Beverly Kaye
Founder and CEO – BevKaye&Co.
Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em
Episode Summary
I had a fascinating conversation with Bev Kaye, the author of the number one bestselling employee retention book in the world—Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em (over 800,000 copies sold)! We talked about the newly released sixth edition of her book and lessons from her award-winning career.
Check out the “60-Second Preview” of this episode!
Bio
Dr. Beverly Kaye’s name is recognized internationally as a professional dedicated to helping individuals, managers, and organizations understand the practical “how-to” principles of employee development, engagement, and retention. Her books and learning materials have stood the test of time.
In 2018, ATD honored her with their Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing her advanced knowledge and extensive practice across the talent development field, her thought leadership, and her contributions to the profession. ISA (The Association of Learning Professionals) also honored her with their 2018 Thought Leadership Award for her body of work supporting work-related learning and performance has significantly influenced people and organizations. Beverly’s books include Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, Hello Stay Interviews, Goodbye Talent Loss, and Up is Not the Only Way. In 2019, Beverly was recognized by the Institute for Management Studies (IMS) with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Website
https://bevkaye.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bevkaye/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/BeverlyLKaye
Leadership Quote
” We don’t receive wisdom. We must discover it ourselves, after a journey that no one can take from us or spare us.” – Marcel Proust
Get Your Copy of Beverly’s Book!
https://bevkaye.com/books/
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Transcript
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This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.
Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive coaching, masterful facilitation, and motivational speaking.Today, I’d like to talk about how we develop talent in organizations, the talent cycle. I have an expert with me today that says you love them or lose them. That expert is none other than the internationally recognized Dr. Beverly Kaye. Dr. Beverly Kaye is internationally recognized as a professional dedicated to helping individuals, managers and organizations understand the practical how-to principles of employee development, engagement and retention. She has been honored with lifetime achievement awards from two major organizations and has received lifetime achievement awards from major organizations such as ATD – the Association for Talent Development, and ISA, the Association for Learning Professionals.
Dr. Kaye, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, thank you, Eddie. It is a pleasure to be here.
Eddie Turner:
I am simply thrilled to have you here. You are someone who throughout my career I have heard about, certainly, the title of your books but the honor to finally meet you and be with you is truly, truly wonderful. Can you tell my listeners who are not familiar with your name, the few that don’t know, a little bit more about your background?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Sure. I came to this world of Human Resources not in really a planful way, I guess. And that’s sad to say for someone who specializes in career development but I have always been interested in how people choose careers and how they often think there’s one path to a career that I set up in my head that I want and they don’t often have contingency plans. And I spent a number of years as a college dean in elite institutions and I watched really smart kids not be able to make their career go the way they wanted to. And when I had a chance to go back for my doctorate, I chose career development in organizations as my doctoral thesis and I began to look at how organizations do or don’t really grow their people. And out of all of that came my first book which was called Up Is Not the Only Way and I am still singing that song that individuals have to look at multiple ways to move and grow in their careers and the vertical move is simply just one of them. And all the interest in careers got me interested in why people stay and why people go. And I learned that people leave organizations if they don’t see a career path for themselves. And that moved me into the world of engagement and retention. And the book that is most recent and in its sixth edition with like 8,00,000 copies out there is titled Love Them or Lose Them: Getting Good People to Stay and it is about different ways to show that you love your employees even if you don’t use that word. It’s just the best word I know because it means so many things. So, treat your people well and you have a chance of keeping them.
Eddie Turner:
Now, you said a lot there and I want to unpack a couple of those. One of those titles that you mentioned is one that I feel is so important, I think they’re all important, but especially this when you say Up Is Not the Only Way. The subtitle that you have on that book is Rethinking Career Mobility.
Eddie Turner:
And, yes, so many people have been told “Pick a lane. Stay there. Up is the only way to go. And don’t try to be a jack of all trades, don’t try to explore your passions” and other advice that people may give but you say the exact opposite.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Right. I think if we only could separate the word ‘career’ from the word ‘development’. I think when we attach those two words, it starts us thinking about the vertical career path. If we just use the word ‘development’, it’s all about growth. And I can grow in a myriad of different ways. I can grow by moving laterally. I can grow by staying right where I am and growing in place, enriching. I can even grow by moving down into something else that could get me a whole new start in a new area or maybe I’m one of those technical people promoted to management who says “Oh my gosh, this is not what I thought it was. Get me back to my wonderful technical work.” And if organizations don’t realize all those paths and make them viable, then they will lose precious talent.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. And you don’t have to get locked into one career. You can and should have contingency plans. And so, that’s just a fascinating title and the content that supports it. Now, your titles, not just that book, here are some of the other titles. You’ve mentioned Love Them or Leave Them but you also have Love It, Don’t Leave It: Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go. I just simply love these because coming up with the title is perhaps the hardest part of writing a book.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
It is. It is. And I work with a publisher who taught me that the title, not even the subtitle, the title has to tell the story of the entire book. And so, the struggle to find, just looking at the title alone, should teach you the lesson that you want to teach like Up Is Not the Only Way, like Love Them or Lose Them, etc. So, they all kind of do that. And you’re right, it’s the title that the whole book hangs on.
Eddie Turner:
Bev, I wish I knew you when I wrote my first book. My title, I look back at it now, and I’m not as excited about it especially when I look at your titles. So, you’re right. It does tell a story just in the title before you get to the subtitle. And then of course you have that content inside that supports it. Would you say that the titles have played a part in the longevity of your work?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
I hadn’t thought about that but I think so because my major books in career development have stayed alive for four decades. And this Love Them or Lose Them book has been around for 20 years, six editions. So, maybe people remember the title and that gives credence to the book.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed. And sixth edition which just was released, when?
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. So, you just released the sixth edition, 20 years it’s been out, sold over 800,000 copies globally in almost 30 different languages.
Eddie Turner:
Fascinating.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
So, everybody would know how to love them by now, huh?
Eddie Turner:
Yes, you would think so but if they had learned, you wouldn’t have had to make five revisions. So, what’s keeping people from applying this the way they should?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
The age old “I’m too busy” and “I have so much on my plate. I have more pressure than ever. I can’t make time.” It’s like I always think managers have the will but not always the skill. And so, we have to give them the skills in ways that they say “That’s not so hard. I could do that.” So, in all the workshops we’ve done around the globe, I want any manager sitting there to say “Hey, that’s not so hard.” And the same thing with the work we’ve done for employees, I want the employee to say “I could do that. I could try that. That’s not so insurmountable.” So, I love making things practical and memorable and I have the theory but I like to build practical on top of the theory.
Eddie Turner:
So, managers have the will but not the skill. So, you make it practical so that it’s memorable.
Eddie Turner:
And you’ve practiced what you’ve preached because you have had this career yourself, as you mentioned, where you were a professor, where you were a dean and you are now one of the most sought-after thought leaders who spend every week on the road carrying your message near and far.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, I’m one of many thought leaders who do that and I’m lucky that the subjects I’ve picked happen to be evergreen. And so, I thank my lucky stars that they’ve stayed evergreen.
Eddie Turner:
And something else that I noticed when we were talking about your work, the word ‘love’ is prominently featured – Love Them or Leave Them; love it, don’t leave it. You said earlier that that’s just the only word you know how to use. What’s behind that?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, 20 years ago, when we said we wanted the title to have ‘love’, it our publisher said “Can’t you find another word? Do you think that on a business shelf that men will walk in and buy a book on love?” And we said “It is the only word that stands for so much. It stands for recognize them, thank them, reward them, listen to them, acknowledge them.” And on the back of the book, it says “Admit it you love them even if you don’t use that word.”
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
They are your talent. They are your diverse talent. And they are important to you for meeting your own goals.
Eddie Turner:
Well, you were onto something, Bev. And, obviously, time and sales have proven that you were onto something. And our dear friend who we were together at the Marshall Goldsmith annual meeting, the first one in 2020, before the whole world changed, and our dear friend Alan Mulally spoke and you say “Love them or leave them,” Alan said to love them up when he was talking about the work that he did to change organizations.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Right. And I just have to say it’s “love them or lose them.” It’s not “Love them or leave them.” And there’s a big difference because sometimes we lose people and they stay and they are not engaged and they lose their motivation and then staying is not so good.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you for correcting me. And that shows my poor writing because when I wrote my notes, for whatever silly reason, I wrote it wrong. Thank you.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
The employee book is Love It, Don’t Leave It.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
So, give your job a chance. Don’t jump ship before you’ve really thought about why you’re going and what you want elsewhere. So, it’s a very easy mistake to make and plenty of people make it. The other part of the title is Getting Good People to Stay. And I am always amazed just in my own career, my own work how many organizations define good as their top 10%, their high potentials. And I think we have to look at the entirety of our talent market and not just say “Its high potentials that we want to love.” I think there’s buried treasure out there.
Eddie Turner:
That’s a good way of looking at it. Buried treasure.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Buried treasure.
Eddie Turner:
Now, obviously, that comes from the GE world, I spent 10 years at GE, and that was the Jack Welch mantra and people have found years later that maybe that wasn’t the best way of looking at it. So, I really appreciate what you’re saying here.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Good, good.
Eddie Turner:
Well, we are talking to the internationally known author, speaker, thought leader Dr. Beverly Kaye. We are talking about the talent development, career development and her book Love Them or Lose Them: Getting Good People to Stay. It’s a never-ending message that has been sustained for over 20 years.We’ll have more from Dr. Beverly Kaye right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
This is Greg Williams, the master negotiator and body language expert and you’re listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
We’re back, everyone. I’m talking to Dr. Beverly Kaye, an internationally known and recognized, respected authority on what it takes to retain employees, develop employees and she has been talking about this as a keynote speaker, writing about it for over 20 years with her main title Love Them or Lose Them, being translated in almost 30 different languages, more than 800,000 copies have been sold.Well, Bev, before we took the break you were talking about the different books that you have written and what those messages are and one of them that you mentioned was “Love It, don’t Leave It” because sometimes people regret making the decision to leave too soon. I’ve never had that experience. So, tell me what is it that people regret?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, I think they don’t think of everything they’re leaving. I think they don’t think of the camaraderie they’ve built in their organization and their work unit. I don’t think they think about the fact that they’ve learned how to negotiate their own organization, how to get what they need when they need it and take some negotiating. And I think we think we can just jump into the new climate, the new adventure with ease. And it takes time. That’s why so many companies are investing right now in onboarding and re-boarding and all of that. So, I think we do make hasty decisions. And Love It, Don’t Leave It came to be when managers said to us “Is all of this on our shoulders? Are we the ones who have to engage?” and we said “Oh my gosh, no. People have to learn to ask for what they want and engage themselves.” So, it is a two-way street.
Eddie Turner:
Everyone doesn’t know how to ask though. Do you have suggestions?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, it’s interesting, both books are written according to the alphabet with 26 ideas that come from our research and A is for Ask. And the interesting thing for managers is ask your people what you can do to keep them, ask your people what they love most about their job. Don’t ask them what you can do to keep them at the exit interview. So, Ask is primary to every single other strategy. As I said, on the individual side, if you don’t ask, your manager can’t read your mind. So, if you’re finding that the work you’re doing is not using the best of you, then you have to ask and tell what it is you want to be doing more of. So, on both sides, I think, Ask is critical.
Eddie Turner:
I am so glad you brought that out. I have long said, when it comes to exit interviews, that I think you ought to consider having about to exit interviews with people because we wait until a person is leaving and find out what we could have done differently when it’s too late now that talent goes across the street to the competition or in some cases goes out and forms its own competitive organization against this company that they were leaving.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Absolutely. And the other book that’s out there is a book called Stay Interviews. And it’s one that we wrote based on that Ask chapter. So, we say have a stay interview and have it constantly and ask your people why they stay before they come in to say “I’m going.”
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Very important.
Eddie Turner:
And the other reason why I’ve long had strong feelings about exit interviews is that in some cases, the data isn’t really used. The departments that capture it are not following up and saying “Hey, here’s what’s happening with this individual. How can we keep this from happening in the future?” Too often it’s either discarded or discounted.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Exactly, exactly. And in many of the companies that we’ve consulted to, we’ve had managers do Alas clinics like “Alas, we lost him. What could we have done?” and actually talk about what they might have done. And without that debrief, it happens over and over and over.
Eddie Turner:
Indeed, indeed. So, what’s been the best story that’s come back that someone’s wrote you about and told you how reading one of your books has changed your life or how it helped them make a better decision?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
There’s a chapter in Love Them about values. And there is a part of what we do in career development around values. And I’ve had people come back to me, who have been through a workshop and done a values exercise, and say they’ve kept it for years and looked at it from time to time to say “Is the work I’m doing meeting my values?” And for some, it’s been “No, it’s not. It’s time I may be looked around.” And for others “Yes, it still is.” Although the values are the same but they’re getting met in some new ways. So, I think I’ve had value conversations with people who have read my books or gone through our workshops years ago and that always thrills me.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. You’ve written so many books. Is there one that people should start with? Should they start with Love Them or Lose Them or should they start with one of the others?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
I don’t know. I think Love Them, in it is tucked in everything else. So, maybe that’s the most comprehensive because when you love them, you develop their careers; when you love them, you build their self-worth; when you love them, you keep them. So, maybe it’s the best one to start with.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. Thank you for confirming that for those who would be wondering which of these should they pick up first. Now, your career has spanned across four decades. You’ve worked with the top thought leaders in the world. Just tell us a little bit about an occasion where perhaps you’ve collaborated with one of these great thought leaders Marshall Goldsmith, Sally Hegelson, any of these people and you feel like “Wow! We did something pretty special there.”
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, I am very lucky that I’ve grown up with the field and many of my friends have grown up with me in the field and they have written books and they have become famous and everyone in their own plot of land. And I love seeing Sally’s work and Marshall’s work and Jim Cruz’s work and all of them become used over time. And I have been very lucky to be with a group of thought leaders that keep me thinking and keep me growing and doing and not just through the good times but through those darn bad times as well, which we have all had plenty of.
Eddie Turner:
All of you all have contributed to a whole generation of us learning, growing, developing. And so, now we have to see what the future holds because you all are going to be a tough group to top.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Well, it’s your turn now.
Eddie Turner:
I like how you turned that around. I was perhaps trying to address anyone of the 80 countries this podcast is downloaded in to pick up the mantle. You put it on me, Bev. Okay.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Yeah, yeah.
Eddie Turner:
That’s a nice curveball you throw at me. All right, I’ll take it. Well, Bev, tell me please what’s the main message you’d like to leave our listeners with of today’s show?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
You made me, when I filled out your form, think of a quote that was a favorite quote and I sent you a quote by Marcel Proust that goes like this. “We don’t receive wisdom. We must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” And I think in every valley that I’ve been through in my life, I’ve learned from it. And while the valleys seem like they’ll never end, they do. And when you come out, you do come out with new wisdom. So, I have that quote hanging on my bulletin board.
Eddie Turner:
That is a wonderful quote indeed.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Thank you.
Eddie Turner:
And where can my listeners learn more about you?
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
I’ve got a website BevKaye.com and I am once again a solopreneur having sold my company but I still do all that work and would welcome people to come visit the website.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. So, we’ll put your website, we’ll put your LinkedIn profile and Twitter and all that into the show notes so people can click on it and have easy access to you. If you are not already following Bev Kaye, I encourage you to do so. Follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn, visit her website, download one of those books, two of the books, three of the books, get all five because she truly is a thought leader to follow, to learn from.And, Bev, I am just so grateful to you for being a guest today on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Dr. Beverly Kaye:
Thank you. it really has been a pleasure. I mean, everybody says it’s been a pleasure but I really mean it. It has been a pleasure. So, thank you.
Eddie Turner:
Well, I feel the same way. Thank you, Bev.And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
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The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.
