The Key To A Thriving Culture? Develop Your Emerging Leaders with the CPO of DocuSign

Leadership development is the lever for a thriving culture. Gallup research indicates that 70% of engagement can be traced back to an employee’s relationship with their manager.

At DocuSign, employees actively love their leaders. In fact, year after year, one of the company’s highest-scoring items on its employee engagement score is “How likely would you recommend your manager?”

When I asked Chief People Officer (CPO) of DocuSign Jennifer Christie about the success of her leadership development team, she said she attributed it to the proper preparation of emerging leaders.

In this interview, Jennifer covers:

1. How she prepares her emerging leaders.

She prepares people to lead early - Christie’s leadership development team works with aspiring leaders before they actually manage people. “If we've identified someone as being on track to become a manager, we put them through training to help them experience what it’s like."

Emerging leaders can then opt out of leadership roles - Based on their experience during training, emerging leaders then have the ability to opt in or out of leadership.

2. Her advice for CPOs: Ingrain yourself in the business

“When I first took the stage at a different company, I thought everyone expected me to be perfect and the best HR expert. I chose to focus less on being an expert in the business. If you focus on understanding the business, it will make you a better partner to your chief executive officer (CEO) and your peers.”
 
3. Jennifer's top book recs (both help drive a culture of effective feedback)

Thanks for the Feedback and Difficult Conversations. Both books were written by the Harvard Negotiation Project with Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone. 

“These are two books that everyone can benefit from. I don't care what job you have or what level you are, these kinds of conversations are difficult. Giving feedback that's going to land the right way or receiving feedback in a productive way are fundamental skills for everything we do.”

Hope you enjoy this one! 

What is The Culture Code?

Welcome to The Culture Code podcast. On this podcast, you’ll learn how to grow, shape, and sustain a high-performance culture with the CEO of LEADx, Kevin Kruse. From designing and delivering highly effective leadership development programs, to measuring and improving the employee experience, you will understand what it takes to cultivate a thriving company culture. Through interviews with Chief People Officers, deep dives into key topics, and recordings of our invite-only community sessions, we bring you cutting-edge, data-backed insights from the most desirable companies to work for in the world.

Kevin Kruse: Hello, everyone! I'm Kevin Kruse. Welcome back to The Culture Code. I'm very excited to have our guest today. She is the Chief People Officer at DocuSign, Jennifer Christie. Jennifer, welcome. And where are you joining from today? By the way,

Jennifer Christie: Hi, thank you for having me. I’m in Washington, D.C.

Kruse: Washington, D.C., that sounds great. So I'm just outside Philadelphia. So we have similar weather patterns, which are rainy today. But I'm looking forward to the fall weather.

For those who might not be familiar with [your company], how big is your organization and in plain language, what do you do?

Christie: I'll start with what we do. So, DocuSign is most known for E-signature, which is the world's number one way of signing agreements and contracts anywhere, at any time around the globe today. But we've gone beyond E-signature, and we're helping our customers really manage end-to-end their agreement process. So from the time you create, negotiate, manage, or sign your contracts, whether it's a very simple rental agreement to a very complex legal contract, we're there for you as a company. We're about 7,000 employees. We have over a million customers and over a billion users like yourself, clearly around the globe, and in over 180 countries. So it's a really exciting time to be at DocuSign.

Kruse: What's going on with hybrid in-office remote work? Where have you landed on that? Just so we have that context as we begin to talk about your culture.

Christie: Yeah, sure. So we did a process earlier this year where we looked at every single role. And we looked to see, like, should this role be a hybrid role? Or should it be a remote role based on the requirements of the job, who that collaborates with, etc. So about half of our company is in a remote job designation, about half are in hybrid, which for us means coming into the office two times a week.

Kruse: Yeah, it sounds like hybrid light. I like that. How would you describe your company culture in just a few words?

Christie: Yes. So what really resonates about our culture are a few things. One is, it's a caring culture. And when I say caring, that means not just caring for each other and having each other's backs inside the company, but we care about our customers. We really, really care about our customers. Are we providing them what they need? It's also a company that I say is very purpose-driven and has a very low ego. It's just people are really here. It's not about titles. It's not about staying in your lane. It's about what we can do to help you. And it's just a nice, respectful culture.

Kruse: Fostering that culture, like it doesn't happen by accident, especially with the growth and the global stuff. What are some of the ways you foster or sustain this culture? Any unique rituals or traditions related to your culture?

Christie: Yes, so a couple of things I would call out. One is, we have a really robust employee resource group. So ERG group, we have 9 global ERGs. And it is really the fabric and a culture driver for us. People coming together who have shared values and shared experiences who are here to help and support each other. We've got great executive sponsorship. So it really helps think about how people navigate their careers and get guidance and development as well. So that's our ERG program is something I'm super proud of. And the other one is actually something we just launched this week. So hot off the press is a recognition platform. Because what we found was, you know, people really did want to celebrate their peers. That caring culture that I talked about, but it was kind of happening in different ways around the organization. So we just launched this platform called Spark, where people can give each other peer-to-peer recognition. It's a more formal way of doing anniversaries through a memory book, and people can give points that are kind of like the equivalent of buying someone a cup of coffee, or they can just give someone a nice shout-out, but it's in a central platform that raises visibility. We launched it on Monday, and we've already had over a third of our employees sign on to it, and over 1,200 points of recognition in just the first few days. So that's really resonating with our employees. When you talk about points, if I gave you some recognition or gave you 5 points or however it works, are you able to, as the receiver of these points, are you able to, like, is there a marketplace?

Kruse: Yeah, I love that idea. I mean, obviously, the research is clear that the biggest power of recognition is just knowing that people appreciate what we've accomplished or the activity, and the reward is secondary, but it's also appreciated. Sometimes, I've never actually put it into place, but I've often thought for my own companies, instead of handing out bonuses, like, I should just give everybody a bonus pile and let them give it to each other. It's probably the fairest way to really show the value, and maybe everyone would be nicer, too, along the way if they knew that, you know. Okay, Jennifer, it's up to her how much bonus I get. I'm gonna, like, not not, you know. I'm gonna keep my attitude in check or something like that.

Christie: I mean, like peer-to-peer recognition is so important, and so is manager-to-peer recognition, no doubt, but the peer-to-peer recognition really resonates with our culture. Going back to that part, I talk about caring and purpose-driven, it just. It really fits us well to have a platform that allows people to do that in a more robust way.

Kruse: Now I want to shift gears a little bit because one of my favorite topics is. 70% of engagement is correlated to the manager, and front-line managers touch more employees than any other leadership group. What are some of the ways you develop your front-line managers?

JChristie: Yeah, what I would, I would call out a couple of things. One, I would say, our people love their managers. So we have an employee survey that we do twice a year, and every single time, the recommendation, "Would you recommend your manager to others?" is a top scoring item. So they really love their managers, and I think the reason for that is twofold. One is that we work with people before they're actually managing people. So if we've identified someone's on a path to be a manager, or if they've raised their hand, they want to be a manager, we actually put them through some training and some sessions to say like, "So you want to be a manager. This is what that really means," because sometimes people just think, "Oh, it's the next progression for me." But they don't recognize it's a lot of work, and we want people to recognize it can be the most rewarding thing that you do. But it can also be some of the most challenging work that you'll do, and we want them to be eyes wide open about that before they take that role. And then the second piece is that allows them to opt in or out, and it lets them. If they take that role and they move into that role, it's very intentional, and they know the work they've got to do to be a really great manager, and then we enable them with all of that. But I think it's that, like, the pre-manager work that we do that really sets people up for success.

Kruse: Just for our listeners, you touched on so much good stuff there. How do you solicit feedback from employees about the culture and their engagement (e.g., engagement or other surveys, town halls, ?)

Christie: Yeah. So that's obviously a big one that we do. And following on each of those surveys, if there's areas that we want to double click on because, you know, it gave us concern, or there's something that we want to get better at, we have many pulses that we can do some deeper dives just to really understand more deeply what those issues are. The other thing that we do is we have monthly town halls, like global town halls, and we always make sure we carve out at least half of the time for live Q&A. And we'll send a slide out in advance, so people can start populating and uploading questions. But we always allow the opportunity for the live, coming in hot, if you will, during the town hall because we think that kind of live interaction and responding back and forth with employees and having that outlet for those questions, in addition to the surveys that we do twice a year, is really important because things change. There's always things going on, and they want to comment on those things. We have Slack channels as well that people can raise issues on. But this one is one that we feel having that cadence of those monthly interactions is also really good.

Kruse: I've been hearing more and more about organizations using Slido or similar tools in their town halls, and there's some back and forth on whether to allow or encourage anonymous questions in Slido or make sure people have their name, and I've heard arguments on both sides. How do you implement that in terms of the town hall questions?

Christie: So they are not anonymous because they are associated with somebody. However, we do have a way for someone to send the person who's moderating the town hall a question if they don't want to put it in Slido, and you know, factor that in accordingly, and it doesn't come up with someone's name. So if there is an anonymous question that comes up like that. But I will tell you, when you open up transparency to your organization, people feel more comfortable asking those questions. You know, there's no retribution for the questions. It's, you know. We take questions live, you know, we're not always prepared for them, but we try to. You know, we try to model transparency and, you know, just being honest with our folks and giving them a real forum for asking us these questions. So we haven't seen a lot of, you know, backlash around not having an anonymous way of asking questions.

Kruse: Yeah. And I think, you know, it's obvious to tell, right? Like, you clearly have a culture of high psychological safety.

What book would you recommend that your colleagues read? (or podcast, video, etc.)

Christie: Yeah, you know, I have two different books, but they're of the same group, the Harvard Negotiation Project with Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone. "Thanks for the Feedback" and "Difficult Conversations" are two books I think everyone can benefit from. I don't care what job you have, what level you are, those kinds of conversations that are difficult, giving feedback that's going to land the right way, or receiving feedback in a productive way can be things that can be challenging at anyone's point in their career, at any level. And I just think they do an amazing job of helping people put themselves in the shoes of the people that are receiving the information and really think about how can I do this effectively? Not just check the box, get it done? But like, how can I really make sure that I have a productive conversation? I think it's so fundamental to everything. So if I send one, it's probably "Thanks for the Feedback," but if I could send two, I'd send that and "Difficult Conversations."

Kruse: Yeah, I wish I had that book early in my career because I used to be a feedback withholder just because I was so uncomfortable giving it. And so, you know, it was a disaster. But I thankfully got over that. What's something that maybe you know now, as a chief people officer, that you wish you knew on day one, you know. Write that letter or the email, or that Slack message to the younger version of yourself. What advice would you give yourself?

Christie: Yeah, I think. You know, when I first took the stage or back at a different company, Str rolled back at a different company. I think I thought, everyone's going to expect me to be perfect and the biggest expert in my function, right? Like, I just felt like I had to be such an HR expert, which is, you know, certainly an expectation. What I didn't focus on as much was being an expert in the business. And I think what I would go back and say to myself is, yes, you know, you've got a team, you know your stuff, focus on really understanding the business because that will make you a better partner to your CEO. That'll make you a better partner to your peers. If you really understand what the business drivers are and what your peers are trying to achieve from a business perspective.

Kruse: That's great advice. What skill or behavior do you wish your employees did more of?

Christie: Yeah. So one of the things we've already touched on a bit is this way of working. So we're still. We launched this new way of working in June. So we're still working through the kinks, if you will. You know there's lots of still things that we wanna make sure we get right. It's fascinating to me, you know I spent over 30 years coming into an office 5 days a week before Covid like without fail. And you know, even on Fridays I was too lazy to leave early without, you know, some kind of great excuse. And it just takes a couple of years for all of that hard wiring to just completely go away, and it's so fascinating to me. But you know, that's what we're trying to figure out like, how do we? What are we rewiring for? And how do we do that in a way that blends the flexibility and the things that people love about being able to work remotely? But then we get back some of what we lost around collaboration and culture that I think in person. Just you. It does it in a way that's very unique. So that we're still working through that formula, what's right for us? And you know every company has, you know, their way of doing it, and you know, different. So I don't think anyone says like, this is the best it really has to fit your company. And we're still on that journey.

Kruse: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. And I thought it was interesting when you first shared this initiative earlier in our chat, you talked about really looking role by role. And I think that is so wise. And again, I'm not hearing that enough. Probably a lot of companies. It's one way or the other. But by actually looking at the different roles and understanding which would make sense. It seems like all great leadership, it's individualizing the behavior, the answer to that role.

Christie: No, I was just gonna say we just didn't think it. We felt it was very arbitrary to say, if you live near an office, go in. We wanted to be a little bit more thoughtful and specific about why we thought people should come into the office. Who should they be working with and make the most sense for us?

Kruse: And I'm fascinated by this whole topic, like, I think this is going to be the topic that is top of mind for probably the next 5 years at least, it's amazing. What excites you the most about your company right now?

Christie: Well, definitely, that what I mentioned in kind of this chapter 2 kind of moving into this broader kind of agreement process space. But one thing that I find really cool is that we're embarking on, and we've launched in the US. This AI-powered identity capability, which is really cool to marry AI with our video kind of selfies. If you will, to make sure that we have a more secure and remote way of identifying signers, which is, gonna be it's our. It's growing in importance in the US. But it's already huge in the EU in the UK. Through this capability, we're able to ensure that the user is at the location during document capture, and we can match their photo with their face. You know, whatever document they're putting up, and it really has opened up a lot for our customers not having to force this face-to-face. You know, interaction so like we were excited about that capability that we've already launched here in the US.

Kruse: Yeah, that's exciting. That's great. My mind is blown. I mean, every day there's new AI breakthroughs, announcements, and I love how you. Your company is also, you know, pushing forward Jennifer Christie, chief people officer at Docusign. Thanks for coming on culture code and sharing your wisdom with your peers here today.

Christie: Thank you for having me. It's been really fun. Thanks, Kevin.