. Transparency is so important. It's really creating that psychologically safe space so that people can be themselves and can say, yeah, I need help on this. Luis, what would you add to this?

Luis (21:19):

Well, as Rafael mentioned, Better Manager has a great company culture, and I love the fact that we live and practice it on a daily basis. In our team, Kate and Rafael, they've done a great job putting together many team activities that help us come together as a group. We get to know each other in a more personal level, and that just makes us a stronger team. We have coffee chats, team lunches, holiday celebrations, podcasts, discussions, team trivia. We film ourselves and send vlogs, and we've even created our own Breal Slack channel. And I've been fortunate to work in several remote environments, and by far, this is the best opportunity I've had to feel the closest to my remote team, which that makes a huge difference.

Wendy (22:14):

Yeah, it's going to be an exciting day when the three of you get to meet in person.

Luis (22:19):

Yes, absolutely. We can't wait.

Wendy (22:21):

And as an organization that we were born to be virtual so that we could really serve people all over the world, and our team is all over the world. That's one of the things now that the pandemic is over that everybody longs for in the future. So hopefully that will be in our future at some point. And Kate, what's the impact you would say that the customer success team has had on the customers that we serve?

Kate (22:46):

So I think primarily we're often matched with the chief people officer, the head of learning and development, but we work with other heads of areas, heads of sales, marketing, and one of the things I think we do is that our team can almost act as an extension of them in terms of accomplishing their goals. So when we're working with the chief people officer or the head of l and d, their goal really is how do they empower their staff to do the best they can at their job? And sometimes they're faced with limited time, limited money, and often a large pool of people they need to train and support. So I think one of the things our team can do is partner to figure out what are you already doing internally that's working well for you, and where do you see the gaps or what are your particular pain points at the moment to really think about what we can offer as an organization that would best suit them in a way that would be cost effective, but still really drive results.

(23:46):

So I think what we end up seeing with the companies we work with as a customer success team is that that partnership leads to strong outcomes for them. And what we really want to do is show that at the end of the day, investing in this kind of work really as a return, that's a profit for companies that at the bottom line can get impacted, that their culture improves, the work improves. And then you see all of the work elevated, you see teams functioning better, you see managers managing better, and then at the end of the day you see better business outcomes. So I really hope our work is at that partnership, but all the way through to really seeing outcomes for the customers we work with that are positive business outcomes for them.

Wendy (24:30):

And that's really what's most important, isn't it? That we want a company to have better business outcomes. One of our client companies said, oh my gosh, I don't consider Better Manager at all a vendor. I consider them a part of our team. And I would cut other things, even people maybe in the organization just so I wouldn't have to cut Better Manager because we are an extension of them. So when people talk about us like that, it shows that what we're doing all around is really working. So I want to skip to what's the biggest lessons that you've learned so far, Luis? Would you start us on that? What's the biggest lesson you've had since you've worked with Better Manager?

Luis (25:14):

As you shared in my bio, Wendy, I come from the call center industry. I was there for a very long time, and in there they have a motto where time is money. So I've always been stressed about respecting people's time, and I would only schedule meetings when it was absolutely necessary. However, under the guidance of Kate, and with the help from my peers like Rafael, I've learned that in order to foster strong relationships, it requires embracing the human aspect.

Wendy (25:51):

Absolutely. I think when companies don't do that, they miss out on a lot. It just is not as successful. People want to be seen, just like people want to be seen on teams, people in companies want to be seen. And Rafael, what would you add to that?

Rafael (26:07):

I'd say my most powerful lesson I've learned so far, I can attribute to Karen Ven, our VP of coaching who you had interviewed in the past. I had reached out to Karen because I wanted to sharpen my coaching skills just because I managed so many relationships both internally and externally as well, that I figured those skills would come in handy. And she gave me this piece of advice that really changed the way that I show up to all interactions, and it is to always assume good intentions. This has helped me just to hope and expect the best of people and not to make assumptions about why someone's doing something or about others' intentions when they're interacting with me. And that has really changed every interaction that I've had since she told me this. It really has become one of those life models going forward. So I really appreciate that from Karen. Oh,

Wendy (26:57):

That's great. And we all know Karen. Bens is terrific at what she does leading all of our coaches and that sage advice she comes out with all the time. If we have a question about something, Karen says, well, let's always assume good intentions and not assume that something else is happening, and then that will always move you in the right direction. Kate, do you want to add anything to that of what you've learned so far?

Kate (27:22):

I mean, I would say I feel like I learned something every day, and that's one of the biggest lessons for me is just be open to what you can learn. I've found that every time I think I've hit a limit, if I'm open-minded about it, then I can go past it. And I think the lesson for me is just feedback is a gift. Figuring out what you can do better, listening to your team. And one of the biggest lessons for me is if you can dream it, you talk to people about it, you can build it and do it. And that's such an empowering feeling that we can really move this company forward in positive ways just by coming up with new ideas and working together to get them done. And we have such nice partners to collaborate with across the organization that it's really been a great lesson for me to just know there's always more to learn.

Wendy (28:14):

It's really a life lesson for all of us that we can all keep learning and growing. And speaking of that, what's your vision, Kate, your goal for the CS team in the future as you continue to build this, as we grow further and further up as an organization?

Kate (28:32):

Well, I'd say the team likes to dream big. So when we have conversations, we do think about a big future for all of us. And of course, we're not immune to all of the discussions around ai. How can we use it to help our customers make the onboarding process smoother, answer their questions more efficiently? And we're always thinking about how can we make getting into Better Manager programs, onboarding and the entire experience really add value to the customers we work with. So the future I see for customer success is really when I think of it as just expansive. I think about hiring people who continue to have that level of emotional intelligence. We need to really understand our customers, and I think about what tools can I give to them so they can elevate their work out of any kind of mundane tasks so they can really spend their time on building those relationships, having those important conversations alongside our sales team, programs team and product teams, and really give our customers the best possible experience they can.

Wendy (29:39):

Well, that's a great vision for the future. And we are so lucky to have the three of you who are able to think so big and think about how we can always be making things better and different. And we've got such a great engineering team and a great product team and a great program team. So with everybody working together, it's really going to make a difference for the people we serve because we want everyone to thrive at work, and that includes HR managers and learning and development managers. They have a tough job these days. The economy is really, everybody's being impacted, and we want to make sure that we can support them. We can find cost effective solutions for them so that they can really take care of their people and their people will grow. And then when their people grow and their managers grow, it really will make even a much bigger difference in companies. So is there any last words? Is there anything as we're closing up that you would like to say that you didn't say before? Either of you?

Kate (30:42):

Just thank you. It was a pleasure to be here today and really it's great to be here with three of my favorite people to work with and just a pleasure to do this with you. So thank you.

Wendy (30:52):

Oh, well, thank you all. And I think everybody that's listening will be able to see that at Better Manager. We really care deeply, and I think that's a lesson that everybody needs to understand that it's not just about, it is about business because we want people's business to get better, but we also want to meet people where they are. And I think you can hear from talking to this wonderful customer success team that is in the forefront of their mind all the time. It's been a pleasure to be with you all, and thank you, Kate, Luis and Rafael for being with me today.

Luis (31:29):

Thank you for having us.

Wendy (31:33):

Thank you for joining us today. For more information, show notes and any downloads from today's podcast, please visit https://www.newlevelwork.com/. We would also be so appreciative if you'd write a review, go on to https://www.newlevelwork.com/review and you can write a review on your favorite podcast app. It makes a big difference because we want to really grow managers and leaders around the world, and we need your help. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

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