John Barrand, CHRO of the state of Utah joins this episode to discuss the importance of speaking civilly and disagreeing in a respectful manner. John has been integrated in the Disagree Better campaign that is being spearheaded by the governor of Utah. Aly and John discuss how important this campaign is, in conjunction with Civility, in a time of political and social challenges.
John Barrand, CHRO of the state of Utah joins this episode to discuss the importance of speaking civilly and disagreeing in a respectful manner. John has been integrated in the Disagree Better campaign that is being spearheaded by the governor of Utah. Aly and John discuss how important this campaign is, in conjunction with civility, in a time of political and social challenges.
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Aly Sharp:
Hello and welcome back to Career Compass, a podcast from SHRM. I'm going to be your host today, Aly Sharp. Career Compass covers pertinent topics in HR that are relevant to students and emerging professionals. Each episode we're joined by an industry expert to share their knowledge and advice with you.
John Barrand is the Chief Human Resources Officer for the State of Utah. John was appointed by Governor Cox to lead HR, effective in 2021. John has served as the Director of Human Resources for Backcountry.com based in Park City, Utah, and both in Livent and Rocket Ranch Productions in Chicago. He also has HR experience at Allstate Insurance and Procter & Gamble. He has a master's degree in Human Resource Management from Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, and a bachelor's degree in Organizational Communications from Brigham Young University in Idaho. Welcome, John.
John Barrand:
Thanks. Let's have some fun.
Aly Sharp:
Alrighty. So, we are going to jump right into our conversation today. You've had quite an extensive HR career. Could you give me a brief rundown on how your journey brought you to CHRO for the State of Utah?
John Barrand:
Yeah, let's see here. I think I'm one of the few people that knew pretty quickly in their life what they wanted to do. When I go way back, I actually blame the Boy Scouts of America. I know Boy Scouts has changed a lot lately, but back in the mid '90s, just taking some air badges and learning the power of impacting humans, human behavior, discretionary effort. Sure, the words weren't called that when I was 15 and 16 and I didn't know that I wanted to do HR, but I got pretty laser focused in what I wanted to study. I don't think that's fair, nor do I think it's right all the time, but I definitely stumbled into it early on and kept that direction as I moved forward.
I'll say the next biggest break in becoming an HR professional was I think every American, or any working professional, should have to spend some sort of time in retail or hospitality. I was a server in a restaurant, and we know how that goes in that space if you've been there. Serve the customer, customer's always right, make sure the food's right. It always seems urgent, but it's not the most important, right? We're serving pasta and potatoes, what I used to say. But I became good at serving, so they promote you and I became a bartender. Which was silly because I don't drink, my favorite drink is Diet Mountain Dew. So then once you get out of that, they make you a trainer or you can hire people.
So very early on, 22 years old, I was hiring and training and onboarding new employees in a restaurant business, which high turnover, and it's pretty easy to train respectfully. But it really became a passion, really honed me in during undergrad. I'd say those two things between the Boy Scouts and restaurant service at the age of 22 and 23 were some of the most pivotal moments for me. Ended up opening up about 21 restaurants with the company that I was with. So I hired about 100 people at each location all across America. So, I had hired about 3,000 people before the time I went to grad school and just said, this seems like a lot of fun.
Try to make this a little shorter as I bounce around. You come out of grad school and you think you're going to change the world. That's what MBA, that's what B school teaches you. It's like, oh, you're going to change the world. I was fortunate enough to start at Procter & Gamble, which at the time was a top five consumer product goods company in the world. Super lucky to spend some time and the Procter & Gamble employees across the world that I still keep in touch with were wonderful.
But you also have to start somewhere. I was somewhat of, respectfully, a button pusher. I was managing a process that was very mature, and right when you come out of B school and you're ready to drive recommendations. So I didn't last too long enough space where I thought, again, I've got to find a place to change the world. So, I went to medium, small and mid-sized businesses for a little while and tooled around there, honed my skills with some great organizations in Chicago, a private equity firm. We were flipping in Livent and [inaudible 00:04:02] home company that had national presence. So much fun, so much fun in that space.
Moved to Utah, had no reason to be here. I have family. My aging parents are up in Idaho. I felt like Idaho was just a little too small for my ambition. So I didn't particularly target Idle Falls, Idaho, where I grew up. But instead landed in Salt Lake, had some friends here and just hunkered down. Was about ready to take a job in southern California and a guy named Spencer Cox called me. I wasn't even in the country during the election. I was courting my now wife who is British. I've spent a lot of time in the UK during the time.
So this guy named Spencer Cox called me and said, "Hey, I just won the governorship for Utah." I said, "Oh, good for you." He was like, "I need someone to run my HR team." I said, "I don't think I'm your guy. I don't know if I'm going to be it." We had a 45-minute conversation. My Thai food was cold by the time I got back to it. Hung up the phone and then had to call a couple locals that I really liked and said, what do you think about this? They said, when the governor calls and offers you a job, you take it.
So spent the weekend with at the time my fiance figuring out where we wanted to live as we settled in and accepted the job. It's been a fun four years. I'd say, if you want to directionally ask why or how I ended up being here, it was just the flexibility and growing a skillset that I think is valuable for any organization and external leaders or the public sector leader saw valuable. We're having a really fun time inside the state of Utah trying to go from transactional to transformational as an HR group.
Aly Sharp:
Wow, that is amazing. I'm just sitting here beaming. I'm like, this is so interesting. It's interesting because I think we recorded a few days ago with our chief transformation officer at SHRM and he was like, I got out of school and I knew exactly what I wanted to do and then that lasted exactly one year.
John Barrand:
Sure.
Aly Sharp:
So it's very interesting where you guys are two sides of a different coin where you knew what you wanted to do from the get and he was just like, I'll figure it out as I go. But you both wound up being extremely influential people in the organizations that you serve.
John Barrand:
I think it's the exception, not the norm. I'm happy that it's worked out and I love nothing more than waking up and trying to create more value in the HR nerd kingdom that we get to play. So it's a lot of fun.
Aly Sharp:
I don't know where I thought you were going with that, but I did not expect nerd kingdom.
John Barrand:
Fair enough.
Aly Sharp:
That's a good way to put it. Your current position allows you to be really involved with the Disagree Better Campaign from the National Governors Association. Could you describe what this campaign is all about?
John Barrand:
Yeah, so getting to know Governor Cox, and I do call him Governor Cox, except for when I tell my deprecating story of how I came to meet him, I wasn't too actively involved in the politics of Utah or even nationally, which is a little apathetic for me. In 2020 when he was running for his first four years as governor, governor Cox became really worried about the depolarization, right? He was worried about the deep divisions. If you remember what was happening in 2020, the other day, I was reminded that's four and a half years ago now, deep divisions, the George Floyd murder, COVID had alienated Americans. We had little distractions. So we became really critical of the reaction or lack of reaction to COVID. Governor Cox has publicly spoken about this. He was running, he's a Republican in the state of Utah and he had a democratic candidate he was running against, and he was really positively impacted by Just Mercy, the Bryan Stevenson Equal Justice Initiative at the time. I don't know if you've seen the movie, it was trending pretty heavily at that time. Bryan Stevenson is wonderful.
He said, "You have to get proximate in order to learn." He was really worried that the nation was so divided that we weren't leaning into proximity, right? Proximity gives you insights that you can't learn from a distance. Even though he had a political strategy team that was saying, hey, you shouldn't really engage with your counterpart, he actually zigged when they zagged and they recorded a commercial. So he gave his political opponent a platform, and they recorded a commercial that said, we may disagree on some of the really heavy hitting things in politics, but we will agree to a peaceful transfer of power, which was also topical at the time, and we will agree to disagree better. That was the first time in 2020, and I know I'm getting a smidge along, but this is such an interesting setup for the rest of our conversation.
Someone sent that commercial to the depolarization lab in Stanford. Stanford, they review these things, they see political opponents, [inaudible 00:08:48] good behavior. Right at that time, that's when Governor Cox became the chair of the National Governors Association. So we were getting really good feedback from this campaigning event that had a depolarizing effect on a campaign. Governor Cox is sitting trying to create an initiative. Typically, when you become the NGA chair, you're talking about attacking healthcare, energy, housing costs, right? Like something substantial, meaty, teachers. He was in his strategy sessions. I remember being part of one. He said, "We can't work on this if we hate each other." That's how simple this was. So for his chair initiative, his key initiative, he did double down on this Disagree Better, drew some branding around it. For that year, which we just wrapped up in July this year, it runs from July to July, for that first year of his initiative, we had over 20 different governors record a message regarding the Disagree Better temperature.
We have a majority of the governors working on this. We just recently, as we ended the initiative, it started credentialing. So now employees can actually sign up for credentialing in the Disagree Better. We just had a visit at the end of his term as the chair from President Zelensky who came and spoke about it. Then we also hosted Matthew McConaughey who said, we need to take back the microphone from the extremes and give it back to the 65% in the middle. One of his best lines, he said, "It's harder to sell belief than it is to sell fear, and we need to sell belief that we can all get along." So been intricately involved in the Disagree Better initiative and extremely proud of Utah for leading the way and the depolarization, not only in politics, but hopefully in humanity as well.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. Of course, that is the perfect segue into our question about where this campaign can be seen in day-to-day collaboration?
John Barrand:
That's a great question. We're trying to provide the most impact. So I'm an HR professional who wakes up every day and talks about the most important component of any operating expenses, the human capital. That's why I love hr. We know the most critical component of human capital typically is a manager-employee relationship. Like how old is that adage? So we've really taken the Disagree Better initiative and rolled it into, we have 22,000 employees, we have 3,800 managers, and we've rolled it into using principles. I'll say we did go get our training team certified in the Crucial Conversations framework, which is a wonderful framework. It actually gives employees and managers the skills to step into disagreement rather than around it. Avoiding the conflict grows the conflict.
It teaches that you can disagree and typically have three types of conflict task. Is it the how, relational, is it the who, or just contempt, which seems to be the thing that's happening in politics. I just generally don't like you. We're learning to label those to challenge them and then assess them. We're creating, again, if the manager-employee relationship is the strongest indicator of success in the workforce, we're really trying to challenge what that looks like. We're permeating the business, we're currently teaching 150 managers a very labor-intensive course on how to do this. That's 4% of our manager population. We didn't want to bite off more than we can chew. But I think that's probably how we're impacting most in day-to-day collaboration. I don't have any anecdotes. We actually just kicked this off in July of this year with our classroom setting teaching over the last six weeks. So I don't have metrics for you, but in day-to-day collaboration, we're attacking the manager and employer relationship.
Aly Sharp:
That's amazing. So obviously you have people that report to you or have in the past, and what is one instance of disagreeing better that you have encouraged in your job?
John Barrand:
Yeah. First I think the setup for how you engage in this, and I know that I am walking a line, I know a lot of people listening to this likely don't serve in the politics. I mean that with a capital P, right? Governor Cox is currently working towards a reelection, we're 60 days away from it. I was with him last week in southern Utah at Zion National Park, and we went to a rodeo together and talking about what depolarization looks like. He always frames it wonderfully. You have to remember that right now, the industrial complex has created an industry of hate. There's a political strategy. Now, I mean little P, in making money off of hate.
Every one of us are impacted on a day-to-day basis by someone's brilliant marketing strategy on how to breed contempt in your life. That's why, again, the state of Utah is attacking or being very aggressive in the ideas of social media and the harm on children. I don't mean to have a stump speech in my answer here, but I feel pretty passionate about this. So for me, I wake up every day and I have an obligation, just as any business partner, HR leader that's listening to this podcast, has an obligation to make their agency, their company, their division, whatever it is, better. I have a legal obligation. It's in actually code to ensure that my agencies fulfill their missions. So we have to attack that in government. The strongest way to have something happen is to run a law. The strongest body of government that I work with is the legislative body.
So you're asking me what's one way I've seen Disagree Better work? I gave you all that setup to tell you that working with the legislature can sometimes be extremely cumbersome. I'm not suggesting that the Utah legislator is bad, inefficient or ineffective. However, what I am trying to infer is that I have 104 CFOs and some of them are Republicans, some are Democrats, some are introverts, some are extroverts, some are left-handed, some are right-handed. So imagine trying to make a recommendation that helps fulfill an agency's mission to just one CFO. Well, I have to do it 104 times.
So when it comes to the ideas of Disagree Better, meaning are we aligning on vision? Are we aligning on the mission? Do we understand that the obstacle is still the same? Do we even have the same view of what the obstacle is? Going in with that framework becomes extremely critical to solve. We worked with the Constructive Dialogue Institute, a non-profit that [inaudible 00:15:38] goals to help depolarize, and they helped us stand up a lot of the thoughts that we work with around this training and around this initiative and how we internalize it.
So for me, being the chief HR officer for the executive branch, when I engage with the legislative branch, I don't want you to think that that's a contentious conversation, but we do disagree on how the state should be run. Not always, and maybe not even the majority of time, we're pretty tightly aligned. But when it comes to two years ago, passing parental leave for the first time ever in the state of Utah, when it comes to moving away from a Cola-based organization to a performance-based organization, that incentives are rewarded based on strong performance management. I had a lot of disagreements when I was changing the way the state government was run in the state of Utah. It becomes pretty unique to engage with the legislature.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. I think part of that is probably why we have three branches of government.
John Barrand:
You're right. That's very fair.
Aly Sharp:
It's comforting to know not every big P political conversation is going to be as heated as we tend to see in mainstream media. But flipping to our student audience, being on campus, you're going to be faced with differing opinions every day, whether on social media, just like I said, walking around campus, working your campus job. So what is your advice for keeping a level head and having respectful conversation for those students?
John Barrand:
Yeah, I just want to make sure, again, you understand that polarization is a strategy that organizations go after. So the problem isn't that we've forgotten how to agree. I think the problem is that we've forgotten how to disagree. In so many instances, the world has propped up too many platforms. I mean that as platforms of social media, right? You are a content provider versus a content digester. I think the world needs less platforms and more forums. For me, approaching as a student on a university, as you're experimenting and learning to have stronger opinions and passions, I think one of the best ways to do it is to understand that not everyone needs a platform, but everyone needs a forum. A forum is different. It's an opportunity for others to present ideas and for you to react to them.
Typically, a vulnerable place that also speaks to the idea of getting proximate with the problem or with the topic. It's really easy, of course, to hide behind the keyboard. You're not proximate at all, and you're likely just engaging in hate or vitriol or some form of passion that can't be reacted to.
One of the best examples I have here, and I don't mean to go to this place while I'm talking to students, but we teach Disagree Better in our Utah Correctional facility. We go and teach those principles to inmates who don't have the ability to hide behind a keyboard. We put them in circles and we start talking about topics that are relevant not only to them, but also to the world. When you're proximate with a problem, it's really hard to hate up close. I've never watched anyone win an argument from attacking someone. I've watched a lot of people win from coming to the table with collaboration.
My last thought here would be the Stanford lab studies things called affect polarization. So affect polarization is emotional. It's actually just not how far apart we are in the difference of our conversation, but how far apart we think we are. It's proven that that has more impact on the polarization or disagreement than the actual difference in the idea, is because you wake up and because you're part of a platform R or D, right, or whatever passion you have, and you stand on your platform, you say, they don't think the way I do. Therefore, I hate. When really, typically most of the issues, you're only this far away from each other versus what you believe to be how far you are. I would just encourage students and Americans and employees to make sure you're really dissecting the affect polarization versus what is true in the conversation.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah, I think in layman's terms, at least my understanding is you're projecting, where I have one perception of the conversation and I must think that my boss thinks exactly this way. How would I know that if I don't just talk to her and ask her? So we had this conversation and break it down. Instead of projecting how I assume two of those things that you don't really want to do when you're on campus or at work, you don't want to be assuming you're [inaudible 00:20:54] or assuming anyone's response to you. We are going to round out our conversation today with probably what I'm anticipating is going to be one of the most interesting parts of our conversation, and that is what are your top pieces of advice for students who are getting ready to enter or re-enter the workforce?
John Barrand:
What would I tell kids these days?
Aly Sharp:
Exactly.
John Barrand:
Wow. Well, first of all, I'm grateful for you and we need you not only because of the rising storm of the workforce demographics change, meaning I'm eager to hire you, in a very selfish employee-driven way. We not only need you, but we need you to be excellent. One of the spaces there that I would encourage and give the chance to tell anyone who's about to enter the workforce is approach us, the employers, with a recommender's attitude. So there's a lot of subtlety to getting recommending right. You likely won't be an authoritative decision-making role on your way in. I don't mean that in any other way other than if you join small organizations, the scope of decision-making is greater. That's great. But what happens is you're expected to be an expert at some point of policy or process or content.
So you have tremendous value coming in and making recommendations. I hate the enemy of back in the day, and I think back in the day has a shelf life of about 730 days or about two years. So when I look at my business, anything that's older than two years, we typically really challenge it. So I welcome new hires and new thought to just bring a recommender's attitude. Yeah, I think that'd be the first is learn how to make great recommendations.
Second, I'd say make sure you abandon, as quick as possible, the idea that you're going to know what you're doing in five years. Even though I started by saying I knew exactly what I wanted to do at the age of 15, never in a million years did I think that I'd be working with a governor in the state of Utah. I knew I targeted HR, but as my bio says, I've bounced around from healthcare to consumer product goods to restaurants to government. I love the breadth of experience I'm getting, but I don't let anyone on my team ask, what are your goals in five years? Because I think that's just a false question to ask.
So you can have a directional understanding of where you want to go. But the correlating internal stat that I share is only one in three HR departments are adaptable enough to quickly react to business needs. So if our function isn't set up to adapt in an agile mind, meaning the sum of the parts, and you as an HR professional are the part, if you are set that this is what you need to be doing, you're not going to help me be agile. So come in with that agility mindset of, I don't know what I'm going to be doing three years from now, but I know it's going to be impactful. If you can develop that directionally, you're in for a really fun ride in the HR function.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. As you're speaking, just thinking everyone when I was in college was pushing the five-year plan. What's your five-year plan? Now I'm almost five years out of college. No... Whatever. I'm three years out of college. When I graduated, I was like, oh, for sure I'm going to be leading the company. I'm so brand new. I know everything. Now I'm like, excuse me. Why does it take three years to be promoted? That is just the normal scheme of life and working for corporate America. I'm not saying that I should be running the company. Definitely not. Even though I got my master's recently, which has, again-
John Barrand:
You're ready, though. You're ready.
Aly Sharp:
... again, made me feel brand new. I'm just the greatest gift to SHRM right now. Just having that mindset just pushed down your throat basically for four years in college. It's like, well, okay, well, I'm going to graduate. I'm going to get a house. I'm going to get a car. Then you're like, hold on, because that is not feasible and it's okay. I think that you have to be willing to accept when plans aren't going exactly as you wanted them to and realize that nothing is written in stone unless you can see it written in stone. There's no clauses that say that this agreement can be destroyed or forgotten.
I think that being Gen Z, I have a really hard time accepting that things are not always going to be the way I want them to be. I do think part of that is because of our access to social media and the internet and just, I wish I had time in my life without a phone that I could truly remember because I got a phone when I was in the fourth grade because I was walking home from school. Obviously my mom wanted to make sure I didn't get nabbed.
So I feel like our childhoods have changed so much, and now that's for the better, for sure. Very glad that I had a way to contact my family. But I just became ingrained in technology to the point where now I am like, I need three screens going and sound on all the time to feel like I can function properly and that cannot be healthy. I know I'm not the only one either.
John Barrand:
Yeah, it's really fair. Type A personalities plus Gen. Z, right? I try to remind them, let's just try to obtain type E or type H, engaged or happy. Again, they're actually probably where I use the most these days. Type A has a really hard time letting go of control, and the world has changed. We are in a post-COVID, just like the post-industrial revolution. We're in a post-COVID revolution and none of us know what is next. So you might as well let go of what you'll be doing in 1200 days and try to focus on what the next 30 look like. You're going to find more engagement, more impact, and more joy if you lean in that way. We've got a deep commitment and such a noble cause to step up for those who are entering the workforce. That would be my alignment to new hires is let's go together. But I don't know what the fifth step looks like, but let's have a good ride.
Aly Sharp:
Yeah. I think that is the perfect sentiment to end off this episode of Career Compass. Thank you so much, John, for joining us.
John Barrand:
It's my pleasure.
Aly Sharp:
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