Strengths, Simplicity and a Thriving Culture at L'Oreal Asia

Jim Collison:
[0:00] I am Jim Collison, and this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on June 3, 2025.

Jim Collison:
[0:06] Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and Gallup-Certified Strengths Coaches share tactics, insights and strategies to help coaches maximize the talent of individuals, teams and organizations around the world. If you're listening live, we'd love to have you with your questions in chat. If you're listening to the podcast audio or YouTube after the fact, you can always send us an email: coaching@ gallup.com. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or right there on YouTube, so you never miss an episode. Purva Hassomal is our host today. Purva is an executive coach and SME here at Gallup. And Purva, it's always a great day when I get to spend it with you. Welcome to Called to Coach!

Purva Hassomal:
[0:48] Thank you so much, Jim. We're really excited to be here today, because I have the pleasure of being joined by Dr. Yvonne Sum. Now, what's really special about Dr. Yvonne Sum is, aside from her experience, which I'll tell you about in just a little moment, we've actually been working together and partnering for the last, gosh, five, six, seven years, perhaps. I've lost count. And I get to work with a lot of different clients, as you know, and organizations and corporations, Jim. And, you know, when you find that person that you work with, where there's chemistry, where you're different, but you're aligned, where you complement each other, where you're on the same wavelength, but you add value in different ways to different things. And the outcome's one plus one equals three — that's how I feel about Yvonne. And so it's my pleasure to introduce you to her and to our guests.

Purva Hassomal:
[1:43] I'll quickly share her Top 10. Yvonne leads with Connectedness, Strategic, Adaptability, Positivity, Maximizer, Input, Intellection, Achiever, Communication and Activator. She was Head of Transformation, Leadership, and Culture; Program Director, Leadership and People Development at L'Oreal University. She's now currently semiretired, and she's a trusted adviser and consultant for L'Oreal at their Asia campus. She's also cofounder of a boutique consulting company, 5Echo, focusing on executive coaching and leadership development.

Purva Hassomal:
[2:24] But just a little bit of background, because she won't tell you this herself, but she's got this incredible diversity in her experience and background. She was a dentist, or probably still is, an RAAF officer. She's a certified medic coach, out-thinker. She's been a leadership speaker. She's a published international author. She's also been on Australian TV. And she is a part of the global faculty for Melbourne Business School, focusing on their work. They call it Australia's Business Generation Lab to Enhance Entrepreneurship. So, Yvonne, welcome to Called to Coach! We're so happy to have you here.

Yvonne Sum:
[3:03] A real pleasure to be here, Purva. It's so nice hearing it from you, people's perspective of oneself. And I must say, yes, I've been very grateful for my life of experiences. And I must say, working with you on the L'Oreal projects, you know, helping us land CliftonStrengths, has been a real joy.

Purva Hassomal:
[3:23] Absolutely. So before we dive into everything we've done across L'Oreal, because as you know, we're going to focus on our work in North Asia, SAPMENA region, but we know it goes across. I want to take you to a moment. And I want you to think about the first interaction that you had personally with CliftonStrengths. Can you remember it?

Yvonne Sum:
[3:49] That is a long time ago. Now, I remember the second one, because that was more recent. That was with you and I did mine in 2020 during COVID, a reset actually. But just before 2003, in 2002, I was in Australia, and a client needed a coach to be familiar with the StrengthsFinder, as they called it at that time. And so I sat for the test, and I remember it was, gee, there's a lot of detail in this. And I sat for it, and I found it really useful.

Yvonne Sum:
[4:33] I had the report tucked away somewhere at that time; it was hard copy. I don't remember getting a soft copy. And forgot promptly about it, except that it was useful. I did it once. And about, like I said, almost two decades later, to come back to it and felt how much I'd grown from that, seeing the stability of my strengths, but how certain things in my support talents had moved up and those that were a little underutilized had moved down. And it was just a great exercise in self-awareness.

Purva Hassomal:
[5:09] Yeah. And do you remember the first time you used it at L'Oreal? Again, we're going to dive into everything we've done, big picture, but for a moment, I want to focus on you. First time you used it at L'Oreal with leaders.

Yvonne Sum:
[5:24] And personally, before I even used it, Fabrice Megarbane, who was then our CEO of North Asia and China, had just come into the region. I think it was about the time I joined, 2019. So he joined very soon after. And I was quite new in my role. And I was very active in around the region, but not quite in China. But he called my boss up and said, like, "We'd like to do something that I did in Germany and StrengthsFinder." And, oh, I just felt, Oh, StrengthsFinder — what was that? I kind of remembered. And I said, "Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with that and I'd love to be able to help you."

Yvonne Sum:
[6:15] So we sat down and he said that I'd love to have this with my senior leadership team, my Mancom, so that they were familiar with it, so that they could have a self-awareness of what brought them energy, sustainable energy, and for them to be, I guess, "vulnerable" was probably not the word he used, but vulnerability to leverage the strengths of others on the team, a great bonding. And really, that was the first time that I was reexposed, and at that time I had forgotten totally about it. I had done it. And then I went, Oh, this seems familiar, but not really. And I said, yeah, let's dive in.

Purva Hassomal:
[6:57] I love that. And, you know, as you share that first experience that you had, the first experience that you noticed using it kind of in that work setting as well at L'Oreal, we're hearing a couple of things that kind of all our listeners, And by the way, I'm so excited that we have some folks I see from Shanghai logging in across the world. Hi, Holly. Hi, Kim. It's really great to see all of you.

Yvonne Sum:
[7:21] Kim was one of the leaders in China that has done CliftonStrengths. And it's welcome, Kim. It's lovely to have you on the call.

Purva Hassomal:
[7:31] Oh, that's fantastic. We have folks joining in from Malaysia as well. So we have a nice kind of Asia contingency right now. Take us back to that moment, Yvonne, where you, we know that there were certain stressors. L'Oreal has evolved. It's so dynamic. It's constantly changing. It's at the forefront of what it does. But as any organizations, it's had its pain points and its stressors. What I love about L'Oreal is that they face them. They face them head-on, and they kind of grab that and say, right, what are we going to do about it? Take us back to those pain points where you noticed that there was a transformation happening, and CliftonStrengths really played a part.

Yvonne Sum:
[8:15] Well, on a personal note, I guess I really only was in L'Oreal China from 2019. But what I was most excited was because part of my role was to, and this was before CliftonStrengths was introduced when Fabrice came and spoke to me. So in my early days, in my first 18 months, first 100 days, actually, when I was exposed to this concept of "Simplicity" as a cultural transformation. And I was thinking, Wow, what a lovely term. And I was curious about what it was. I was asked to go to Korea by the EVP then of the APEC zone, Johan Zomzai, who was saying that there was — this cultural transformation has just started in 2017 in Asia. And we've been recording the last three years' pulse scores. And our Korean country Mancom has not been performing so well in the pulse engagement scores run by Korn Ferry. And to measure Simplicity, how they're doing as a team leading it. I'd like you to go and work with that. And so I guess I got a briefing on what Simplicity was, why it was formed, and how it could help this team on where L'Oreal was taking it.

Purva Hassomal:
[9:40] So, Yvonne, tell us in one sentence, for all of our listeners, what is "Simplicity"?

Yvonne Sum:
[9:46] OK, great. So "Simplicity" is not simple to explain, but essentially, it was trying to look at the lens through a L'Orealian's day-to-day work. How can, in a very VUCA world — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous situation that continues to accelerate — can we look through the foundations of the most simple things, the guiding principles, by which we can be empowered to lead, enable each other towards being an agile, growing organization, plus an attractive place to work. So essentially, if you saw it that way, it's an everyday, some guiding principles, not rules, but how can we be our best in that moment when we might actually be stressed?

Purva Hassomal:
[10:39] And what I love about Simplicity is, and you heard it from Yvonne, right? It's these simple, everyday, essentially, behaviors. And I know a lot of us at organizations, we see the values and the culture and the mission on the wall. At L'Oreal, I've noticed that they actually do their best to live in an everyday way. And to Yvonne's point, I noticed that these were quite simple. Give us a few examples, Yvonne, of Simplicity kind of guidelines or behaviors.

Yvonne Sum:
[11:10] Right. So first of all, let's look at the fact that there were four guiding principles on a day-to-day work, which is kind of like if you were riding on a bicycle, that was the back wheel. That's what propels us forward. We need to look at four things, which was measured by that pulse engagement. How are we living with cooperation with one another? How are we cooperating? And in doing so, how can we give and receive feedback in a timely way with trust? So cooperation and being centered through trust. And then there's two more structured way by looking at it. No. 1, how do we set a frame together? So an animal frame that is co-created by every leader and his or her team, which is cascaded from like a Russian doll, from senior management and global to that. So how do we set a frame, so that within that we know what's our mission? What are our four or five KPIs, as in mission-focused areas that we're focused on? And the third area, how will we measure our success?

Yvonne Sum:
[12:26] And this frame guides us through the whole year so that we have freedom within a frame. So that's the third one. And to live that daily gives you empowerment to know what to act. And the last part is having better meetings and better life. Having come from a French company where I guess debate and confrontation is the way to really have a great dialogue to get our viewpoint across, often meetings dragged on because everybody wanted to have a say. So better meetings, better meeting why I put some time to it, some facilitative roles in there so that we could have everybody speak up and that it had an agenda, which, prior to Simplicity in 2017, you never know what meeting you were going to, and everybody wanted to go, because you didn't know what was going to happen.

Purva Hassomal:
[13:14] And so what I love about this is, this is at the root of, if you notice, they were, L'Oreal was very specific. They pinpointed certain key elements in the behavior of L'Orealians that they wanted to kind of encourage, nurture and guide. And they were simple. Let's give feedback with trust. Let's keep meetings clear, short, respectful. Teams Are the New Heroes, right? For me, that's part of the lingo. Test and Learn, as you think of these elements. And where do you think this transformation — I know this was before your time, but as you look at the history, what do you think were the pain points that were happening — the stressors that kind of drove this to happen? What was happening that L'oreal said, "Hey, we want to kind of change this"?

Yvonne Sum:
[14:07] Right. And again, thank you. So those four levers that you're talking about drives towards an ambition that had like eight pillars, like Teams Are the New Heroes and Test and Learn. Now, why was that? So around, I think, very early on in the year 2000s, when VUCA was being mentioned, there was word on the street. There were weak signals that Jean-Paul Agon was picking up. He was our then CEO. And the signals were that young people weren't being retained as well when they joined the company and left very quickly. But they were also not excited to join, and we depended a pipeline of our leadership being homegrown from our management trainees, our MTs. And there was basically this sense that people weren't wanting to join L'Oreal. And he then created a Senior Leadership Forum, where he invited what he called the 10-years growth of his leaders. So these are people who are future leaders of L'Oreal.

Yvonne Sum:
[15:07] "What do you think is happening at the — you're there, feeling the pulse. Talk to me. What's happening?" So he spent some time, and some of these leaders were Fabrice Megarbane and a few of his cronies like Christian Marcos and Medi Cuban. Anyway, so these are names that some of our L'Orealians, if they're listening in, would be familiar with. And they told Jean-Paul Agon, they said, Like, we are homegrown, and we have a very strong culture of doing whatever it takes. You know, like we put all energy, because each one of us wants to succeed. If we don't do our best, we're letting people down.

Yvonne Sum:
[15:43] But that doesn't seem — and to rally and encourage and maybe even confront young people about it. It's not kind of sitting really well. A lot of people, our young people, are feeling that we don't have a purpose, not a strong enough, doing, doing, doing. So the pain point that was coming up for Jean-Paul Agon, hearing from his leaders, was that people were not joining because there's certain parts of our culture that was not healthy. They loved the fact that we had a passion for beauty. We had a lot of R&D that people definitely joined. We have a lot of smart people joining. There was a certain sense of innovation like, Try anything; Test and Learn, right? L et's go ahead! But on the reverse, because the leaders were so smart and powerful and strong and, and, and outspoken, there was a sense that we always had to escalate things to the leader. So, and we worked in silos; we were quite competitive to, to win. Almost worked in silos to compete. Best practices weren't shared, we were just kind of competing almost with one another, which was not actually the intent.

Yvonne Sum:
[16:53] So I guess what some of the pain points that was coming up was, the smart people we employed didn't find they had a voice to contribute. The frame wasn't clear. Why do we want this beauty for these consumers? What is it giving the planet, right? So that was another one. And so finally, I think, even though that was in the woodwork, it was in the DNA, but it was not overtly expressed. So as these pain points surfaced through this Senior Leadership Forum, as well as then consulting with normal consulting, big foreign consulting companies, we actually found a framework called Simplicity, where we had the four Simplicity pillars that I described; five qualities of leaders for a new vision of leadership that we named to lead and to enable. So not just lead; keep that, but we need to enable our people. And then we drive to an ambition that we called the Simplicity Manifesto; that's where Teams Are the New Heroes; Cooperation; Confrontation; Test and Learn is the new leadership and so on and so forth. Yeah, yeah.

Purva Hassomal:
[18:03] I love it! So you've painted that picture of where we were, what was happening. Now, bring us to — kind of fast forward a little bit. Where did you notice — and again, I know when you came in, it was already partly being used — but from what you know, where do you think CliftonStrengths, how did it get into the picture at L'Oreal, from what you know?

Yvonne Sum:
[18:26] Yes. So before I joined, and of course, before Fabrice Megarbane became our CEO, who became a champion for CliftonStrengths, he was working as a GM in Germany. And the senior leadership team, they had actually started experimenting with using CliftonStrengths as a language for Simplicity. The lead enable was in like, How can we lead from our strengths? How can we lead from something that we're already good at and natural at? And having a term and great research on. So they tested CliftonStrengths in Germany, which subsequently had had great uptake, because the leaders found it was useful for them. And then they cascaded it down too. So currently, I think Germany is probably still one of the leading countries markets in L'Oreal that has full use of CliftonStrengths.

Yvonne Sum:
[19:19] So when Fabrice Megarbane moved in our mission, every three to five years, we move our leaders, so that they become agile and take their experience to other parts of the world. When he came to China and looked after the five markets of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, he felt that what he'd learned in Germany would be very useful as a team bonding exercise for people, to first of all, celebrate the awareness of how good they are, what are their superpowers, and be appreciative of it and being able to speak to it. And at the same time, notice in a team, what were some of the gaps that I'm not so good at? And it's a lot easier for you to do that. So he really wanted that on his team. And so because of his sponsorship, his senior leadership found the language really useful. And in China, pretty much a lot of the China Mancom started to do it with their teams. And even now, I think when I think about it five or six years later, China's population, I think almost 90% of the China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, has really celebrated CliftonStrengths. So the uptake and therefore the language of what I call appreciative inquiry of one another for team performance has become one of the legacies that Fabrice had taken to get the uptake to help Simplicity in a more concrete way.

Purva Hassomal:
[20:52] And Yvonne, you know, I love this, because you were talking about kind of where, what the pain points were and those stressors. You talked about retention and attraction, particularly of the younger generation, talking about how there was a piece around purpose, siloed, you know, very entrepreneurship mentality. But am I feeling empowered? Clarity, right, with the frame. And there was a lot going on, you know, L'Oreal was really driving this using, rooted in Simplicity, Lead and Enable. And one of the things that happened is you had a really strong leader who found value, it sounds like, in a simple tool. You called it a language, right? A language to be able to talk about our talents, our diversity, how we add value for team bonding, for acceleration of trust. And then if we fast forward to today, we see, like you said, I don't know what percentage, right? 90% of the population in North Asia have taken their CliftonStrengths, are using it in some way or other, there's team sessions.

Purva Hassomal:
[21:56] So I want to kind of unpack the middle bit, how we went from kind of a leader coming into the region, right, from global, being someone who, and I think I remember at the time, and it was only like five years, I think it was 2018, 2019, just before COVID, brought his leaders together. I believe it was my colleague, Babas, who delivered a session for Fabrice and his team, I think it was in Malaysia, for that leadership team, using CliftonStrengths as a languages and a tool, to today, when it's so prolific and embedded in L'Oreal's culture. Walk us through what were some of those things that allowed that to happen. And the reason I'm asking is because I see so many of our beautiful listeners — I love that we have live listeners today from Dubai, from California, from Taiwan, from Singapore, from Philippines, from Malaysia. Good morning, everyone. Good evening, everyone. We're so excited that you're here.

Purva Hassomal:
[22:55] What I want you to share for them, Yvonne, is the how now. What was it that worked? As you think about how Fabrice kind of was that advocate, we're hearing that — you had that leader, but we know it takes more than that. That's just the starting point. What were some of the things that were tested, right, that worked? What didn't work, right, as we were kind of trying to move our people at L'Oreal towards this goal that we had? How did strengths get integrated? How was it used, and what worked?

Yvonne Sum:
[23:29] Let's go all the way back, I guess. Again, it starts with a sponsor, you know, someone who really believed in it, the energy behind it. And we certainly had that with Fabrice. But Fabrice was also a person who also enabled through giving energy. And he came in with kind of evidence-based, you say, like, it seems that in Simplicity, that lever of the Feedback With Trust is something that we pride ourselves in, but I'm not feeling it. I mean, even in our Simplicity scores, we are actually showing that we are giving and receiving feedback, but I'm not, I'm at the top here, and people aren't giving me feedback. So I would love to be able to have a tool where to give feedback was not personal; it wasn't an attack. So I think it was more like, this is not what I — and almost being able to be vulnerable, from a perspective. and that's not very — you know, for high Achievers, and you know that in L'Oreal, our Achiever is usually in our Top 10 of all our senior leadership teams. And so it was very hard. And so he's, I think that key being able to pick a, key lever, and then slotting in how CliftonStrengths as a tool could be a way we can express ourselves.

Purva Hassomal:
[24:50] Let me pause you there, Yvonne, because I just want to unpack that for the listeners. This is huge. We're going to get practical today. And so as Yvonne shares a couple things, I'll kind of pause her and ask her to get a little bit practical about this golden nugget. So, many times, many of you work in organizations or are supporting organizations, right? And looking at how do we get to our goals and objectives? Sometimes when we think of CliftonStrengths, we think, Oh, it's a great report. And you heard Yvonne's story at the beginning, where she said, you know, I took my CliftonStrengths, and I read my report. And it was interesting and useful, but then I kind of put it away in a drawer, right? And what you notice is the difference is because CliftonStrengths can be so useful, sometimes we need to think of, What is its use within our highest priority objective or day-to-day? In this case, Fabrice and the team saw that it could be really useful in being able to give feedback and creating trust around that. Can you share, Yvonne, maybe an example or two around that? What happened? How did he make that work? How did he make that piece come alive around feedback and trust?

Yvonne Sum:
[25:58] Oh, as we all know, foundations to candid, or ruthlessly candid feedback is that we have to have trust between two parties. So for him, the way to build trust is to be able to share where we're good at and what we're not so good at. So basically be the volunteer. Let me ask for feedback. So through that lens, and I think so through that lens, he got two points: One was building trust immediately to say, Hey, I'm not so good in this, so help me out, because I see you do it really well. So it actually came from more positive feedback.

Yvonne Sum:
[26:38] But at the same time, I am stuck. So using my strengths, what do you think I could use in my strengths that you're seeing that could help me in this difficult situation? So I think that was the concrete way. I mean, I don't think it was actually positioned that way. But in terms of running an intact team workshop where, you know, teams of 12 to 18 people who can work taking CliftonStrengths as the self-awareness tool and then taking them back in real case scenarios in intimate trios or small groups, really practicing that and having a facilitator hold their feet to the fire. So we created that psychological safety where they could start saying like, Oh, CliftonStrengths is not just a thing that's good for me to know about, but I have a practical use for it. And so I think that started the small group of the uptake in the intact leadership teams, which then allowed, well, I want this for my team as well. So, and then it starts cascading.

Purva Hassomal:
[27:44] OK, great. So let's kind of highlight the tips that Yvonne has just shared, because we've noticed this in so many organizations, is A), we're hearing, Have an advocate, particularly if you have a senior leader, someone kind of leading kind of that organization who's got a voice, help them to see the value, but to believe in this through experience. Fabrice believes in it because he experienced it. And one of the things that we're hearing is he then felt it could help with a certain area that they were trying to achieve. And he got his team to experience it. So team sessions, and you hear Yvonne using the word "intact team," right? The people that I work with. Not necessarily a department where I know the people — I'm part of the same department, but I don't necessarily work with them. Don't get me wrong. Those are also good. Any session where you do CliftonStrengths is good. But if we're going to kind of look at what has the higher likelihood of, particularly in the beginning, driving impact and allowing people to have an accelerated kind of result when it comes to the use of CliftonStrengths, doing it within an intact team is going to have more success.

Purva Hassomal:
[28:52] And what you notice that you said is a couple of tips here. One is, Have a facilitator that can create a safe space. Help and make sure that you're kind of setting the stage and foundation, but you're getting them to use it in one-to-one or small group settings. Because we know that's when most of the interaction happens at work. It's that small group, one-to-one setting. Get them to experience that. And if you notice here, it was about feedback. Now, if you've ever had feedback, as all of our listeners know, it's not fun. And yet, think about the last time, as Yvonne said, when you've had a moment to say, Hey, can I share my Top 5? Can I share how I use them, what I love about them? Can I share those blind spots — how they might get in my way? And I notice this happens when we kind of work together in this area. All of a sudden, it's a completely different conversation, but the goal of giving feedback is achieved in a trusting way. I love it.

Yvonne Sum:
[29:51] Yeah. So I just wanted to add that I think feedback becomes more, I'm seeking advice. And most people are much more open to give advice rather than give one feedback. Feedback has had a semantically packedness about it, I think. So it's really being a bit more cautious. I wanted to also talk about the challenges when we came to facilitators. So when we were rolling it out, we needed facilitators that had at least three qualities. No. 1, that they know the L'Oreal landscape. So we couldn't just kind of onboard just anybody to come on board; to hold that space for leaders, because they needed to feel safe. They had to be certified, so that they can use the language but make it real. And thirdly, as we started to have an uptake, and there was a great uptake, because we obviously picked the right facilitators. And I'll talk a little bit more about how we got those facilitators on board.

Yvonne Sum:
[30:48] We then had to learn local language, because — think places like Japan, Korea and China. As we start rolling down to make things safe, the facilitator not only needed those first two qualities, but the third. So the challenges for our internal learning teams was to be able to help select the right facilitator that knew the culture and have already started working with L'Oreal. And if not, we had to onboard, you know, Strengths-Certified Coaches. We were lucky to have you, Purva. So you were both; you know, you knew us, you worked with us, but you also were CliftonStrengths-Certified.

Yvonne Sum:
[31:27] And then being able to then started to also, because at the senior leadership, we needed external much more to build that momentum. But as we started to roll it out, we started having HR and leaders who wanted to be certified. And so we started to, again, it was organic. L'Oreal loves to let things kind of grow. And so then we got certified. I mean, I was also certified as a result of being able to scale it inside, also to be able to pick the right facilitators, scaling it with, even some team leaders felt that was very useful for them to have the tool to be able to do that. And then, last but not least, if you remember, we codesigned with Melania Guzman and her team in China, our learning director.

Purva Hassomal:
[32:12] Pause, pause! We'll talk about that in a second. I know you want to talk about the beautiful session we did for managers. I'll come to that. I just want to highlight a couple of things and kind of emphasize this. So as our listeners are hearing, Yvonne is talking both about kind of an approach where you have senior leadership buy-in starting at the top, but then it's also kind of bottom, kind of coming from the bottom, organic approach. As you look at this kind of, now you look back, right, at kind of how it played out, Yvonne. How did L'Oreal, from your perspective, make sure that when it was a little bit organic and it was kind of a bottom-up approach, how did we make sure that folks had, like you said, the support and the structure to use this in the right way?

Yvonne Sum:
[32:59] Well, firstly, like I said, if it was people who had already done it as, as a, as an intact team, some of them were of course more expressive. But having HR people who could do some one-on-one decoding, because as you know, the report is so rich, but to kind of try to sit down yourself and even do it with a colleague, it's not, without being certified, it's really hard. So having HR that they could approach, and therefore it also cuts the cost, because you've got an external coach to do that, that's really put the budget at risk. But having someone internal doing it really, really helped it scale.

Purva Hassomal:
[33:41] And I think that's a big piece, as you think about what's the support structure, especially if you have an organization like L'Oreal, where it can, if it grows and it takes on and it becomes part of the culture, how do you then support that in an effective, cost-effective way as well? So you talked about having champions, champions externally from Gallup, from CliftonStrengths-Certified Coaches, but also internally. Not just HR; I know L'Oreal did various GGSCs, where we certified HR, but also other folks that got interested in strengths and coaching, to be able to support the local teams and the leaders. Because like you said, one of the things we find that's most useful is when someone takes CliftonStrengths, their energy is high; they're looking at the report. But it quickly goes down unless they have someone there to have a conversation with them. They have a session, they actually use it in a particular way. Right. I love it. So making it sustainable, kind of, and you talked about this piece where we would do a session with an intact team. And then those leaders said, "We want it for our team."

Yvonne Sum:
[34:47] Yes.

Purva Hassomal:
[34:48] How did it work at L'Oreal, with more and more people wanting to get CliftonStrengths, just practically? Because I know for a lot of our listeners, they're probably thinking, gosh, how do we manage all of that?

Yvonne Sum:
[34:58] Right, right. So let's start with just generally, before we talk about how we piloted a way of scaling it with the managers. The first thing was we also looked at our current facilitators who knew L'Oreal, but wasn't Clifton-Certified, but they ran a lot of our programs that were our licensed to manage leadership programs. So if you had a first leader come in with one person that they manage, we have transitioned to people management, TPM, and then they had two or more people transition to team management, and then they became a head of function, transitioned to head of function — PM, TTM, THF. So our facilitators, we also onboarded that we preferred them to be certified if they wanted to run at scale. So we were also populating that even within our leadership programs that we were recommending Clifton-Certified. And our facilitators that were running the programs do that. So that's one.

Yvonne Sum:
[35:59] But then within the managers, so they were very excited to want to make it more practical to help their teams on a daily basis. And as you have it, L'Oreal at the global level was starting to run something called employee-empowered reviews. We called it a "connect conversation" that was enabled by employees; it was part of Simplicity. You need to enable them to have conversations with their managers. So we recommended that things like midyear reviews and in-year reviews were more formal things where we talked about development plans and maybe your next year's mission. But throughout the year, we would ask an employee to have that conversation with their managers. Now, the managers weren't really trained to say like OK, when they ask for something, what do I do? Right? OK, so coaching was one thing, so we needed to kind of, so our leadership licensed to manage programs has touched on coaching, but we wanted to make it practical with CliftonStrengths, because it was kind of refining that was the key, certainly in China. And under the sponsorship of Melania Guzman, who's our Learning Director, who worked, of course, closely with Fabrice Megarbane, felt that this was something that we can do. So we decided —

Purva Hassomal:
[37:11] Let me pause you there. Hold on. Let me pause you there. Let me add kind of that color for everyone here. So one of the things that L'Oreal is incredible about, aside from being this marketing genius of an organization, is, particularly with people like Dr. Yvonne Sum and Melania Guzman, is whenever I would talk to them, it was like they were doing their own research on great organizations, great teams, and what their people needed. And at the same time, we were realizing, we knew from our research and data that the main key core person in the organization is the manager. They have 70% impact on someone's engagement. They are the heart and beating soul of that organization. We also knew that managers have the toughest job in the world, right? They're managing up, sideways, down. We also knew from that research and data, what L'Oreal knew as well was that for a manager to be at their best, they need to become a manager coach. They need to have those coaching skills as a manager, which you called "coaching posture."

Purva Hassomal:
[38:14] In the data, we know that it's essentially having one meaningful conversation a week. That's kind of like the benchmark for what motivates and drives performance. And we knew that L'Oreal knew that, but they said, how do we get our managers to kind of upskill in this area? And there was born this beautiful program that kind of we codesigned with you to make it very L'Oreal, called Strengths-Based Coaching for Managers. Tell us what the goal of this program was. This program, by the way, everyone, was beautifully designed by the L'Oreal team with Gallup for the North Asia region. But it's now being taken across the world, because other L'Oreal entities have seen how useful it is and kind of tailored to them. Tell us what the goal of that program was and is.

Yvonne Sum:
[39:01] I think it was two-pronged. Firstly, we wanted to give the managers a practice with real cases that they could safely do in that program with their peers and also even on that session, to bring at least a coaching call to one of their direct reports. So we wanted something really practical that they could feel they could use their coaching posture or coaching skills. It didn't certify you as a coach, but it gave you the practicality of as an everyday manager, how can I bring this into my posture, my leadership posture? So that was one tenet that we wanted. The second one was really around, OK, with this connect conversations, let's look at some of the scenarios that our employees are likely to bring up, because they're running the agenda. So meeting better life from our levers. So they're going to bring something, and it's likely that it's one of seven topics. So it could be career. It could be development. It could be rewards and benefits. It could be mobility to a new role or whatever it might be. So we had these topics. And together with Gallup, we looked at how we could have those coaching conversations as practice scenarios that they could prepare. They could have a cheat sheet.

Yvonne Sum:
[40:19] And to the credit of Melania and her team, they had already started researching, you know, what were some of the programs that might exist? And we knew that Gallup had the From Boss to Coach; that they had also in their testing, in their research, to see. And they felt like, we don't want Boss to Coach. The word "boss" doesn't stick in L'Oreal. So how do you take, take the best of —not the whole program as you've run it, but take the best of that program, so we don't reinvent the wheel. Bring in the tenets, you know, like, this coaching posture as well as this, this cheat sheet, these, these, these, these scenarios that are really relevant and real for L'orealians, so that they can make it. And so those were the objectives — to make it so easy and practical that they could basically start the session in 2 1/2 days to be able to coach each other and their direct report in that sense. And it really was amazing. It was something quite magical. Yeah.

Purva Hassomal:
[41:14] It was magical. And I think you mentioned this. Again, tips for our listeners — if you're thinking of kind of running something, L'Oreal pushed us to do this, which was beautiful because it works so well, was make it highly practical. To Yvonne's point, they can come out the kind of next day and feel that they're able to do this. I'll give you one secret of what we did in this class that we know works highly well. For those of you that are designing programs, listen up. One of the things we included is what we call a live practice. So the program was 2 1/2 days. We got them to practice, practice, practice, right? Whether it was five-minute conversations, 10-minute conversations, 30-minute longer conversations. So they realized they could use this, whether it's a five-minute quick connect or their weekly catch-up or the more deeper kind of quarterly, right, deep dive.

Purva Hassomal:
[42:05] What we did on the last day is they had previously set up a time with someone that they managed — a direct report, an N minus-1. And so we're getting them to practice. And on the last day, they go and have a call and practice with someone actually in their team. Kind of like pushing them in that kind of swimming pool with a lot of support and a big life vest. But they actually then actually did it. One of the things we know with training, and Yvonne will tell you this was true of L'Oreal, is they're great at the learning, at the development, at the training. But then how do we make sure that our people are using it when they go back and they're not in that training space? And that was one of our key goals. And I have to say, I think we've had more impact because of the way that was designed — the less theory, more practical, getting them to practice and getting them to do this live one.

Purva Hassomal:
[42:55] I want to ask all the listeners, as Yvonne continues to share, what have you noticed that works in this area as well from your experience or from your organizations that really takes kind of that behavior you're trying and that skill in the training to live, let me try and do it kind of and integrate it? Yvonne, I want to come back here and I want to ask you now, as you think about this whole journey, and as you think about the things, the key tips that you would share with our listeners of, if you had to go back, what really worked, and what are the things that maybe you would do slightly differently?

Yvonne Sum:
[43:37] Gee, time machines are great, but I often feel that we do the best of what we've got. I think it's tip No. 1. Don't look back and beat yourself up, because you can always, you would have accumulated experience and said, "I wish I did." I think that's one of the key things is not to say, "I wish I did," but to say, "I'm glad I did. I'm grateful that I did." So I think that's tip No. 1, because you can never, never repeat a sliding door. So that's No. 1. No. 2 is really work with great experts with great research base. So for example, working with Gallup and Melania Guzman and her team, Melania Guzman and her team are great with researching what's out there in the marketplace, and they know what their teams need. So working with specific people in your organization, not to just grab something that global gives you and kind of regionalize it with the right language and maybe a little tweak here and there; really understand that when you run a program or something, pilot it, so that we get some great feedback of whether it sits and it will take and will be sticky for that. So that our research with the intact teams were really great in the regions, because we can give feedback to our global teams whenever they run something. So one of the key things I think is found that when we did that, global programs were more sticky in, in local programs.

Purva Hassomal:
[45:03] And I'll just pause there. Tip for our listeners: The way we piloted strengths-based coaching for managers at L'Oreal, it was incredible. It was during COVID. I was sitting in Singapore virtually. Folks were in Shanghai. They would be able to be in a room and very simple ways to kind of get feedback. We'd gotten feedback, like she said, from intact teams. We would also, at the end of every day of the session, give folks Post-It notes, two colors. Share the top three things from today that really engaged and that really worked; share the one thing that maybe you would change or do differently or doesn't need to be there, right? We also did formal evals. We got more formal feedback, but can you see, we did a lot of testing, like Yvonne said, to bring that kind of together — I love that word you used: to make it "sticky." Anything else, Yvonne, that comes to your mind?

Yvonne Sum:
[45:52] What would I do differently? You know, maybe it's my, my Maximizer — I think we've done the best we could in that time. And, and being an Achiever, I think if we, if we hit the mark, you know just celebrate and, and, and just, just don't hold on to, "I wish I didn't." I guess the only thing that you know, to be cautious about is I mean at that time L'Or, I mean, L'Oreal is an organization that really loves learning, and there are great sponsors in there. Maybe one of the things that we have to be aware of, to be cautious of, is don't push things too quickly. Organic is best, and I think that fitted — my style, my Connectedness style, fitted to really well my Adaptability and Positivity in the L'Oreal culture. But imagine if you had a very structured organization that you work with. There might be a certain rhythm that is more imposed upon people. But we tune in to allow it to be organic, even in that case, and not just push. I think it's more to draw people.

Purva Hassomal:
[47:02] And I have to say, one of the things that allows that approach to work at L'Oreal is the excellent HR, learning and development PDL people that you have and leaders. Because the organic approach can work when you have that support system of HR, L&D, PDL leaders listening and saying, "Oh, my team wants this. How can we support? How can we make this move forward now, not in six months?" And at L'Oreal, you're, in that sense, very entrepreneurial, very enabling, in that moment. "Purva, can we do it next week?" I remember those calls, right? Which is incredible pressure, but it's incredibly beautiful for your people. I'm going to come to some questions. I know Jim's online. I want to take one, because Yvonne, it speaks to what you were just speaking now, which is, as you're kind of allowing this organic change to take place and integrate, Mark talks about how L'Oreal is such a complex culture. What about outliers or resistors? How did kind of maybe that get managed? What was the play there?

Yvonne Sum:
[48:08] Right. I think the beautiful thing about L'Oreal, it is this culture of — resistance often means that we haven't met a certain expectation. So more conversations, right? Actually do those conversations. And again, having HR and learning teams that can do that internally, because it's much harder for the external to do that. But secondly, if there's a trust as we have with you, like Purva, we've often run some workshops with multiple different divisions that might not take things very well or with leaders that say, "Right. We're going to roll this out, and we have to roll this out. I want to have my voice heard." So actually having little pilot focus groups, where we do do that. So that's our resistance. And for outliers that you don't reach, I think I often believe that you can't reach everyone all of the time. So don't go for perfection. So if you're a perfectionist, Maximizers, please don't just polish everything to become too perfect. I think the idea is cross the chasm. If there's at least 13.5% of usually an uptake in certain passionate leaders, it's more than likely that it will really take. And before you know it, you'll have about 70%, 80% uptake. And the 20% that doesn't, don't spend too much energy on them, because I think that would be a waste of time. Does that help?

Purva Hassomal:
[49:37] This is brilliant. Share those percentages again. I want everyone to hear those carefully. What's your benchmark for getting buy-in? Share those again.

Yvonne Sum:
[49:45] OK. So for me, I mean, OK, I'm quoting the work of Crossing the Chasm by George — I can't remember what's his surname. But it was more in sales, you know, like for you to actually have early adopters to things, if you have 13.5% of your leaders already have crossed the chasm, they have buy-in. So normally it starts with the one leader, the early adopter. Really reap those benefits. Get the learning, because if that leader can have a strong voice, where is Fabrice Megarbane and there's a few other leaders, my boss and Melania Guzman. And a lot of business leaders too, if they're willing to try something with a pain point, go in there because they're going to be your advocate. And then they will convert at least enough people to do an uptake. So 13.5%, and before you know it, you'll have social proof.

Purva Hassomal:
[50:33] I love it. I'm going to come to Jim now in a second for any thoughts and questions he's got. Yvonne, as we do that, as you look today, what has been the impact of all of this? If you think of, what have been the results, the impact, has this been worth it? And yes, I tried to make a pun there.

Yvonne Sum:
[50:55] Yes.

Purva Hassomal:
[50:56] Jim was not getting it for a moment.

Yvonne Sum:
[50:58] Yes, L'Oreal, you're worth it. Yes, absolutely. I'm worth it. It's 2017 when it was rolled out in Asia; I think it really started in 2016. So it was a 10-year cultural transformation. And in L'Oreal, what I love about them is they like to turn things around and learn things very quickly in the short term, but having a long-term vision of 10 years. So we're really a year or two away to Simplicity transformation landing. And was it worth it? Yes, because the commitment in 2022, right in the middle of COVID, we did a poll of pulse around the world of 80,000 people who had looked at, you know, completing the pulse engagement scores for five years. And we noticed that we were really moving the needle on five areas of Simplicity that was being measured. So cooperation, engagement, enablement, entrepreneurship and empowerment. And we're really moving the needle. We could see, you know, literally every year, the, the points were going up around the world. And at 70 to 80, 80%, we know that we've kind of hit the mark. This is — again, I talk about the 80%/20% rule. And we were just short of, like 69, 79, 89 — just below 80% of all this. So we knew we had some work to do for the next five years for Simplicity. So I love the commitment of our group to work in the office.

Yvonne Sum:
[52:32] And so we did some listening to the people, and we did some focus groups again with our employees. And the key thing was during the measurement, of course, COVID had hit and enablement was big drawdown. So it went to close to 75%, and it dropped to about 60%. And in enablement, everybody around the world said it was overwhelmed from the stress of too many meetings and back-to-back meetings. And we had, well, resources aside, we never have enough time. We don't have enough time to prioritize. We don't have enough time. We all are Achievers. We're looking to achieve, but we don't have this time. So I think what I love about Simplicity, it also evolved to Simplicity Chapter 2. Simplicity 2.

Purva Hassomal:
[53:13] Yeah.

Yvonne Sum:
[53:14] So it went from the foundations were the same; Simplicity levers remained the same. The five lead-enabled qualities of strategic, innovation, entrepreneurship, people development, and integration remain the same. Sorry, I need to —

Purva Hassomal:
[53:33] I love that. No, don't worry. I love that. And I'll pause you there, Yvonne, because this is our next podcast, which we won't get into right now. It's, where are we going for the future with L'Oreal and with this piece? But I'll just recap for everyone and then come to Jim here. As you hear two big things that Yvonne just shared, which is key. One is, how are you tracking and measuring if this is working — if it's actually making an impact? You heard at L'Oreal, they were able to measure engagement. They were tracking progress on these Simplicity levers. They were looking potentially at kind of their leaders and their managers. And I'm sure they were also looking at retention numbers, attraction metrics, all that kind of wellbeing, I know it comes in. But track and measure that progress of whatever it is that you're investing in. And the second big piece, keep evolving. Same as L'Oreal, I'm sure all of us know, things are happening in the world. Things are changing. It's a constant state. And so it's not a piece of, Oh, we're there, we've arrived, we stop. Actually, it's a constant integration. Right now, for example, I know that skills are coming in. How do we integrate strengths there? How do we move that into our culture? And so I'll come to Jim as well, to find out his thoughts. What have you thought of today in the learnings?

Jim Collison:
[54:47] I'm kind of content just to let you guys go on. I don't think you need me at all. It was great to just sit back. Yvonne, thanks. And for many of you, this is our second take at this. And I'm so glad we waited for the second, because the second time was best. So, Yvonne, thanks. Thanks for doing that. I will say, you know, I will say for L'Oreal coaches, I do get to see a lot of them come through both certification and recertification. And it's just fun to see the email address pop in and, know, another Certified Coach in the organization. Let me, let me close it on this question here. And often as we think — from Mark, and Mark, thanks for two excellent questions. As we think about ROI, your thoughts on that from a business perspective? I know it doesn't, you know, ROI doesn't always mean a percentage or dollars or whatever. Yvonne, when you think about the amount of time you invest in something like this and its return, right, what do you think about, when we think about that ROI for CliftonStrengths?

Yvonne Sum:
[55:48] I think one of the key things that we're certainly measuring in L'Oreal in terms of business performance is the level of psychological safety that's happening in the organization, because there is definitely a correlation between high safety and difficulty with high performance. And I think what the StrengthsFinder, if we were to think of return on investment aside from the, at least two times the market growth, which is one thing that we always measure, and an attractive place to work. Certainly, like we do a measure, we did StrengthsFinder within an Emerging Leaders Program over three years, and we were measuring, say, retention. How has been understanding ourselves as a leader and growing as a young emerging leader the most difficult part of your career, we measured not only their engagement through the whole, so that we had 100% engagement, using a tool called Nobi, for the duration of their nine-month program, but they actually had a retention rate.

Yvonne Sum:
[57:00] So from the first program, I think we were losing about 20% of that talent band. In the first year, we only lost probably, I think it was 20% in that first-year program. By the third year, we only had 0.1%. In other words, one person dropped out. And the only reason why they dropped out was their spouse was moving to another part of the world that L'Oreal was not going to be suitable for them. So it was that retention rate. So if you kind of measure the amount of time you spend to nurture a leader, and we know it's 10 years in L'Oreal, that StrengthsFinder has given us a retention of our, you know, that really key emerging leader talent pool that is going to grow and help our organization move. And if that was one, just talking about retention and engagement of the leader in their own growth, that's got to be important.

Jim Collison:
[57:52] I think that's a great place to kind of wrap this conversation. Purva, let's take a second. Would you thank Yvonne for coming today to be a part of this conversation?

Purva Hassomal:
[58:02] Oh, it's a huge, heartfelt, from the bottom of our hearts, Yvonne, thank you for sharing. I think not just your knowledge and time and expertise and real honest thoughts, case studies, tips, practical, what worked, what didn't, but also your genuine passion and purpose for what you do and, I think, for really just making an impact on the people that you work with. So thank you so much.

Yvonne Sum:
[58:29] I think it's been a real pleasure. I also want to thank Jim and Purva for your patience, because the last time we had an issue with my Wi-Fi, because I had a bad computer, so my fault. But I think the key thing, if I had to leave one thing for everybody in our very, very fast-moving world at the moment, really start with yourself. If you can actually understand yourself better, and if CliftonStrengths is one of the tools you can use for self-awareness, there's certainly, of course, different ways you can do that. But not only that creates that safety, but you honor that by help expressing yourself in a way that helps others grow. And the tool CliftonStrengths has been a very growth area for me that allowed me to be more centered during my own growth. And in the time of setting that energy of stability in a very, very fast-changing world, it's been enormous for me. Thank you so much.

Purva Hassomal:
[59:25] And Jim, I will say, to Yvonne's point, it takes a tribe. And so Yvonne talked about all the people at L'Oreal and outside that we've worked with in North Asia — Jenny, Gladys, Melania, Helene, so many amazing, plus more individuals across the globe that have helped bring this and keep doing the work. So thank you to all of them as well.

Jim Collison:
[59:50] Yeah. Thank you, Purva. Thanks for coming. And thanks for being a part of this. Thanks for leading us through this. And I think I heard a Part 2 in there somewhere. So we'll have to figure out what that's going to look like. And so, Yvonne, thank you for coming. Purva, thank you for being here. I'll ask you two to hang tight with me for one second. With that, we'll remind everyone to take full advantage of all the resources we have available in Gallup Access. You can log in, and we talked about your Top 5 report or all 34 report available there. If you're listening for this, for coaching, master coaching, if you want to become a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, we do that as well. You can contact us — send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Stay up to date on all our webcasts just by joining our Facebook or LinkedIn groups (I almost combined those together) and we'd love to have you come out and join these when we do these events live. For those of you who did join us live, thanks for listening. For those of you listening in the podcast or on YouTube, hit Like and S. You know all the things that the kids have to do, so we get those social, the social proof that's out there. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Yvonne Sum's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Connectedness, Strategic, Adaptability, Positivity and Maximizer.