Leadership Insights: Navigating Challenges in Corporate America

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Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast, a show for the new generation of leaders. Join Melissa R. Skog as she speaks to a wide variety of guests that bring new insights into leadership, prosperity, and personal growth. While now it has all the answers, by building a community of open-minded and engaged leaders, we hope to give you the tools you need to help you find your own path to success. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast.

I'm so excited to have my friend Nadine Hall and fellow executive leader with over 25 years of P&L experience, managing some of the biggest and most iconic brands like Haynes, Champions, Polo Ralph, Laurent, DKNY, and several others. She has navigated various distribution channels with some of the top retailers, like Walmart, Target, Amazon, Macy's, both internationally and domestically. She's here to talk to us today about leadership. Welcome to D.D. Thank you, Melissa.

It's a real pleasure to be with you and I appreciate the kind introduction today. So I'm just going to jump right into it like I normally do. Clearly, you're a branding expert for what someone probably consider products that are hard to differentiate. What's your approach to differentiating the products, your positioning, and how can these principles be applied to leaders looking to stand out and position themselves favorably in corporate America?

Yeah, it's a great question. Well, we would say is that there's a real, you need to find a place of differentiation in the market that is driven by consumer insights. So what do consumers want from their products? What solutions are they looking for? And then you innovate the products to deliver those benefits and communicate in a compelling way, both in the store or online or in advertising. We think about personal branding. A lot of the things can continue in that same vein.

So it's a continuation of that theme. So we think about as we start to think about a personal branding statement, think about career interests, think about targeted roles you'd like, think about your current role and things you're good at doing. So we might say that there's a phrase that would say, I am this, I am a sales leader,

and then you would talk about in what case who you deliver certain sales goals or you've increased sales in new channels or you've gotten new customers on board. And then you think about what things are you known for? I'm known for my ability to do what? To grow business in difficult times, to make categories exciting to retail partners, those kinds of things. And lastly, you might think about what is my superpower? What are some things I'm really, really enjoy doing? I'm good at doing.

And a tip there is to ask some people who have worked with you in the past and known you over time because often they can tell you what your superpower is, even though maybe you've missed it. So it's another tip for trying to figure that figure that one out. I love it. Sounds like we need to own it more and use words like I and you're superpower. That's such an important thing. Like what are you great at as someone that is very experienced in leadership roles?

What do you consider the most critical skill or maybe mindset trait for a successful leader in this in the world today? Yeah, I think part of it is a sense of continuous learning. So that just approach of continuously learning and continuously upgrading your abilities. I'm thinking about questions that you can have that will help you understand other people and their businesses or their situations. So kind of what is your end goal?

What is the thing you're trying to accomplish in your business or in your life? What are three top imperatives? So if nothing else happens, what three things have to happen? And then the last, what are your top three challenges? What is your biggest problem? What are you trying to solve? Because often if we can solve that problem for someone else, then you get on board and you start thinking about other things you can work on together and how that can progress.

The other thing I'd say is also listening to develop a skill of listening with a desire and a purpose of understanding others. What their goals and motivations are, what their challenges and their work that they're trying to accomplish. And what their general approaches, what their thoughts are. And that way you really have a sense of what the person is really about, but also what this business situation is.

And it's much easier to find sort of a place where you can work together towards a solution. I love the one listening, actively listening. I forget the saying that goes, listen to understand, not listen to respond. I think most people listen to respond and we're not really hearing what other people are saying clearly. And so I think I would agree a lot of times what people are trying to say and what they're really saying is misunderstood a lot of time as we navigate complex workforce.

And the world we live in today on teams and the way we are as far as wanting things yesterday and now and not patient. And so I myself constantly work on the listening because I would agree it's one of the most difficult things these days with so many dynamic things going on. And it's a great point was it is hard because there's so much coming out of us all the time and we do process information very quickly.

A thing that has helped me is to say, I'd like to share what I think I heard you say so you can help make sure that I've understood you and then kind of cover the key points.

And so they're invited in to help you make sure that you're clear on everything. So that sense of I'd love to just summarize what I think I heard you say is a great way of kind of keeping the dialogue open and learning more and making sure that you sort of you have it. You're clear. Yeah, so like telephoning it back, right?

Because you know, I've heard sometimes where I'll say something that comes back around and I'm like, wait, that's not what I meant. That's not what I said. That's somehow I said it. So actively practicing repeating what you heard to make sure it was indeed what you're that's really great advice that I love. What would you consider the defining factors that encourage you to navigate your career and the different roles you've taken in the apparel business?

I think I'll cover since the time I started with Sarah Lee Corporation, then you know, we were spun off to Haynes brand. So I'll cover kind of those key junctures there. And that was after I had my MBA so I would consider that it's more more clear kind of career journey at that point. So the first was I joined Sarah Lee Corporation Haynes Hojri because I felt like I learned a tremendous amount about business, about consumer marketing and about customers.

And so I thought it was a great place to begin in those days. They had a fantastic training and mentoring both informally and formally. And the executives I met during interview process were incredibly impressive in every way. And they like to teach kind of teach a mentor people. So that was the place I started. And then I had an opportunity to make a change over to a leadership role years later that was a lateral.

And what I determined was Haynes brands had or Sarah Lee in those days had a lot of businesses in the mass channel. So Walmart and Target. And I realized then I had never worked on those businesses. So I thought to myself, you know, I'm not going to be considered for some of these roles where you have to know those customers really well. Even though it wasn't in sales directly, it was part of the kind of team work we had for trying to present solutions to customers.

So I took a lateral move back into the Hojri business and it was great. I knew the product and I knew a lot of the people who are still there, but I just was able to learn those mass customers. And that made me have a chance I was asked to lead the C9 by champion business, which was our champion product line at Target exclusively. And so I probably wouldn't have been in line for that, but we had the same senior executive on the target side for both businesses.

That was a great business as a huge team effort. We grew it from about 50 million and retail to over a billion dollars and annualized retail sales. So a huge team effort, a wonderful group of people who worked on that. And then I had the opportunity was asked to come back to the inner where side of business, so underwear and socks and lead those businesses.

And those are some of the largest businesses that Haynes had and very much profitable businesses. So that was a chance to really grow there and understand the full P&L, a broader view of the supply chain and how our business fit into the total company. And most recently one of my roles was in the men's business, we had a portfolio in men's under and sleepware of key brands.

So Haynes, Champion and Licensed Polo Business. And that was really an opportunity to think about the portfolio brands we had and how could we sort of get to every consumer across the board, given a mix of those brands and a mix of retail channels and including our own stores and sites.

And so this sort of a kind of a focused view on continuing to expand learning, thinking about what I didn't know and how I could have that knowledge. And also I've been very lucky to have had a number of mentors who've been thinking with me a long time about what are the things that you're going to need to learn and know to continue to advance and to grow.

And it sounds like you pushed yourself out of your comfort zone constantly. It sounds like you had, you know, I hear a lot of times this, I forget the saying that if a woman has doesn't have 80 or more percent of the skills they won't apply for the job or take the challenge.

And it sounds like every time you knew you had some of the knowledge, but you had some growth to do. And so you kind of pushed yourself out of your boundary and asked for help. And it's not like you also champions that were pulling you along and supporting you and working with you and really mentoring you. It sounds like as well in these roles and I would always say like target to me and Walmart or like big leagues, right? They're like the big leagues.

And it's a total different supply chain than like the local mom and pop, right? Yeah, just the size and scale and certainly if I think about businesses like CNI or some of the, there was a huge target and also men's underwear at Walmart. You know, these are large scale businesses and the supply chain has to be very robust in our demand and supply planning. So how much are we going to sell of what and when does it need to be here? That has to be very carefully coordinated.

But it was a great opportunity to really do some some terrific things, hopefully for our customers, but also for consumers too. So you're right, mentoring and the support of and advocacy in some cases for by others has been something I've been very grateful for. And there's been a lot of it. And the other things interesting is that mentors sometimes come from unusual places.

I heard someone say that years ago who he ended up to be CEO of a company and he said, you across his career, he sort of traced his entire career. And he said, you know, I had mentors who were in totally different functional areas. Very much senior to me. I didn't even think they knew me at all. And he said they would take an interest.

And he said, I always just sort of appreciated that and tried to gracefully accept whatever help we're coaching they were giving. He said some of those people became some of my largest advocates because they saw in the, you know, a partner in marketing who was really appreciated by someone who is a very senior executive for example in sales or in supply chain that they saw something in this person was quite exceptional for sure.

But, but thinking about, you know, if someone sees sees something in you and they want to help or support it's wonderful to just graciously accept the help and support and to have that kind of breadth. Because those folks are remarkable in what they know both about leadership but also about their functional disciplines.

And it sounds like you've had to like pivot the ship a few times, right? You know, we were going down one direction and the team was executing a strategy and with the rebranding and changes you've had to really pivot teams of people and strategy and which is not really easy these days to pivot and change. So how did you, how did you handle that landscape and from a leadership perspective and really give your team confidence in the changes.

I know now there's a lot of change going on in our world and I think that now it's more important than ever to be adaptable to change and open to change. You kind of touched on it as well. You had champions internally that were teaching you things. So what do you think from for aspiring professionals and leadership roles.

Any any feedback or suggestions for them when they're, you know, maybe their landscape is constantly changing or pivoting or re-organ. So this is probably a couple of things is to think, kind of think constantly and be open to new opportunities. Think about what, where how you could potentially attack a problem or address an issue in a new way.

So think about a broad view of the data, looking at all the data that you have on the performance of the business, what all the details are getting into a great level of depth and understanding. And talking to the team about ideas they have, what they think is really the central problem, what they think are opportunities. And communicating that in a simple way and having a plan that is both strategic in nature, but simple in execution as much as possible.

And then making sure there are different folks who are leading each part of that. I also think there's a lot to seeing the bigger purpose of what we're doing.

So some might say we're in the active apparel sports broad business or we're in the men's underwear business, but we would say, you know, we're in a place where we're trying to delight consumers with our products, meet their needs for solutions they want and provide those products at prices that pretty much everybody can afford and find and retail locations they're easily accessible. Certainly now at the internet, but back years ago was just trying to get product distributed broadly.

So we would say that as well as we always took our position in the communities in which we did business very seriously. So we had the number of at Haynes, Branson number of medical missions to other parts of the world where we had facilities or we built schools in certain other locales or when there were kind of difficult human tragedies or unexpected disasters we would provide product or water or whatever was needed.

So things really sort of, I guess, put a different sort of view on what our purpose is. It's a business purpose in delighting consumers and customers with solutions, but it's also serving the bigger community of humanity. That's impressive. That's leading multi billion dollar P is not, you know, a small task. So you're working in effort to move and position brands across multiple lines, so you're hitting male female age, all the buckets and.

It made me think, you know, how do you balance that so that's not an easy task, easy feat. How do you balance kind of that personal professional side with driving revenue for a large publicly traded company, right? And profit profitability revenues increasing branding, getting stronger, better absorbing more market share constantly. I mean, there's only so many pairs of underwear one can have, right? So. Or wear it one time, right?

So how do you balance that personal professional life day to day? Yeah, I think one thing the professional side is having a lot of clarity about where you're going strategically or if nothing else, these things have to be accomplished in this way.

And by this timeframe and then backing into what is the action plan to get there based on the data that you have the performance of the business today, the characteristics of the business. And working at it with a fair amount of relentlessness or intensity because you these we used to say, these are large businesses. And so if we make in a large business a mistake, it can be very large.

And so part of it's just being very clear on what the facts are where you are, you know, where you're going and what is the path to get there. And so that's the backup plan if we don't, you know, if we struggle along the way, so how could we kind of recover the timeline or some of the investment we've made. And then personally, I think the balance of the two is is never I think a simple thing to do overall. I would say generally, I've had a lot of a lot of help in that.

I think you find friends or others or partners marriage partners who are who are set up to help and willing to help. And when you have to travel constantly that they're there to help, which is great. My husband's been wonderful. I think also you think about in that there are often key priorities or key times where you really have to be physically and I'd say mentally present. And trying to make sure you as someone says, we want the brain and the person stays with the body.

So when you're there and it's important to be with family or important to be at work that in that setting that you're there fully to the other parts that are taking care of. And I think the last thing is just a bit of constant sort of reprioritizing of, you know, this was the schedule for today. But these other things can wait and there's something more important or it's going to take more time to do this, whatever it is. And for just an empty got away.

I think also for me one last thing is I had the blessing early in my career of a job I did not like. And so it was a huge blessing. All it didn't seem so at the time. But that was a reminder of if you do things you really enjoy doing, it never feels like work. Because you run to it and you run from it of course just for family and other things. But it never feels like work and the ability to constantly work at it or relentlessly go after something is much easier.

So I just remind everybody about that. The other thing is some people would say, well, you know, I like this part of the work but less this well. Maybe over time you could do more of the part that you like better. You think you're better at doing it. And as well, I think some people say, well, I love my work. But I have a, you know, my work is very much like in the area of technology or finance or engineering.

But I have this creative side. Well, in hobbies, you can pick something that lets you explore your creative side so that you can continue on in your career. And so the balance becomes there in that way. I love it. So many really good nuggets and that. I think the first one I heard was you are not only leading a team, but you're leading yourself. Right.

You're leading yourself through your day to day. And you get through your day and you're like, OK, I was supposed to get these things done. I didn't. So we're going to pivot to this maybe the next day and then giving yourself grace, right? It's one thing to say, I didn't get my 20 things done. That's it.

I'm working on my work late and exhaust myself and get it all John. But I think what I heard was leading yourself. And I guess the flight attendant say it best, right? You put your mask on first so you can, you know, put your kids mask on and. So playing that in your head, right? So you lead yourself, pivot, give yourself grace and realize we're all not yet a chat GPT AI bot. So we're just humans trying to figure it out on this earth for now. Right.

It's so true. And I think you put it beautifully. Unless I love what you said about about thinking about, you know, kind of giving yourself a chance like, well, tomorrow we're going to hit this harder or we're going to reallocate time or I'm going to ask some other people to help me so we can kind of crest the hill. I think part of it is the sense of like we're working to be better at what we're doing all the time.

So we're not worried about something didn't work or we weren't as good as you want to be. Well, we're just working to be better all the time. I think is a big thing. And I think you know, the other piece of it is that whatever we do, we just work on being our best at doing that. Right. We're just we're just trying to give everything we do our very best. And it's not always possible, but I think the goal is, you know, I'm going to try and do my very best wherever I am.

So I often say people who are more junior in their career, like if you want to be at this other level at some point in your career, then just do the best you can and whatever you're doing right now, because often also people think how we do small things is how we do big things, you know.

So those small things, seemingly small things are assigned both to ourselves and to others of like, what is our approach? How do we think about things? How do we execute things? How do we plan things? How do we approach things strategically? So part of it's saying, I'm going to do the very best I can at whatever I have in front of me to do whatever my assignment, so to speak is I'm going to do it with the best of my ability.

And and you also find that way you tend to find you learn a lot that way, learn a lot about yourself, but you also end up in a place where you have more opportunities to do different things because people see you as like, why she could figure that out or she asked for help when she was trying to think about this. She had a new approach and just went after it until we could make it work. So things like that sometimes, you know, the success of one thing breeds breeds to another.

And I love that and the other thing I always think too is doing things to the best of your abilities and if and when you make a mistake. It's okay as I'm a personally recovering perfectionist and I realize sometimes my biggest mistakes were some of the best blessings in my life. And like you said, work really hard at it and you know, not dwelling on it, get it across the line. And then if you make a mistake, learn from it and ask for help or hey, I did this assignment.

What do you think, you know, and asking feedback for people and it doesn't have to be senior people. sideline, down line, around line, your kids, your mom, whoever is your council. And I love what she said because we all are just trying to do our best job. And we all, where we are, where we are today was what we have and aspiring for these other roles is really, I love what you said it so great is learning and keep trying to the best of your ability because it

will show over time. Yeah, it's really true. I love what you said about that sort of like we don't have to be perfect in some cases. Some things just have to be finished and completed, right? They just need to be completed by a certain time some they need the timeline is you got more time but they have to be done with great precision or other things are very complicated and you have to sort of create a new business model or think about something that the team has never

done before. So you're gonna need a little more time and you have to talk a lot together about okay here's where we want to go. How do we have to work our way there? So I think those things are really really important and I think it what you hit on a great thing list of which is feedback and I think learning to ask for feedback and saying you know tell me about how you perceive that that

session went. They'll tell you about it and you say what things do you think I were I was strongest at doing what things do you think I could improve and and

how would you suggest I do that. So learning to ask for feedback and to accept it graciously because you know all feedback is a gift and someone said to me once you know we like it the holidays or our birthdays we like some gifts more than others so if you need back as a gift we have to remind that and thank the person for helping us by giving us feedback that maybe we need to hear as well as compliments and things of you know really just do more of that is a great thing

so I think some of those basic things like accepting feedback having a positive attitude being prepared working hard those kinds of things really they make a difference over the long haul they really do absolutely absolutely I think as we embark on the end of the year hard to believe we're at the end of the year I always think you know everybody sets goals right end of the year goal right and not be so hard on yourself whether it's weightless goals or this goal or

that goal and and realize that it takes time to get where we're going wherever that goal is it takes time and effort and I just want to end just any final thoughts or maybe three key leadership takeaways you've learned in your mega career that you can share with our leaders I think like I said previously listening is a is a great skill to develop and you'll be surprised when you when you talk to someone you say we came from this meeting what what were your kind of key

takeaways or what did you think about this point people will will see things that you never would have seen and it's just a wonderful way to get to know somebody and then when you go back and you work with them on something else you you have this understanding of them and how they view the world and it's incredibly broadening and you realize boy the two of us sort of join forces we are going to be unstoppable so listening I think is this critical with like

you said within a goal of understanding and then maybe sometimes repeating back to people I think I heard you say the following do you mind if I share share that with you so you can help me make sure the second thing is what I call back to basics a little bit about we talked about earlier so so we're going to be positive enthusiastic we're open to learn we're we're doing making our best effort we show up on time ready to go those things don't cost anything don't take

a lot of extra work or exceptional IQ they're just the basics and when when we get a straight sometimes just get back to basics it really helps us and the last thing I'd say is working well with other people just figuring out a way like is there any bridge between us do we have anything in common do we have almost nothing in common but we have this person has great skills that I don't have maybe that would be wonderful compliments was working together but just finding

a way to do that and in situations that are more sensitive or more difficult or in the businesses especially challenging is finding a way to diffuse the situations the put others at ease to put everyone in position where we're prepared to work together as a team and sort of be our best together even if we're all struggling or it's a very difficult environment so those kinds of things that diffuse attention and provide a platform of moving forward together really

really remarkable because you you know there are tense moments in these businesses and things have to things have to happen that are very difficult so being able to harness that group effort is is a big thing I love that that's such could advise to be able to be likeable I forget who wrote that book the likability factor or maybe it was like Dale Carnegie or something like that it's true working with culture race background ages you know working with

different the baby boomers do things different than Gen X the you know people from Japan do business different than the people from the US and being mindful that it's a cultural thing too and it may not be you it's just their perspective of things I love that I'm actively working myself in that space so that is great advice need you and I appreciate that I want to thank you so much for being here I love so many words of wisdom so many nuggets how can the listeners connect with

you is there a social channel that's best for you yes probably on LinkedIn so if you put in LinkedIn you know LinkedIn.com and then in and then it's netting hall one number one so an a D I N E and H L L and then the number one I love it connects with the ad she's amazing wonderful thank you so much for joining executive and the next podcast you like pleasure thank you so much I really appreciate and humbled by the invitation to join you it's just terrific to be with

you today thanks so much but thank you for listening to executive connect and tune into us again next week you've been listening to the executive connect podcast if you have questions or ideas on how to bring leadership to the next level email us at executive connect podcast at gmail dot com and don't forget to subscribe she can catch every new episode until next time (upbeat music)