The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Leadership Strategies for Employee Retention

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 37

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A company is like a tree—its roots representing the people and their connections. If the roots are weak or disconnected, the tree cannot stand strong. In this week's episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I’m joined by Roxanne Derhodge, a registered psychotherapist, corporate consultant, and bestselling author. With over 20 years of experience, Roxanne has worked closely with senior leaders to enhance resilience and implement effective mental health strategies within organizations.

Throughout our conversation, Roxanne shares her powerful insights into how authentic leadership and strong relationships are crucial to keeping teams connected and thriving. We explore the biggest challenges leaders face in retaining employees, how workplace dynamics are shifting in a remote world, and why employee well-being should be at the core of leadership decisions.

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Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonnell, and this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, make sure you hit that subscribe button. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel. And if you didn't know, I do have a YouTube channel. You can watch it all back as well. If you know any friends, family, or any business groups who would benefit from this episode or any other episode, please make sure to share it with them. So today I am delighted to be joined by Roxanne Derhodge. Roxanne is a registered psychotherapist, corporate consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, Best selling author and international podcaster with over 20 years experience, she works with senior leadership to enhance their resilience and assist companies with their corporate mental health strategies, Roxanne. You're very welcome.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, thanks for having me, Louise. I know it's been a bit of back and forth with you being across the pond, like we say, but I pleasure and every, all the, a little nicks along the way, but we're finally together. So thanks for having me.

Louise McDonnell:

Thank you so much for making the time to be here. Do you want to maybe start by giving everybody a little insight into your journey so far?

Roxanne Derhodge:

So my journey, I think started just growing up in Trinidad and Tobago. So I grew up in the Caribbean and I think I recognized that disconnection was a real thing. I think I had some, Primary understandings of it. I grew up in a very connected family, but within that family there. There was some inconsistency. So I start to recognize as a child and the middle child of 6 children is like, I have to figure out a way to be able to, you know, quote, unquote, find my unique identity to get the needs met that I had. So connection was you know, middle child syndrome. I don't know how many people listening could relate. So I figured that out. I'd really just loved, you know, connecting and talking. And and I, I often say that at that point, I think at 11 years old, I thought, well, this is kind of a thing. Now I grew up in a very traditional culture with the British school system doctor, lawyer, engineer, nurse, you know, and I'm like, I don't, I don't think I fit any of those. And I said, what if they can like people would actually pay you to help people and at that, you know, little tween brain, I think I kind of conceptualized it and eventually decided to my parents sent me abroad to study psychology in Toronto. And that's how my path began starting to go to school and then, do frontline work as a psychotherapist.

Louise McDonnell:

That was amazing at the age of 11, that you had that insight.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, I think, you know, sometimes you don't know, right. Cause I had friends, we laugh because we're all kind of the brats of the seventies, like they call us because we all went all over the world. Actually, one of my best friends went to the Royal Academy of Surgeons to become a physician. And we don't, you know, you realize how young you are and you don't know, then you think, you know, right. And she, you know, we're all finishing at 21, which like now you think what 21 year old would know but she used to pass out in the watching your father do operations when she was 11. And guess what she's doing today. She's an eye surgeon. So you never know what, what things kind of come about and you have these ideas to be able to want to do something. And then in my case, it ended up being something that actualized for me.

Louise McDonnell:

And so tell me a little bit more about your work.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, my work started frontline with doing trauma responses as a first responder with the Metro Toronto Police and you know, kind of meandered from specialties and addictions complex PTSD and then marriage and family therapy. And just kind of touching like every, most new grads do. And then eventually started to work more in corporate strategy relatively early. And loved it because I could actually kind of start to look at what kept people healthy. and in this case, my role in the executive strategy was what did people need to have happen to stay healthy. And at work, so looking at the end of prevention versus kind of the unwell employee. So I kind of started working in that field. And it's really quite fascinating that you could kind of benchmark based on industry based on demographics, based on sector and 24 7 services that you can actually see. What the demographics of the presenting issues for people being unwell were, and kind of grafted out to create plans. So that's the fascination part of it. And, you know, the analytical part of my brain really loved it, right. Cause we could look at, you know, banking and see, you know, kind of what were the luls, what were the primary concerns people would go off with? How long would they be off? If you were to intervene with prevention, that in fact, you could cut. Yeah. The time the return, keep them at work and keep them healthy. And in fact, save the company of course, massive amounts of dollars. So that's the part that really ignited a spark in me to be able to help at a different level.

Louise McDonnell:

That is actually fascinating. So you can tell nearly down by the sector, where people are going to potentially get beyond well, be not happy, either go off work or leave.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Right, like, say, for instance, something like law, right? I mean, something that we all can understand. So, you know, lawyers in Canada, I've worked with the law society across Ontario, which is our province. And they could not retain female lawyers within 5 to 7 years of them starting in the field, because naturally, let's say they were going into having a family with the work life balance concerns. Were, you know, sometimes their hours were 60 to 80 hours. And anybody that really wanted to have more than just a job and maybe had to have a life and more mothers really decided to use their feet and not stay in the field. So the law. You know, how to look at if they are wanting the perspective of female lawyers what could they do? What should they be considering as a preventative measure to be able to obviously attract every team, female lawyers through this work life kind of misbalance I'm going to say, so that you don't lose them completely.

Louise McDonnell:

And tell me, was there anything then out of the stats that you were looking at that surprised you? Anything stood out to you over the years?

Roxanne Derhodge:

relationships are always number one, that the concerns are right. So hence, why am I foray into what I ended up doing. So when I left consulting, I thought, you know, what is it that we're all striving for? Right. We're all striving for connection. We're all striving to get along, you know, better at work at home. and In our communities, all those things, so it's ultimately that what we found across nationally for the company that worked with that 65 percent of people presented were with around relationship concerns. So it either could be work related, which showed us lower at that time. I think since you know, the pandemic that would have shifted in numbers, but 65 percent of people that presented to a service like for relationship related concerns.

Louise McDonnell:

Wow. Okay. Yeah. And you mentioned the pandemic there, like how has that impacted or is still impacting us today?

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, I think, you know, when you're in mental health and you've picked the trajectory that I did years and years ago, it's a really good way to clear a room in that most people don't want to talk. They want to talk about mental wellbeing, but you know, on the counter side of mental wellbeing is mental, Unfitness or mental illness, so I think what has happened since the pandemic is we've created unfortunately, with some unfortunate things, the capacity to recognize that we're no longer in the environments where we're going to break a leg or you know, get into most accidents, which are generally physically on the body. But in fact, it's a visible psychological strains on us today with most of what we do. I think of what you do or what I do. We're not doing much, you know, quote unquote, physical heavy lifting, but we're doing a lot of psychological and emotional lifting in our careers. So I, now I think it has created a space for people to actually start to say, how are you doing? not how are your KPIs? How are your key performance indicators? How's your bottom line? But recognizing that your human capital is really the core fundamental thing that you need to keep. Your eye on because the healthier people are not just physically, because the mind and the body is the same. So I think we can have more of those conversations without don't want to talk about anything personal to be able to introduce those conversations. And you see a lot of companies today really keeping their eye on what's happening in companies like recently one of a huge company applied a menopause. Policy. Imagine that.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, my God.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Oh, my God. Yeah. So again, we're, we're keeping our pulse on what's happening with people and recognizes that we want our companies to be productive and attract the right people. You have to create the services that are needed to keep people healthy and prevent them from going off for work or going to your competitor.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. That makes sense. And so. Yeah. you've been working and helping people for many years now, Roxanne, are the problems that you would have encountered 20 years ago, any different to the problems that you encounter today?

Roxanne Derhodge:

I often think, you know, when I think of my grandparents and they go, well, I don't know how you guys are going to cope today. And then we think of our children that I don't know, Louise, if you have children, I have a 23 year old and I'm thinking, how is he going to cope? You know. we are people and there are always problems. I think in today's society, though what the issue is, disconnection is becoming more normative. So that is what I think is the biggest concern, and, I know you, did you grow up in Ireland? You must've grown up in Ireland. Yeah. Well, you know, kind of the basic things. Like I think if I grew up in the Caribbean, you know, food, The family system and, I still had a mom at home and, you know, it had structure and you had, afterschool activities and stuff like that. But today, if you think about most about the work environments now how many people are actually leaving home? Right. Are they connecting and they do the basic fundamental things like problem solving or dealing with concerns with people that aren't like them? Are they communicating? what's really going on? And a lot of the companies with younger people, I find that it's harder for them to discuss things. Openly because they've not have had as much practice say as us that maybe got thrown outside. And like, you know, the old joke is don't come back until they like the streetlights are on. Cause we were out there problem solving, fighting, you know trimming trees. Jumping streams. Will I make it to the other side? Well, right. You know, having garden fights like I did with my siblings and, and, you know, warfare and strategy, we were learning all those things while all the while, you know, being outside. And I think with the digitization that's created a lot of disconnection where we have people, valuing who they are based on, some piece of celebrity that. You know, is morphed into, a superhuman that looks perfect all the time. And we have the younger generation now comparing and having a lot more depression and anxiety because of these unfair comparisons.

Louise McDonnell:

This is so true. suppose you've touched on it there, like a social media, obviously, how do you see that impacting people?

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, it's unfortunate, right? I think it's kind of like, you know, when extracurricular activities used to be the babysitter, right? And now it's social media, unfortunately, and, you're invested going to you know, out to, A walk in the park or out in the mall and not seeing a, three year old with an iPad in their stroller so that's, what's unfortunately happening. Connection is being lost and as human beings that were mammals, right? We need the capacity to connect with real life. human beings. And I think unfortunately with what's happening is, you know, I was coaching a, younger employee yesterday and he literally says his pastime other than working is gaming. And so the basic fundamentals and he's having trouble at work because he doesn't know how to quote unquote, connect let's use the word, make friends. To get along. So some of the basic things that I'm thinking that I would have taught my, eight year old just bought from, okay, you didn't, you know, you didn't get picked for the hockey team, go out there and try to do your best. And, you might have a bit of a tumbleweed with the people on your hockey team. You're gonna have to figure it out. This young man, you know, hadn't done it. And was kind of in college and university when the pandemic happened, got into a job, kind of missed that space, got disconnected from friends. And now his kind of 25 year old group aren't getting together as much and now he's in the workplace and feels displaced. So you're getting a different kind of concern now say, compared to when I was 25, which, you know, was a different time.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. God, you can really see that happening. That kind of disconnection and resilience is another thing as well. I think you see like, years ago, as you said, you would have been told to go and figure that out. And you know, if something happens, it's like, well, you know,

Roxanne Derhodge:

you call me and if it's critical, and you know, but most times as kids, what are you doing? You're

Louise McDonnell:

at one point, I was, somebody was picking on me at school and my mom said, just tell them, get stuffed. And that was it. So I remember I was going back to school and I was like, get stuff, get stuff. But like, you know, nowadays they'd come in and they'd nearly move schools. I think it's not good for the kids because they don't figure out how to build that resilience, you know? so what advice then would you give to anyone who's listening in here now in terms of whether they're a business owner themselves and they have a team of people, I know a lot of people now are working remotely or semi remotely so like what advice would you give to businesses that are in that situation?

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, I think, you know, if you are the owner or leader, it's your job to still know who's working for you. And I guess I would task you with saying, how well do you know them. if you have hired them, if you've never met them, you know, meet them right. And think we've lost the water cooler kind of scenario, Louise, to be honest, where we would just kind of intuit, Hey, Louisa seems a little bit quiet this month or whatever. leader or the owner of the company needs to say, how well do I know people? And am I getting remissed in recognizing that connection is going to look a little bit different? Who's on my team? How old are they? You know, what experiences might they have had? And like let's say, you have a manager, are you relating to that manager to get the right information that you need to understand where people are at? And I think at the end of the day, you know, I talk a lot about ROR, which is return on relationship, which is, um. if you know what's happening in people's lives what you can do is you can meet them where they're at, because I think at the end of the day, most people want to do a great job, but if they're disconnected, and they're feeling that you don't care in some way, and I'm not suggesting any warm, fuzzy kind of rah rah cheerleading, but just knowing, you know, hey, so and so just had, you know, you know, The dog just got put down, for instance, keep that in the back of your mind. And you know, you might do something, if you know, let's say the person's more of quieter and introvert, you might send them a little email or something saying he thought about this must be tough, just because people want to know that you care. And I think at the end of the day, that's what you're trying to do. What is the pulse of your team? okay, are they are they hitting the metrics that you need for productivity and innovation? Okay. if, even if they are, What do you need to know that maybe you don't know? And I think that's what most CEOs that are successful or owners of companies, they can. Walk onto a floor in this case, it could be a figurative floor or a digital floor and be able to have people not stop conversation. It's like when the boss would show up and enter a meeting room. What would happen? We'd know the pulse of a boss because that conversation would shift. If that boss wasn't kind of liked, if that particular leader was liked people kind of. Would include them. They would say, Oh, yeah, we were just talking about X, Y, Z, and the new shift in the, the I. T. system and the difficulties and they would kind of flow with the conversation. I think as a leader, you still have to do the same things and think who haven't I seen lately. How are you running your meetings? Are you using icebreakers? Are they getting to know what's going on with you? Or are you so shiny and bright? Thanks. You know that quite literally they're having limbs fall off because they're so stressed and you're looking like everything's a okay Because if you're not stressed and the company is stressed, they're thinking well, it must be me So maybe I should just kind of stuff it all in and where's that going to go? That's going to go to their mental well being and the level of what they're going to be able. They're going to give you what they call. You know, I don't know if you've ever heard the term presenteeism, which is, I'm going to show up. I'm going to, you know, do what was expected of me, but you're not going to get any more, right? You want people to be fully and optimally available to function as best as they possibly can within your teams.

Louise McDonnell:

Hmm. Yeah. That's very interesting. And I suppose, yeah. it really just has changed so much in recent years with remote working, with social media and AI is, now beginning to come into our lives more and more. What do you think about that?

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, AI is an interesting one you know, and I often, again, I talk about authenticity and I say, you know, what we want even more is we want even more authenticity now with AI. Right. now I don't know if you see the captions, not written by AI written by so people are now qualifying with a lot of things. I don't know if you've seen a lot of that. And, conversations like this. People are going to want more. They're going to want to know who you are. They're going to want to know how you tick, why you tick. So I think being yourself and being real is even that much more important. I'm not saying AI is great at augmentation to advance, to do research. But at the end of the day, your voice should never get lost in you know, what your, Primary values are within your business. Why did you start your business? What is the service you're trying to offer and how are your values in alignment with that? AI should supplement that, but not take over. So if someone goes onto something, it's like you and I with our podcasts and they're like, Louise doesn't talk like that, or Roxanne would never say X, Y, Z. Then people are going to start to mistrust that you're not being as transparent as you need to be. So I know I use it with a lot of my team and we use it in different parts of my business. But at the end of the day, it has to be in alignment with what my brand is, which is focusing on relationships and the impact on people's mental wellbeing.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And I know you have your book there. You were, we were just looking at it. So tell us a little bit about your book.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well, I've written two. This is the second one. It's for, for those that have video, it's called ROR, Return on Relationships, Amplify Your Authentic Leadership to Build More Resilient Teams. So that was launched last year, and it's to work with leaders. And I think, Any of us could be a leader. Think about it. It's not that you have to have a massive team. You are leading when you go out to, you know, drop off, you know, the child to the baseball game and you're part of that team. You're, you're leading in some way. So the book was launched with the concept that things like decision making, communication. connection are so very for fundamental. So there's 5 areas that leaders work through because I'm of the complete belief that if you ask in our capacity leading, if we're not aware of ourselves and our internal space, how can we effectively lead? Right, so if I'm you know, my stress signature is worse at the year and a month end and nobody can talk to me. I need to kind of be aware of how I come across to others and what kind of things I can do to address that because I can't like, kind of. Cut down people a couple of pegs and then come back Monday. Say, Hey, how's everybody? Did you have a great long weekend? Cause I'm, you still have people left in the shrapnel and they're like still pissed off about the fact that you were so rude on Friday. So I think it's that awareness. So the whole concept of the book is that in those five areas, we have responsibilities as leaders to take care of our internal space and there that concentric circle. Kind of comes off us. And then in turn, what are others saying about you? Are they saying what you want to hear when you enter the room? Or are they truly having the feeling that, you know, Louise is a really, really good communicator, but when she's under stress, she's not so good at decision making. You want the real core space of what people need from you, not what you think you need to hear from them to get them to be able to be productive and part of your team.

Louise McDonnell:

So you talk about the five factors. What are the five factors?

Roxanne Derhodge:

So awareness, communication, connection balance processing, which is decision making and recognition.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay, great. And so the book takes you through those five.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Every one of them, and it goes through an introspective lens of understanding it. So if you were to work through it as a team or within yourself as one to one coaching, what you would do is you'd come up with a heartbeat model of leadership. So you'd kind of know your own leadership internally and what kind of things you want to implement. And as the leader is going through this, the team is benchmarking how the leader is doing. So let's say you do the decision making we're, we're checking how you're doing with your team. Around your decision making as you go through that particular module, and then eventually we, we train the teams on the different modules so that they are aware of what, what you've been exposed to, but also for them to then start to think about what are they like in those areas and what do they need to enhance to be able to get back to be in alignment with the vision of the company. So, again. If you have misalignment, if people don't get your excitement about this new product launch if they don't see how they fit in that cog along the way that disconnects happen. So we want to kind of get leadership more in alignment with people are at, and then, you know, it gives you something palpable to work with, with someone let's say they freeze under when they have to make, Big decisions, what do they need from you as a leader to be able to facilitate that space? Because that could make the difference between the breakdown of a launch or it could be the best thing that could happen. So, again, you want to enhance who's great the skills that they're good at. Oh, that's great. We're not going to touch those. What are the areas that they're kind of struggling with? And then that's when the leadership or leader within that company is going to work to figure out what skill enhancements do they need? And what is it that they need different from who manages them or if it's from you as the leader. So, so you can kind of set those goals with them and it becomes collaborative. The goal setting, it becomes collaborative. It's not a one down kind of autocratic. These are the goals, but what is it that you need from me collaboratively so that we can create that, you know, goal together this quarter or this month to be able to progress along.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay. And I suppose the whole idea then is to get everybody in alignment with the values of the company. So the company becomes.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Absolutely. And if somebody is not in alignment, you're thinking, okay, what's happened Did we feel slighted? is there a feeling that there's nepotism is there's the feeling like, you know what, every time there's issues going on with Jim and Jane, Jane gets her way because she's a more extroverted, but. the other person who's introverted doesn't say much and I could look in our team meetings and say, well, it doesn't matter because I see what happens. Jane wins every time. So it's really for the betterment of, making sure that everybody has what they need for that common vision. And if pieces are missing, what's going on, that becomes, that should become your hypothetical stance to say, Hmm, Roxanne's disconnected. She was always, self driven and could get things done. I was giving us ideas and lately she's just like, she's just doing it, but she's a turn of the exploration or excitement what's happening there. And then the more that you get to know about that, it may have nothing to do with the company. That's one thing that you get them, obviously whatever sports they need, but if it's within the company, that's where you're, Like needs to go on with what, what do I need to facilitate what this person needs?

Louise McDonnell:

Okay. And I presume that goes back to what we spoke about earlier on in terms of retention of employees and, you know, making sure that there's less absences from work, that kind of thing as well.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Absolutely. And if people go off, you don't want the recycling door, the revolving door. Right. So it's got, you know, my short term, it's, two and a half months and I go off and I don't make any change. And I come back and it next quarter is something else. So how are you really addressing it? So that it doesn't cost you because when you lose a really good employee, if you were to look at the numbers, it's almost, they say it's almost about Six months salary, a replacement cost to get a really good employee again. So to really value the people that you know, are good and, you know, give them recognition, like, have your, check ins and, have those kudos in different ways, the extrovert wants to be told how great they are, but the introvert, you know, wants to be Is going to, you know, be scampering if you bring them up on a Friday meeting, but there's other ways that you can also, you know, let that person know how much you value them with something significant, but quiet. So again, I think it's knowing people and what you need.

Louise McDonnell:

Brilliant. This is such great advice. And, as you said, we're all leaders, we're all leaders in some shape or form. You might have a large company, you might have a small company, but in your life, you're leading relationships. So this advice has been, so worthwhile. And thank you so much for sharing all your expertise with us. So if somebody wanted to find you, Roxanne, where's the best place?

Roxanne Derhodge:

Well my website roxanderhodge. com and I'm, all socials, but I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. So just roxanderhodge on LinkedIn as well. If people wanted to do a really quick quiz to see how authentically connected they are to their relationships, they could just go to roxanderhodge. com for a quiz and they'll be able to kind of do a really quick mini quiz a minute or two. And they could do it for work. Or home or both and we'll send you back a little mini report with some recommendations and potentially next steps to consider so they can check that out. Oh,

Louise McDonnell:

that sounds really, really, really interesting. Well, thank you so much for that again. And I look forward to checking out the quiz myself.

Roxanne Derhodge:

Awesome. Awesome. thank you