How to Hire and Apply with Leadership Authenticity with Julie Mahfouz Rezvani

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
I would say, spend a little bit of money on the things that you can get someone else to do that frees up your time, to do the things that you do best. We start our businesses because of the interests we have and because of the skills we have, and I think that when we spend our time really dedicating ourselves to those things, we do better.

Mathieu Yuill:
Hey, and welcome to the Leading With Nice interview series podcast. My name is Mathieu Yuill, and we want to help you and your team inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Now, today I’m super excited because we have somebody in full transparency. I’ve known her probably my whole life. We haven’t always been in touch, but I’ve always kept apt to what she’s doing because it’s super exciting. We have Julie Mahfouz Rezvani on the show and she is the founder and managing director of The Orion Group. It’s a boutique human capital management services firm and they serve both national and international clients.

Mathieu Yuill:
So, another cool thing, we’re going to talk about it a little bit later on too, is she co-founded and was the Executive Director of Mes Amis Canada. It was an award winning not-for-profit civil society organization. And what it did is, you may recall, and it’s still happening, but it’s not as much in the news today. There was a time when a lot of Syrian refugees were coming to Canada and her organization, that organization, helped over 2000 of them. And I have some questions about it so I won’t go too deep into it now. Today, she still volunteers as a board member on different boards and she’s a mom of two. So she’s super engaged in her school board, both regionally and of course at her own children’s school.

Mathieu Yuill:
And something very cool, that I thought at least, was she is a recipient of a Governor General of Canada Sovereign Medal. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s okay. But the sovereign medal, if you’ve worked in nonprofit you probably have heard of it before. It’s given to Canadians by the Governor-General and it’s to honor volunteers who have made a significant and continual contribution in their community. So, we’re going to welcome Julie, but before we start chatting with her, I just want to remind you, if you have not gotten your discount code for the Communicating in Crisis online course, head over to leadingwithnice.com, there’s a big, huge button you can’t miss it, and you can get your discount code right now. The emails we’re getting, people are finding it helpful, especially as we’re kind of in this mid-to-exit strategy around the crisis portion of COVID-19, and there’s some great tips and some great learning on just how to manage and facilitate that. So, without any further ado, Julie, thank you so much for being here today.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Thank you for having me, Mathieu, it’s lovely to be on with you.

Mathieu Yuill:
Back in our neighborhood, Julie and I lived in the same neighborhood, so I’ll just get that out of the way. So if there’s times when it was like, how does that relate to anything? It’s probably because I’ve done some 1980s callback. So, before I go down that rabbit hole too much, I want to talk to you Julie first about our employment landscape, because it’s changed so much through the COVID-19 pandemic. And I know a lot of listeners are in these positions where they’re hiring people and they’re trying to figure out what’s important, in addition to all the other usual metrics they look at, like skills and culture fit. So, what should employers be asking today that they may not have been before?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
I think that’s a really good question. I didn’t know I would start with sort of what you’ve touched on, which is COVID’s thrown companies into creating what they thought would be these short term makeshift management processes, because we didn’t think we’d be here a year later. But as we know and as it’s been stated that the way we work has now forever been changed. Keeping that in mind and understanding that perhaps the biggest change, of course that we’ve all experienced at some level or most of us have is the remote work. That wasn’t as popular prior to COVID and now we’re all Zoom experts.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
So, one of the questions I think is, where I start with when I’m advising is that, we’re all in this together. That’s the expression, but we really are. And it’s important I think as a prospective employer to start with the basic question to prospective candidates just how they’re navigating through the pandemic, how are you doing? I think that’s where I think it’s important to start because it’s the elephant in the room that everyone’s asking about, everyone has that elephant in the room. As an employer, when you ask that question, it shows empathy, it creates a connection that, “Yeah, I know this is something we’re all going through, how are you managing it?” And I think it sets the stage for an open and honest interview and I think it lets guards down. So that’s where I always encourage people to start.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Apart from that, COVID has created situations where we’ve had to learn how to problem solve at every level, whether it be while you’re at home and you’re on a Zoom call and the doorbell rings, or your dog starts to bark, or your kids who are homeschooling in the next office or the next bedroom are knocking on your door. So, problem-solving, and how you sort of navigate through those disruptions, those disturbances, that’s a really good question to ask. And there isn’t sort of a right answer, I think. I think what you really want to hear from people is, how far have they come in being able to sort of manage those types of interruptions, what have they put in place to make it easier, and how are they dealing with that?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
I think that sort of shows the employer or the prospective employer, how do you problem solve? When these things come up that you’re not expecting, how are you working around them? You’re on a Zoom call, you’re supposed to host a meeting, all of a sudden your internet goes down. So what do you do? Do you email everybody in the group and say you’re not going to be there, do you try to get someone else to do it? How are you solving these problems that all of us, working from home, relying on things like the internet that can’t always be fully relied on. We’re facing these challenges. We want to know how people are sort of problem solving and trying to work around what is a precarious situation sometimes.

Mathieu Yuill:
I never even thought about asking a question about how are you doing, but of course we could end the interview right now and this would be a huge takeaway for a lot of listeners. Thank you. That was really good advice. Alternately, I have some individuals I work with as coaching client, but then also sometimes clients that are in the middle of career rediscovery, they’ve discovered now they actually want to make a drastic career change. And they’ve realized that they’re only in their job out of comfort because of the holidays they had, because of the salary, because of the location. So when someone contacts you like this, what are the questions you ask them to make sure it’s something they should actually explore? What I’m hoping is that people will hear this and maybe ask themselves this question.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Right. So, you know what, I mean… I think it’s the same approach. I’d take the same approach as I would if they were telling me they’d like to leave their current employment or if I was approaching them for an opportunity. I think it’s important to understand the depth. I always start with the why, why are you looking to leave, or why are you looking for the change? And what you’re really trying to get to there is… Is it a bad day at work? Did you have a bad week? Is it a series of bad days? Or is there more depth? Is it something facal that’s going to change, if I talk to you again two weeks later when you’ve won Employee of the Week Award or something? Or is there something that you’ve actually given a lot of thought, have you researched it?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
And some of the questions I often start with is, of course the why, why do you want to do this? And what is it that you want to do? Because, I think that sometimes people come to the table and say, “I just want to change, I’m bored.” I’ve been there myself, I’ve been doing this for 17 years and there’s times when I’m like, “Maybe I should do something completely different.” But I don’t know what that different thing is. And it’s a fleeting moment or maybe it lasts a week or two and then I’m back on to doing what I love to do. So I think the amount of time that they’ve actually spent thinking about it, and not on the surface but the depth, have you researched it? Have you applied the effort to understanding everything from… What additional education you might require. How are you going to actualize this career change?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
And you also have to have the pragmatic questions like, is there a demand for what you want to do? I’d love to do certain things, is it something that’s viable for me? Am I going to be able to maintain the things that are important to me in my life? And it’s not just about money, it could be about your work-life balance or these certain luxuries you’re afforded or flexibilities you’re afforded. So, I think it’s really important to learn from them. How much do they understand? What is it that they’re hoping to do? And then from there, we move forward. But the first thing is really understanding if they’ve taken the time to research it and also do they have the patience and a viable plan to see it through?

Mathieu Yuill:
I’m just pulling up right now because I saw a post by Adam Grant who’s an author and you might’ve seen him on Ted talk, and he had this great pie chart that he shared about all the different things, how we measure what our career success looks like. And before the pie chart, he would argue we split down the middle, and on one side it was salary and one side it was job title and they were in equal measure. And now, we think so much more about job title and salary. Yes, but they’re a small part, but free time, liking what you do, your physical health, your mental health, those all play into what’s next.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Yeah. And I see that as something that’s evolved. I know, 17 years ago when I started, even in terms of a job change, it always surrounded compensation and responsibility which equated to title for them. And now it’s not the same, much more and more people are concerned about everything from the balance, of course the work-life balance, to being able to work from home to, what are the company’s policies and how do they feel about certain social causes. That’s really important to a lot of people as well. So yeah, I’ve seen that pie chart and I fully concur. I’ve seen that actually in real life interviews with people where the things that you think matter, or they used to matter, they’re not as important anymore.

Mathieu Yuill:
And I often say with our staff, my question to them is, is work life-giving? Does the work we do here during the day, give you the energy to be a better mom or dad or spouse or friend? Because it shouldn’t be taken away from that. You launched The Orion Group almost two decades ago, so a, congratulations, that’s amazing. And so now I’m going to ask you to reach back into your memory banks and you get to a point where you’re like, “Okay, this is actually going to work and this is going to be my thing and we’re going to make it, we’re sustainable now.” And instead of just wondering how or what business we get next month, we’re looking at planning two, three, four, five years out.

Mathieu Yuill:
And so for the people that own their own company, they might’ve tuned in to listen so they could get some tips on hiring. I’d like you to offer some other advice that you’d be an expert in as well. And also you help other companies do this. It’s like, what do you have to be conscious of when you start to think about staffing up and adding maybe your first, second, or maybe it’s your 10th or 11th employee, what are some important things to be thinking of in those earlier days?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
For me, it was a lot about where I came from. Prior to launching my own company, I worked for a billion dollar conglomerate. There were no budgetary constraints, and so you were at freewill to use what you needed to, to make sure that you were able to meet your goals and your targets, especially on the sales side. So, moving from that into, “Okay, this is all my money now and I don’t know if this is going to work or not.” I took a very conservative approach at the beginning, as I think a lot of places do. I wore all the hats from accounting to sales, to marketing and to IT and… I was that one woman shop and it was tough, but what it did is it allowed me to have that hands-on understanding of what skillset I needed for each of those roles. So, even if I was in a position to fully staff those roles, I think it was important that I did it the way I did it because I learned those job descriptions, I understood hands on what they would consist of.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
But what I also learned, and this is where if I were able to tell my 17 years back self, I would say, “Spend a little bit of money on the things that you can get someone else to do that frees up your time to do the things that you do best.” So I started to look more carefully, probably a little bit later than I would’ve liked to, on things like the billable rate. So if I have administrative work to do, am I best to do that or am I best to hire somebody at 16, $17 an hour, to get that person to do that? So I can use my skill and my expertise and those hours to generate the revenue in the company and still have, coming back to sort of having that mental health check, the balance, the work-life balance, the time, the energy to be able to come back in the next day to work and continue.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
So, I think when you’re starting off and then you start to scale up, I think it’s important to look at obviously what the value add of that person is going to be. I don’t think you can look at everybody from a revenue side because not every position is a revenue creating position of course. But, for me, it was very simple, which roles are going to help drive revenue and which roles help save money. And that sort of helped me to sort of strive forward. But I had to be careful as well because being a service-based business, our largest cost is payroll, and being a largely contingency based business at that time, it was really difficult to know when to scale up the staff because, okay, we scale up, but the business isn’t as strong as we had expected it to be.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
So until we got to a point where we had that consistency of clients, where, “Okay, well, you know what? I know I’m on contract with these people or I’ve been working with them for long enough that I know there’s going to be a consistent amount of repeat business.” It was a bit of a precarious skill. So, I think that when you’re in that point where you’re looking at scaling up, I would go after the positions that are absolutely necessary, and I would also consider how much of your time as the owner or the founder is being spent doing those tasks that you could probably hire somebody else to do at a less billable rate than what you would charge.

Mathieu Yuill:
What was it you loved doing? What were you doing that you loved?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
So I loved speaking to the clients. I liked being the face of the company. I liked having those one-on-one conversations on the phone about client’s needs and that could translate into sales and marketing. But really that forward facing role, talking to these different clients and generating the business, that was really where I was strong. And when I got into the minutia of some of these other things like accounting or administration, I felt like it just took me a lot longer to do those things as well. And again, it would be better served if I actually got someone else to do that so I could focus on not only what I loved doing, but honestly what I was better at than some of these other areas that I had delved into.

Mathieu Yuill:
Similarly, for me, and it was kind of a paradigm shift because the first thing I outsourced was accounting. And I was using an online accounting software and pay like $32 a month. And then all of a sudden, monthly accounting was like a thousand dollars or somewhere in there for the work that I needed done. And I was like, “Oh, but I can do this for $32 a month on my own.” But when I let that go, Oh my gosh, the freedom it gave me… And I’m sure you experienced that as well.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Yeah. And you’re now able to focus on it. My accountant tells me this all the time, “Let me do what I do best. You look over the stuff I do, but you do what you do best.” I think it’s as simple as that. We start our businesses because of the interests we have and because of the skills we have and I think that when we spend our time really dedicating ourselves to those things, we do better. And, especially in my field, that’s what I do, I hire people to do jobs and bringing that home and incorporating that into my company was very important for me.

Mathieu Yuill:
If you’ve just heard what Julie had to say and you’re like, “Oh, I need to figure that out.” It may not be because you want to staff up, maybe there’s a lot of reasons why you need to let go of something. Two resources I’m going to recommend for you. One is a book by Henry Cloud called Necessary Endings, where he talks about not just more about dramatic endings, but sometimes it’s like ending your control or lack of trust over others and how you can let that go. And another resource, and Jamie who does all our content management, if you can dig it up, buddy, we have an Alexa Skill, the Leading With Nice Daily. We have a whole week on, Asking Yourself The Question, What Am I At My Best, which would really help you discover the true things that you love doing and help you… Conversely, it’s like, what do I long for, while I long to be better at accounting. That’s how I decided accounting would be the first thing of the several things.

Mathieu Yuill:
I just have a couple more questions and they move away from your professional work, but not your professional skills. I want to talk about the nonprofit you led. And the reason is one of the tenets of Leading With Nice is our value of being service driven. So in 2017, you were leading Mes Amis, which did a lot, including operating a clothing bank and skills development for women refugees. I know you’re a mom, you’re a wife, you’re a business owner, so no one would fault you for not volunteering your time, you have a lot of stuff going on. So, I know this isn’t the motivation. I know that you didn’t volunteer so that you could be glorified or held on a pedestal, I know that’s not why you did it. But at the same time, you, when you volunteer, you get something out of it. So I’d love to hear, when you were doing that, leading that, how were you winning for yourself? How were you gaining? What were you getting out of it?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
I tell this story because I think this is where it began for me. My grandma used to say that those who give are happier than those who need to receive. And the reason for that was because giving was in your control, whereas receiving was not, you had to rely on somebody else to give to you. If that made you happy, then you were always going to be dependent on someone else for your happiness, whereas if you could derive happiness from giving, then the world was your oyster when it came to the amount of happiness you could have. With that in mind, for me, when the Syrian crisis, it did start with the Syrian crisis and it started actually earlier in the latter part of 2015 when, you may know or not, but my husband is Syrian, and we have lost family in the war. And that, for me, along with the sad little picture of that boy, Alan Kurdi, who had washed up on the shores of Greece, I thought for me it was probably the starting point in wanting to get involved.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
But it was more than that. For me, I’ve been, again, working in my business for a long time. I really wanted to do something more, I wanted to effect change in the things that I felt like I had no control over, I couldn’t contribute to. Sitting here in Canada, watching the destruction, watching the death, it was something that pained me. It started with just volunteering to do this clothing drive, but it then evolved into me taking a full year as a sabbatical from my business. And I dedicated that full year to, yes, running the clothing drive but also coming up with a social enterprise for Syrian and other refugee women and doing everything from eye checkups for them, from St. Mike’s Hospital, partnering with them to food drives and so on.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
And for me, I did it for me. I did it because I wanted to give, I wanted to be happy through that giving, I wanted to help these people because it was so sad what had happened to them, but I also… I felt good when I did it. So, it was still very selfish, I wanted to… I get that, what I did helped them, but I feel like it helped me more. I think I was at a place in my career where I was like, “This is good, I can do this job with my eyes closed. I’m not challenged and I’m sort of feeling privileged here, and I feel I need to give back.”

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
And when this catastrophic situation arose in Syria, and there was an opportunity to give back, I had to take it up. And then it was supposed to be a month or two that I was going to do this, it was during Christmas time. And honestly Mathieu, it made me feel so good. I hadn’t felt happy like that in a long time in so far as any work that I was doing. And so I made the decision that I wanted to do this for longer because it brought me so much happiness and that’s why I ended up taking off that year to fully dedicate to it. And then once the project had concluded and there were other organizations that could carry on, once the influx of refugees had lessened, as you mentioned, I’ve continued that work through the board work that I do, working with women and with refugees as well.

Mathieu Yuill:
That must’ve been… Okay, not must’ve been, it clearly was an awesome experience. How have you carried that forward? Not in your actions, but I mean internally, how has that changed you… It must have changed you fundamentally. It must have or added or given you something new. What does it look like today?

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Well, it did change my attitude first of all, it changed my perspective. Because working in the kind of field that I work in, I work with a lot of professionals. I had a newfound appreciation for immigrants even being an immigrant myself, but having come to this country when I was one or two years old, I didn’t have that appreciation for how much immigrants enrich our country, I hadn’t seen that firsthand. And so, that really changed my perspective on the people that I would consider for the different jobs, whether it was for my company or my clients’ companies as well, because I saw that there was an enormous amount of skill that was often not being brought to the forefront really, because of our unconscious biases and our stereotypes and whatnot.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
So, it did change my attitude. How it changed me is, I think it’s made me a more empathetic person. I think it made me more whole and not as sort of focused on me. I think it’s opened me up to say there are so many other things apart from what happens in your peripheral that you really have to consider and that as citizens, as people who live in this world, it is not only our obligation to help our neighbor, but it’s our obligation now that our neighbors are not just the people who live next door to us, they’re wider than that. And that, just like businesses act globally, we have to act globally when it comes to humanity. And I live by that now, it’s something that drives where I spend my time, how I give my money, and how I see different people.

Mathieu Yuill:
That’s amazing. Thank you by the way for sharing so vulnerably. If you’re listening you’re thinking, “Oh man, that’s really good. I’d like that.” No, that’s just good for Julie. It’s actually good, science shows us, increasing your empathy is actually good for your company too. I’ll throw this stat out because I think it reflects so well when it does, employees who say their boss is empathetic take 30% less sick days than employees who say their boss, not necessarily is anti-empathetic, just doesn’t display that. And as you know, absenteeism directly impacts your bottom line. I’m not trying to cheapen empathy. In fact, I’m trying to lift it up as you’ve just heard from Julie how it has deeply impacted her life for the better, but it also could help your organization. Julie, thank you so much. Again, I turned into a listener so many times during this conversation.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Thank you, Mathieu. It’s been great being on and I loved your questions because I think they really made me think and has sort of drawn out the answers that otherwise sit in a different place that you’d never really get to. And it’s really made me more introspective. So, thank you for that.

Mathieu Yuill:
For more on this, to see our blog post and to get the resources, visit leadingwithnice.com. And I got to thank a few people that helped make this conversation happen. The first is Naomi who helps out in the office or the virtual office and helps me get organized, helps develop the questions, reminds me to show up on time. Jamie is our content manager, he’s going to put together the post and make sure it gets promoted and up online. Austin Pomeroy is our guy behind the board, making sure we sound great. Cindy booked Julie, she does all the coordination with the guests. And Carrie is our account manager. And as we were doing this, I saw messages come through where she was just taking care of business while I got to sit and [inaudible 00:26:59] poetic with Julie for a half an hour. So thank you to all those. But most of all, Julie, thank you so much for being here today.

Julie Mahfouz Rezvani:
Thank you for having me.