You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel, well, Joining me today is Tiffany Castagno, CEO and founder of Sephir LLC. Tiffany leads a boutique, HR, and culture consulting firm helping small to mid-sized businesses build strong teams and inclusive workplaces. She's also a children's book co-author who is passionate about equity, acceptance,
Tiffany, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast with me today. Thank you. Thanks for having me as a guest, Shari. We have talked a lot on the podcast about different forms of leadership development over the last couple of years. I feel like leadership development is always like the top you know, top five or top 10 things for HR trends for every year that I've been in HR. But I want to focus our conversation today really around, you know, your personal leadership brand style
as an HR person. I think this is one of those opportunities where we don't do enough talking about our own kind of brand and how we want to show up, whether that's we want that super white glove approach, or we want to be more collaborative,
or we want to be the question person who's really curious. So with all of that as our setup, how do you go about kind of shaping your own leadership brand around that philosophy that so many of us HR people sit in, which is like that people first approach of like giving and showing up for people. We also have to have that leadership brand This was such a cool question. I'm really grateful that you asked it because a lot of times when I'm helping shape this for other leaders or helping
them shape their brand, it really is. You don't have to mimic yourself after everyone else. And so I do pride myself on having my own brand where I'm known for being very authentic and for being collaborative and building community. And that's so important. And of course, I'm an HR consultant, right? But even as an HR practitioner, we need to be seen that way by the folks who we are working with and partnering with in HR. And I haven't always found that to be the case. So for me, I really
want it to be this collaboration, this partnership. And some people don't like the word partnership because it brings but it's really about how do we work together? You mentioned questions, questions and curious questions are a significant part of my leadership brand and how I like to lead. I like to ask questions first and listen and really help people feel seen, heard, valued and appreciated. And that seems to be working, so.
Yes, it definitely does. How do you help leaders get to that list of non-negotiables for themselves? And the reason kind of the context or the reason behind this question is, you know, there's so much work that I think a lot of HR people have done either with defining their values or knowing their why or leaning into their strengths or whatever, you know, assessment that you want to use. I feel like we've all taken a bajillion of them over
the years. But sometimes we get stuck in these leadership buzzwords. You know, you got to be this way or that way. But I think being genuine and unique to yourself is part of creating that own brand. But how do you find that uniqueness in the context of why you're doing your role? Because I'm sure you've been in roles like this. I know I have been where my brand and uniqueness sometimes gets masked because of the leadership team that I'm working with or supporting. I
think that's changing for us in HR. I think we're able to come to the table Yeah, it's I think we have to have a list of non-negotiables, and quite frankly, that's how I began to establish my own leadership brand. I was swiping and adapting from what worked well under leaders whom I reported, and then I was also taking from them. This is what we don't want to do and the things that I've seen as best practices in human resources that I know disengage. We've
looked at all the surveys, right? We've heard from the employees. We have the pulse. And so one of those things in helping them find that confidence that helps me is What are your own values? Now, we hope that they're aligned with the business, right? But what are your walkaway points? What ethically can you live with and live without? And how do you want to show up for the team that you're leading? How do you want, you know, what
do you want them to say when you're not around? And so for me, those are some of the ways that I encourage people to do that. And really looking at Being human, we at Stanford have a value of being human at work. And that's what I encourage leaders to do. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to, we can be vulnerable. We can show empathy. We don't have to have all the answers. And being human at work really helps to build trust with employees. So those are some
I love that. How have you incorporated that vulnerability? And I'm thinking about my own career journey and there, I mean, I hate saying this, but there was definitely a time in my career where I looked at other women who were more squishy, that's the word I'll use, more squishy in the office, a little bit more vulnerable with your emotions. And I judged them. I'm
being fairly transparent. That's where I was. I judged them. The more I grew and learned about emotions and resiliency and how people interact with stuff, I realized that everybody's different and emotions show up in lots of different ways. And that's not something we should be judgy of. Obviously, you still need to do your job and all those things, but there is a part about being vulnerable and authentic. How have you helped navigate finding
It's a little tricky, right? Because we get to, I will never forget this phrase, and you mentioned buzzwords, where we were told like, to be in leadership, you have to have political savvy. And I was like, what does that even mean? Like, you know, being in HR almost 20 plus years, there was a time when we told people, don't talk about politics at work. So I'm like, well, what do they mean this political savvy? But it was how do you navigate challenge and
change? But a lot of that, you know, we're telling people that we're building these hard skills of like almost hard shelled humans where that wasn't a thing. in the past. And I think now it has become more squishy because we've realized that people are going to trust and follow leaders who they believe care about them. And you have to be a little squishy to
be able to do that. You have to be able to relate to them, which means you don't have to walk exactly in their shoes or know exactly what's going on. But you can take a pause, you can listen, you can let different people lead the team meeting or carve out space for that or in your one on ones. And I think that there's so much, you know, even when we look at performance management, it's a lot of times the manager talking to the employee about what they need to do.
But do we ever ask what they aspire to? I've asked leaders, you know, they'll come to me with a problem with someone and I'm like, they're struggling in their role and I'm like, What are their aspirations? And the number of times people can't tell me, and you've been working with this person and they're on your team, it's kind of frightening. So I would say just
the curiosity, right? Asking questions to understand is certainly before replacing blame because often it's a process or a tool that's lacking a resource, maybe some retraining versus the Yeah, and it's so funny because I think back to, you know, all the conferences I've attended or all the great speakers that are out there, and they all show up on stage with these very personal, vulnerable stories. And we look up to them, right? We
don't see that same kind of mirror in organizations. So it's definitely something for us to figure out how do we want to bring that into our brand as HR professionals. Let's get a little tactical though. So if you're listening, I want to get into like, okay, how do we actually do this? So if you are going down this journey where you're like, hey, you know what? I'm actually going to get strategic about defining my own leadership brand. What's
what I will always go back to, what are your values? And then behind that, how do you want to be seen by your team? What's important to you? Because unless and until we are aligned in values, if you value DEI, for instance, and I don't, we're going to naturally struggle. And there's always going to be this natural struggle within, I shouldn't say struggle, but there's natural tension sort of in leadership and between employees. But to understand what it is that you
value so that you can communicate that to the team. And also looking at what are your expectations? And so underneath those values are behaviors. What are the types of behaviors and expectations? So not just focusing on the technical side of the rote job description, so to speak, but looking at what are the behaviors? What does good look like under here? Have you defined competencies for the team? Have you been clear about what their roles are and those expectations and what good looks like?
And even coaching when things maybe are not going the right way? Are you giving full feedback? And those are things that I always encourage people to really think about, as well as just checking when we talk about vulnerability and leading people first, checking in enough so that you understand when somebody may be struggling or when you understand that something, this doesn't seem like how Shari typically operates. I might want to ask some questions to
see if she needs some support. So there are so many things we could I love that idea around linking the behaviors to your own personal values. I mean, we all kind of know that if we've worked on creating competency models in our organization, so it's not necessarily a new concept, but I don't know that we always think about it for ourselves personally, starting with the values and then thinking about the behaviors like the way we want to show up. You
know, two different people could have the same value, right? Maybe the value is that you want to be a great partner to your business. And one person's behaviors of that is, like I mentioned before, a white glove approach. Another person's behaviors to that might be, I'm going to create all the great resources. So they always have access to great resources, right? Two different behaviors, same value, but
going through that exercise really helps that come to life. How have you seen the impact of leaders who bring these strong brands with them? And I'm thinking specifically of leaders that are coming in that are maybe new to an organization who've done this work already and are bringing that strong leadership brand inside of a new place with them. How does that come to life? How do they show that to their new team or to their new organization?
I think one of my favorite tools, and I was just having this conversation a couple of weeks ago, is having a new leader transition meeting and having that leader really showcase, this is who I am on a personal level, it's very human, right? Having them understand, this is how I like to approach work, so that their team understands that, but then that they're also curious and listening on the other side, how do you like to approach work? How do you like
to be recognized and rewarded? And so thinking about how both of those worlds from employee to leadership, how they can combine and align is really healthy. I think when you when you're clear, it creates transparency, which builds trust and psychological safety, because if we're not clear or if we start to make assumptions like Tiffany person, she seems like she's a little bit too good to be true or I don't know, maybe you've been burned by a leader in the past who didn't have a good brand
and maybe that's why this new leader is coming in. But we just want to be clear about our intentions and be intentional about it so that we can create meaning and these moments that become engaging where we can retain our Do you think there's been any innovation in this space specifically around, you know, brand leadership over the last, you know, five, six years. I think because there's just, there's so many leadership books
out there. I mean, there's just a wealth of knowledge. But I'm curious, have you run into anything that just feels really innovative or a new approach to kind of tackling being a leader? Maybe something even Gen Z is doing that we haven't kind of incorporated yet. You know, for this, I always say, because you're right, it's overwhelming. Every time I talk to someone, I get a new resource, whether it's a podcast or whatever it is, and you're just like, how am I gonna make time
for all of this? And it's all great, and we have to be doing research to build it into what we're doing, especially as HR, as we're becoming transformational and looking at that. But I think, for me, it's always gonna be just allowing for mistakes to happen, allowing for things that we can't always control, And I think in leadership, this is where sometimes it goes wrong. There's so much fear and I have to look good. I have to be the role model. Role
modeling can be, hey, I made a mistake too. And accountability will be always a go-to for me to allow for that creativity and to show like we can make mistakes. We can grow and learn as a team from them. Now, of course, do we want everything to go right 100 percent of the time? That would be nice, but that's not real life. And so grounding things in reality and authenticity and also accountability to say, hey, I have to give you some hard feedback, but we're going to work on this, but
I'm not going to be punitive about it. And even showcasing this is a mistake I made and this is how I learn and grow to normalize that. really to me is how we get through a period of creativity and innovation. So we can have all the books we want, but if we don't have an environment You brought up such a good point about a leader sharing their story, their mistakes. I mean, we grow so much from our mistakes. We grow so much from our failures. Those
are great stories to share. And I feel that when you were sharing about how, you know, you kind of want to show up in this perfection way as an HR person. You don't necessarily want to be questioned or leave room for questioning on your competency as an HR practitioner. And I definitely began my career that way. I would approach things very, you're going to get kind of the full package, buttoned
up, bow tie, here you go. There wasn't a lot of collaboration or iteration or failure or opportunity to kind of work along the process. And as I've gone through my own kind of leadership brand and development, one of the things that I've kind of created in my values and the way it comes to life is I'm, I'm a curious person. I like to ask questions and that behavior comes from being, it shows up in being iterative as I work on projects with other leaders instead of giving them the
fully baked. It's like, Tell me more about what you're trying to accomplish. What is a perfect end goal? If money wasn't an option, how would you want the end result to be? And that curiosity has opened so many doors and great discussions with other leaders. That doesn't work for everybody, obviously. And so as you define yourself, you definitely have to figure out what's your
fit. So let's talk about how this kind of comes off the corporate page and into your public page as a leader from a, you know, a LinkedIn or a social media perspective, how do you start to make that brand visible I think, you know, you talked about storytelling, Shari, and it that really is one of my favorite parts besides community building on LinkedIn is to really build, of course, you get to build your brand and you get to establish that. But within that, it's what are the stories that
make you come alive? How can you share your expertise there and help others learn? And so there becomes a component of mentorship. as well, which should be a part of leadership. And I think whether you're an HR consultant in the corporate space or you're consulting on your own, there's such a space to bring both of those things together. I worked in and out of corporate a lot during my career. And a lot of those things brought, I worked in different industries. It really allowed me to broaden my
perspectives. And now that I work with small to medium businesses, to bring that large corporate experience to them and to help them create and innovate and have the structure that oftentimes they don't have the resources to build. So it's still, I'm seeing so many people who haven't built on LinkedIn and who I'm trying to like nudge clients or nudge people who I know to do that. It's, well, I mean, of course they have some paid tools, but it's
free for the most part to use your voice. It's one of my other favorite things about LinkedIn. We can use our voice. We can activate things. We are able to inspire people. There are so many good things that come from that and it's free brand building basically. So why would you not do that to attract candidates, to energize your team? There's so many great things about being social. Have you found that for some people it's hard for them to feel like they're being authentic when
they're sharing in that medium? And if you have, how have you kind of coached them to get over that? Because, you know, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn probably like you do too. And there's, you know, there's posts that I post that are very corporate sounding, right? They've got a very specific call to action. And then there are moments where I'm sharing stories and being more personal.
you know sometimes they feel icky right but you you need to get some information out there so how do you kind of get over that for like the thing that holds you back from knowing that what you have to say and what you have to share it's going to impact somebody like we all have these amazing stories and we all learn from other people unless we're willing to share that We can't help ourselves grow And that's what you just said is the bowl on top, right?
That that is why we need to do it, because so many times I've had people reach out into my direct messages and say that really helped me. I'm so glad you share that because maybe they're unable to say it or maybe they can't share that publicly, but they needed a voice like you to be there. And we spend so much time in our own heads worrying about you know, being judged or what other people are going to say? Are they going to care about what
I say? Is this post going to be good enough? Is it going to resonate? What will people think? And we ask ourselves all these hard questions if we just do it. I mean, my first LinkedIn post, I sat there, unbeknownst to me that I was like, my mug matched my But I sat down one day and just recorded a video and I was like, why am I going to post this? Should I post it? And I did all this. Just do it. Just post it. It's going to resonate with someone. Is it
going to resonate with everyone? No, but we are not for everyone. And that's Well, that was the tweetable moment of this episode. If you're looking for one, I love that. I'm gonna keep that in my back pocket of mantras that I collect as I talk to different people. All right,
one last question. I know this is kind of a tough one to end, but what advice do you have for leaders who have decided they need to rebrand themselves, whether it's they had a tough leadership challenge or they made a big mistake and they're kind of reevaluating who they are. How do Yeah. And I think, you know, again, it's it's values. And it's I always like there's a very simple way
to say, like, what do I need to start, stop and continue? And if you are looking to rebrand, one good way, if you're open to that and vulnerable enough is to ask people what was working for them, what wasn't, what areas of opportunity. So just lean into that. It's called getting curious. We all learn and grow. I've learned some of my best lessons through making some of my biggest
mistakes. And if we can lean into that and embrace it, not only do we help reestablish and rebrand our own selves and leadership, but we're also now role modeling that and mentoring other people on how to do it. So it's getting curious, leaning into the good, bad and ugly of what's working well within ourselves and maybe what skills we need to. We need some upskilling and reskilling. And there's always opportunities to improve. But I would also say, like, Give yourself some grace. There's
a reason people rebrand their businesses, right? We were not meant to stay static and change is constant. So Tiffany, such great advice overall. If someone wants to learn more about you and your consulting business, how Thank you. They can find me on LinkedIn, as we've been talking about, because we need to be social, and also on our website at I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes and links at thehrmixtape.com Come back