My Sales Onboarding Disaster - A Cautionary Tale

Lars Nielsen (00:01.208) Hello everybody and welcome back to Cultures from Hell. This is the podcast where we dissect the workplace nightmares that shape company culture for better or usually for worse. I am your host Lars and joining me as always is my wonderful co-host Pauline, co-founder of the Culture Code Foundation. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:32.622) High-Lars. Lars Nielsen (00:33.72) Okay, we're gonna do this again. Lars Nielsen (00:39.828) It's in the script! It's in the script! Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:41.166) Yes, just have like three lines of the script in front of me and yeah, okay Lars Nielsen (00:47.914) Okay. When I say culture co-foundation, you just say, hi, great to be here. And then I continue. Okay. Let's go again. Three, two, one. Welcome to cultures from hell. This is the podcast where we dissect the workplace nightmares that shape company culture for better or usually for worse. I'm your host Lars and joining me as always is my wonderful co-host Paulina, co-founder of the Culture Coat Foundation. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:27.864) Hi Lars and hi everyone out there. It's great to be here as always. Lars Nielsen (01:33.184) And Paulina, today we have a truly cautionary tale and we are joined by Dragi, our very first guest on the show, who's bravely sharing her story about a sales onboarding experience that felt less like a welcome and more like being thrown into the deep end without a life jacket. Dragi, welcome to the show. Draginja Lass (01:58.052) Thanks for having me, Lars and Paulina. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (02:00.622) And welcome from my side. Welcome from... Yes, we are. You're so welcome Dragi and for everyone out there. This is a premiere today because for now we have retold the stories of all of our guests. And today it's the very first time that we have a guest here that is going to tell her story herself. So we're really glad that you're here. Lars Nielsen (02:01.1) We are so glad that you're here. Draginja Lass (02:27.876) Thanks. Lars Nielsen (02:28.402) Exactly. And Dragi's experience highlights just how critical or and how damaging the first few weeks in a new role can be. I think we have all been there and I'm really looking forward to hearing the story here. Pauline, we'll come back to that later. You'll unpack the lessons learned once we hear the story from Dragi, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (02:56.664) Yes, I will, of course. Lars Nielsen (03:00.52) Let's dive in. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (03:03.34) Okay. I mean, you already told us your story, so we know what it's about. And it really struck us. As Lars said, we've all been there. I think everyone out there has at least one onboarding experience that really sucked. And so I'm sure that a lot of people can relate to what you're going to tell us. So can you please take us back to day one of that new job that you took? And what was, I mean, when you start a new job, there is this initial excitement. And then there is the point where you realize things might be off. So take us down that road with you. Draginja Lass (03:48.542) LVS. So yeah, I was honestly so excited to start as an account executive. So it's sales environment, new world, new product, new team, and I was ready to go. So I'm working remote, by the way, so I'm not in the office or I was not in the office. Yeah, but the very first day everything felt off. Why? I logged in remotely and my laptop wasn't even set up. And I was like sitting here, okay, what should I do now? I had no access to tools, no email, nothing, no slack. I just sat there staring at my screen, my locked screen, sorry, not even screen, and waiting for ITR to fix things. So it was not a great start at all for me, no. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:33.934) you Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:42.236) Jesus. mean, that sounds, that's, that sound horrible, especially, guess you then had to call IT through your personal phone or something like that. for people just listening, Droggy is nodding along at the moment. so basically you have no welcome meeting, you have no team intro, not even a high on Slack, obviously, because you don't have access to Slack. So how did that make you feel right at the start? Draginja Lass (05:10.602) not good at all. I felt like no one knew or cared that I had started. So I keep checking my calendar thinking maybe something was missing or I missed something but nothing came. So yes, as you just mentioned, no message, no intro, no structure at all. So I felt incredibly isolated, especially working from home. You see nobody else around you. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (05:14.956) Mm. Draginja Lass (05:39.82) So yeah, I started wondering that they forget about me. Lars Nielsen (05:49.16) Can I just jump in here? Like you said, Pauline, we heard the story previous to the show, but I'm still like baffled. Like, welcomed you. Like, there was like... I've tried a couple of times to start in a new job in a remote role. And like the first thing I see is like... Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (05:51.629) Of course. Draginja Lass (05:52.11) Yes. Lars Nielsen (06:10.998) Join this meeting to say welcome to everybody and everybody's on Slack is like, hey, last great to meet you. Please hook up for a one-on-one or something like that. So nothing. Draginja Lass (06:22.676) Nothing. I mean, maybe yes, but my laptop didn't work. I don't know. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (06:28.375) You Lars Nielsen (06:28.544) Shit. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (06:31.366) man. And when you, when you shared your story with us, you also mentioned that you had like a buddy and team lead, obviously, they were assigned to take care of you, but both were on vacation when you arrived. what went through your mind there, knowing that your initial support system wasn't there. Draginja Lass (06:44.046) Yes. Draginja Lass (06:56.312) Yes, that was honestly the moment I knew this onboarding might not go well. I had really no buddy, so as you said I did have a buddy, but he was on vacation for two weeks I guess. The team also wasn't there, so yeah, it was just silence. No laptop, mean yes laptop, but no access and yeah I feel I felt abandoned. and even got started, so day one. No, not day one, hour four. So yeah. Lars Nielsen (07:35.144) And there was like no support at all, right? Like you didn't get any support to start fixing stuff or anything. Draginja Lass (07:43.958) Yes, especially in sales. in sales you need learning on the job, you need like meetings, need like product shows. But I will send this huge folder with what a mess, half then thousand slides. I don't know exactly. Topics like meet the channel acquisition team. Yeah, I mean, it's important, right, but not for my sales role. like legal stuff, a thousand of tools we don't even use. But not a single slide was about what I actually needed to do my job. I mentioned it before, I'm an account executive, so I need to know other things like what is the process in sales, what tools are we using, what are our USPs, what are... I don't know anything but nothing about talent acquisition. Lars Nielsen (08:46.816) And like, like you said, like just, just a folder with, with thousands and thousands of slides. doesn't, doesn't sound very organized. I would say I'm not a very organized person, but I would, I would still kind of divide it into different folders depending on the role. And, and also again, I have tried this before. When you have slides that you might want to go through, at least there will be a person that kind of connects with you, right? And say like, Hey, Draginja Lass (08:47.258) you Draginja Lass (08:51.279) Yes. Lars Nielsen (09:13.964) please find this slide so we can go through what is your role, what do you have to do and so on. But there was none of that. Draginja Lass (09:22.511) No, only Google Drive, a lot of folders, a lot of sheets. I mean, not only PDFs, also videos, but yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (09:33.602) I mean, for everyone out there, all three of us are in sales. So this might get a bit technical today because we're going to dive into the, into the details of this. Because I mean, honestly, Lars, you said it before. It's really baffling just to drop a huge amount of irrelevant content on somebody or generic info that I don't want to say it's irrelevant because Draguje you said it too. Lars Nielsen (09:41.227) You Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:02.56) It is important, but not for your role. And, definitely nothing that helped you figure out to try to do your job. So you had to get creative, obviously. So how did you even begin to do that? To figure out, I mean, obviously you are an experienced account executive, so you do know how to do the basics of your job. But we also, everyone who's in sales knows. doing sales in company A and doing sales in company B is a different job. So how did you try to figure that out? Draginja Lass (10:39.8) Yes, very good question. mean, just to answer first another question in my head. If you're a junior, you're going to be lost. If you just start in sales and you will be welcoming like this, this is your end, I guess. So, yeah, I had to figure everything out by myself. So I started messaging random people, joining meetings without context. I Googled. I googled our competitors or I wrote down into chat GPT to give me some tips. So I was even trying to reverse engineer old pitch decks. So pitch decks from 1980. No, just kidding, but very old pitch decks. So it was just survival mode. I was learning by doing and by guessing. yeah. Lars Nielsen (11:36.726) That's going to be the future. People are going to get a line from somebody in HR saying, like, hey, go to JetGBT and onboard yourself. Draginja Lass (11:47.467) Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (11:48.39) please, not, let that not be the future, guys. Lars Nielsen (11:51.224) you Draginja Lass (11:54.34) So we also... Lars Nielsen (11:54.68) Dragi, listen to your story again. I just want to highlight that we, of course, read the story before we went on. But actually hearing you telling the story, it kind of puts more context to things. And it sounds incredibly isolating. You mentioned most colleagues were also new and lost and experienced, once they were too busy or on vacation. Draginja Lass (12:03.834) you Lars Nielsen (12:20.745) Can you share an example of trying to get help and the response you received? Draginja Lass (12:27.138) Yes, I remember messaging one of the most experienced reps with a pretty simple question I would say. So yeah, it took three days to get a reply and the message was like, sorry, Swamp, maybe next week. And I was like, maybe not. So that kind of things happened a lot. So a lot of new sales reps. maybe doing the same things like myself, but we had like two, three people with experience, yeah, swam. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:12.558) I mean, again, if you hire a lot of new account executives at the same time, that is challenging for every company and for every team lead. And especially in that kind of situation, you should put a lot of effort on making that onboarding experience, getting this onboarding experience right. But we'll get into that later. Let me get back to your story. While you were navigating this Draginja Lass (13:14.298) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:41.654) entire chaos. You also mentioned that the pressure to perform started basically immediately. Can you describe that pressure and what were the expectations that were set? And who set them? Because I mean, your team lead was still on vacation. Draginja Lass (14:01.732) There is that like weeks before. So yeah, welcome to sales from day one. The expectations were sky high, but this is nothing bad for me. So because I'm in sales, I know how things work. So build pipeline, book meetings. By the way, I'm always a full sales cycle account executive. So not only inbound, also outbound. So yeah, build pipeline, meetings, close deals, hit your KPIs. There we are already talking about Q2 numbers and I didn't, I hadn't even seen a proper product table. So I was like, wow, okay, this is fast. So yeah, there was zero ramp up period. Just deliver or you're out. So I would say it's not typical sales anymore, but I saw it in a lot of companies. So yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:02.638) I get so angry. I get so angry when I listen to this. mean, yeah, no, it's not, no, it's not your fault, obviously, but just expecting people to deliver on targets while not giving them any support or any tools to actually do this. It's just lazy. Honestly, it's lazy from the companies because it means that they didn't take the time or didn't make the effort. Draginja Lass (15:08.154) All right. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:31.886) to make sure to help their people become the best version of themselves. Draginja Lass (15:39.546) I know. Lars Nielsen (15:41.08) And I don't get it. I know Pauline, you have probably more experience as a sales manager than I do. But I would say for me is like, I'm dependent on the people that I work with to perform. It's not the sales leader that has to do the majority of the performance. That's why you have a team. And if you're not investing in that team, it's like everything in life. If you don't invest, Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:55.886) Of course. Of course. Lars Nielsen (16:09.772) You don't get an outcome of things, right? So I really don't get it. For me, it's so basic. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:18.382) I mean, there are companies who get one major thing wrong. And the very first thing is to already have their team leads have carry their own quota. If that is the case, and this is a huge advice for everyone out there, ask that question in interview process. your sales manager has to carry their own quota, because if they do run, don't go there because they will not have the time to coach you. Lars Nielsen (16:41.037) Hmph. Draginja Lass (16:42.359) Run! Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:46.062) or to invest in your development, they will only be focused on their own quota and their own performance. So that is the biggest, most basic mistake that sales organizations can make from my perspective. And that brings me basically to the second point. And that's you try to say, Lars. It's a manager's role to make sure that my people can perform. And that starts with onboarding and that starts with, and that goes on with continuous coaching and with making sure that people get back in their jobs, especially in Germany, because I've seen this time and time and time again in the U S for example, and then the UK, you have an extremely well thought out coaching and development process for AEs and they learn a lot. had to have a lot of sparring. have a lot of going back and forth. and learning on the job. And in Germany, it's still until this day, a lot of the time it's like, everybody can do sales. It's just drinking coffee and yapping away. So they don't do any of that. And then they are surprised that their sales teams aren't performing because they don't teach them the art of selling. And it is an art. It's one of the most beautiful arts out there. If you ask me. And I see Lars and Dragi nodding along. We all have sales in our blood, obviously. and, but we need to invest the time into it. And every single seller I've met during my career had things to learn and you do, you, learn by, obviously you learn on the job when you're talking to the clients, but you learn most if you have the sparring, if you have the coaching with your team, with your peers, with your, with your. Draginja Lass (18:20.75) We do. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (18:44.174) Team Lead. whew, rent over. Lars Nielsen (18:49.144) Thank you, we only have an hour for this Pauline. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (18:52.974) Yeah, I know. know. Okay. Let's get back to the story. So, Dargi, you were balancing learning, preparing for, yeah, every, everything that you had to do, understanding the product and hitting targets while having zero guidance. We said it before, sounds super overwhelming. And as we are talking about culture, culture and engagement and mental health is very closely connected. Lars Nielsen (18:56.376) you Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (19:21.922) So how did this constant survival mode affect your personal motivation, your engagement and your wellbeing? Draginja Lass (19:29.358) Very good question Paulina. I was, no it was incredibly demotivating to be honest. So I wanted to do well, but I didn't even have the basics. So I felt like I was set up to fail to be honest, that constant pressure we all know, but on the other side with no support. Willie took, yeah, a toll on my mental health to be honest. So I was stressed all the time, I had trouble sleeping and I felt alone. Maybe I felt alone because I was sitting in my home office, but yeah, it was exhausting, especially in sales, need or I need or maybe others need to, I don't know, small wins early on to build confidence, to stay motivated. But without the right support there were no wins of course, because I had to take my time to bring myself, to learn the product by my own, to learn all the things. So yeah, just pressure and doubt to be honest. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:38.317) Mm. Lars Nielsen (20:40.664) It is so important to, especially now that companies have like a remote culture or some companies have a remote culture, to respect that thing about people working from home. I'm a outgoing person. I have a great network personally and so on. But it's like when people work from home, I think it's really important for managers to kind of tap in. once in a while at least and just ask like, hey, are you okay? Because you don't have that feeling in the office where you see people every day and you get that vibe, is people okay and so on. Yeah, I've just heard that so many times that people working from home felt like alone and had no backup and so on. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:24.238) else. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:30.68) That's a good point. Lars Nielsen (21:31.116) But Dragi, looking back at the whole experience, because you've been sharing a story, and thank you again very much for being open and sharing it. What was the absolute low point for you in this whole experience? Draginja Lass (21:47.032) need to think about it, there are a lot. So I think the lowest point was one evening when I stayed late trying to figure out a sales deck on my own for a big meeting I have the next morning I can remember exactly. So yeah, I felt completely lost and had no idea if what I was doing made any sense. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (22:06.081) Yeah. Draginja Lass (22:15.098) So no one had shown me how. There was no playbook. mean, maybe it was, but I couldn't find it on the Google Drive, 10,000 folders. So no guidance. I remember thinking, like, this can't be how it's supposed to feel. But that night also I made something clear to me. If no one is going to help me, I had to help myself. So... It wasn't fair, yes, but it taught me now resourceful or how resourceful I can be under pressure to be honest. But yeah, it's not healthy, but yeah, I had to help myself and it worked out. I closed the deal, but it was stressed. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:01.41) Hmm. Lars Nielsen (23:07.618) Thank you very much for sharing the whole story, Dragi. For me, it's like you mentioned before, Pauline, that you got angry and I can just feel that I have this nut in my stomach right now. I want to get the name of your manager. I want to hook them up and then I'm going to tell them off like the big Danish Viking is coming for you. Again, Dragi, thank you very much for sharing it. It's a very powerful story. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:11.735) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:18.126) you Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:23.182) Thank Lars Nielsen (23:35.692) Paulina, hearing this first-hand account, what are your immediate reactions as someone who focuses on company culture and employee experience? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:39.714) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:46.604) I'm getting, I'm getting ready. so to be honest, I don't even know where to start. I mean, I know I shouldn't swear this much, but everything that a company can fuck up during an onboarding was fucked up here. Right. But from a cultural perspective, I would say the most critical point was that the people who were assigned to, yeah, onboard you or take care of you or be there for you, don't, weren't. there. I had a similar situation a couple of years ago. I had a new joiner joining my team and I knew that I wasn't going to be there for his very first day. It was just one day, but his very first day. And I felt really bad about this because I am convinced that the team lead should be there on their first day. So I took extra effort to make sure that two team members, trusted peer of mine and another team lead were there to welcome him. on the first day instead of me. And then I also made a point because I was working remotely as well. So I made sure that on his second day, I was in the office to greet him personally and have lunch with him. And then we had team dinner with him as well. Just make sure that he got to meet everyone in his very first week. So having no initial point of contact during your very first day simply leaves the impression and you, Straga, you said that yourself. that no one cares if you are there or if you're not. And that kind of feeling destroys the basis for any future loyalty or engagement that you're going to have towards your company or your colleague, because you will never feel like you're welcome there. It's just, it's a critical time and it can destroy everything. Lars Nielsen (25:41.048) And that's it Pauline. I think we've mentioned it a couple of times on our podcast. We got to know each other in a company that doesn't exist anymore called SaltMate. And shout out to SaltMate, shout out to Eric, the former CEO of the company. When I joined that company and I joined it during Corona, so my experience was actually, or my situation was the same as you Dragi, that I joined during a time where we couldn't meet up. So everything was done remote. with the team in Berlin and me sitting in Copenhagen. everybody just joined the meeting, you know, and everybody just welcomed me and hooked me up on Slack. And people never knew, like, started like, hey, I want to meet you. I've heard about this Danish guy joining, like, great to see you. And it is just so important. And if we have to... Draginja Lass (26:10.991) Yeah. Draginja Lass (26:31.738) It is. Lars Nielsen (26:34.61) this might come off as said in a wrong way. It's easy points. It's easy points. yeah, OK, back on track. We're getting so emotional here. Paulina, Dragi described a situation with no structure, unavailable support, irrelevant information and immediate pressure. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (26:41.582) It doesn't come off. It's absolutely. Draginja Lass (26:41.902) Mm-hmm. Lars Nielsen (27:02.846) Why do you think companies, even seemingly successful ones, get onboarding so fundamentally wrong? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (27:11.534) Hmm. it is a super, super important question, Lars. And I've seen it time and time again, even with good ones, who are not good at the onboarding part. And any, as many of you out there know, I have led sales teams myself for more than 10 years. And so I know that especially for sales onboarding, this sink or swim mentality that Dragi has described is not uncommon. even though it is extremely destructive. Because with this kind of onboarding you will pit colleagues against each other from like day one and as I said before you will definitely not see people performing at their best of their ability to the best of their abilities and from my experience companies get the onboarding wrong usually because of one of two reasons either they are super caught up in the day-to-day busy work that they simply don't have time to reflect on their onboarding process and what's good, what's done well, what's not going well, and then invest the necessary time to improve it or take the busy, the time out of their time, out of their day. Because especially with startups, they usually wait to hire new people, right? Because money is an issue. and then people are so overworked already that if somebody new joins, they They still have so much to do that they really don't feel that they can take the time to take a step back and help somebody else on board. Obviously that's kind of a short way of thinking things, because if I don't help this person to get on track quickly, they can't take a workload off of me quickly. So, but this is, this is the one thing that I see. And the other view that I see, which is super toxic. is to view onboarding as a method to methodically weed out the weak. So they will think that it's, if you don't manage to figure everything out on your own, you're just not cut out to do this job. And again, you know me, I don't use the word term toxic a lot, but this definitely is. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (29:30.58) And on top of being toxic, it's also super ineffective because you do spend a lot of time and money to find good people to join your company. And if you treat them like, like this, like you, don't, if you don't figure it out or you can just bugger off, that's just money down the drain. and in those kinds of companies, you will see a lot of fluctuation as well. Lars Nielsen (29:59.902) Very good point. Dragi, question for you, like from your perspective, inside that chaos, and I think we can all say that it is a lot of chaos, what do you think was the biggest underlying issue? Was it like neglect, incompetence, a flawed culture, or what is your take on it? Draginja Lass (30:12.814) Thank Draginja Lass (30:27.438) I think, as you mentioned, this kind of chaos happens so often in sales organizations. I guess it's because of the constant pressure to deliver. So sales teams are often focused on hitting targets, closing deals, ensuring results. So that leaves very little time or willingness, I don't know, to slow down and properly onboard new people. So I guess the mindset is often you're in sales, you're going to figure it out by yourself. So and if you're not, goodbye then. So as Paulina mentioned, it can be toxic like hell. So if you're good, you will survive. But that's a dangerous assumption in my opinion. It creates a culture where, yeah, like new reps or junior reps are expected to perform. before they even understand what they are selling. And onboarding is, in my opinion, treated like luxury, but not a priority, and this is very bad. Yeah, and in the end, both the people and the business suffer because of it. Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (31:39.616) That's a beautiful quote. Beautiful quote. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (31:51.95) Absolutely. Lars Nielsen (31:53.218) Thank you very much. like Paulina said, beautiful quote. I'm just going to be open here in the podcast. I'm going to cut that out and make a short video on it. It is awesome. Paulina, back to you. Let's talk impact. We heard Dragi mentioned the motivation and stress. What are the broader business consequences of such poor onboarding experiences? Draginja Lass (31:58.266) you Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (32:03.31) You Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (32:16.526) Yeah, that is super critical. And I already started going down that road, I think, from what I've seen with companies I've worked with, the onboarding experience influences the entire employee life cycle in a company because it usually is quite a good mirror of the overall culture. So when you see that kind of onboarding that Dragi has experienced, you can almost certainly see low engagement across the team. and a high turnover, normally already during the first six months, because either people will leave on their own or they will get fired because they are perceived as low performers. And obviously, high turnover comes with a lot of X additional costs for rehiring, retraining, la di la di la, and not having that position filled effectively that can bring in money, especially in sales. in all other functions, you have the same issues, right? Maybe an engineer doesn't generate revenue directly, but they do obviously have an impact on the overall company efficiency and productivity so, so highly. And the same goes for HR and marketing and la de la de la. So I don't want to put sales on a, on a pedestal of being more important than any other function here. It's just that I know that function better than any, any other. So in my experience, very, very few leaders or even CEOs take the time. to question a high turnover rate that they might see during an onboarding phase. So they will not sit down and ask their team or the team leads, why the fuck, are so many people leaving in the onboarding phase. So they will usually just jot it down to, are just not capable to, there are just no good people out there anymore. Yeah, so. Draginja Lass (34:27.256) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (34:28.686) But let me tell you this, reassessing and then adapting the quality and the empathy during your onboarding will critically skyrocket your new joiner success. You will definitely see improved time to productivity. You will see higher engagement. You will see positive effects on your employer branding, both internally and externally. You will see better team cohesion. You will see lower turnover rates. You will, yeah, just to name a few, it will affect everything during the entire employee life cycle experience. yeah. Lars Nielsen (35:14.384) Exactly. Dragi, back to you. Reflecting on it now, that you kind of like it's in your past and so on, was there any single moment or interaction that in hindsight was a major, major red flag you perhaps didn't recognize fully at the time? Draginja Lass (35:38.744) yeah looking back it was probably yeah the total silence on day one to be honest so no welcome no message no plan no laptop i mean yes laptop but no access so that moment taught me everything i needed to know right so but at that time i didn't realize but yeah now i would say a huge red flag Lars Nielsen (36:10.634) And that is like red flags on day one. That's a huge no-go, right? Dragi, what advice would you give to someone starting a new remote sales job today based on what you went through? Draginja Lass (36:27.916) Yes, own your ramp up like you own your quota. So no one will care more about your success than you. So take control early, ask for what you need, build relationships fast, especially with sales reps who are very, I'm missing the English word, successful. Yeah, and don't wait for permission to get involved. But a very, very important topic for myself, protect your energy. So remote sense can be isolated. You need to set boundaries and don't confuse being busy with being effective. So most importantly, trust your instincts. If something feels off, speak up, speak up, even as a woman, sorry Lars, but... Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (37:27.306) especially as a woman. Draginja Lass (37:29.164) Especially as a woman speak up, you're not just there to sell, you're there to succeed. So yeah, that's my advice. Lars Nielsen (37:40.672) And I would say, spoken like a true powerful saleswoman. Like, I love it. I love the power. Paulina, what about you? What advice would you give to managers or HR leaders responsible for designing onboarding programs? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (37:41.262) you. Draginja Lass (37:45.646) Thanks. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (37:56.91) Yeah, there is a lot out there that I can give advice on. And I love that you asked for managers and HR leaders, because let us be very clear, it is not HR's sole responsibility to write and structure a good onboarding program. From the overall business impact that the onboarding has, I would actually say it's a C-level responsibility. And every team lead should be... And to do that right. then obviously you can use HR really well to supervise and to, yeah, assist in a lot of parts of the onboarding, but it's not HR's responsibility. So my biggest advice, one of my biggest advice probably is just talk to your people that, that recently joined. right? And ask them what they would have loved their experience to be instead of what they, the experience that they had. So I know this is a painful question or the answers might be painful, but you will be surprised how much really incredibly valuable input you will be getting. And if you implement that into your routine and make sure that you keep encouraging new joiners to share their experience and their, their input after four to six weeks after joining. that will just continuously improve your onboarding process. Also, I personally feel that it is always great if a company has an overall framework for the first one to one to two weeks, that is more or less the same across departments because that saves a lot of time. It allows to build cohorts of new joiners that experience the company together. And just can create new connections with for every new joiner very quickly. And so I'm a huge fan of having a new joiner's breakfast on the first day, ideally together with their managers or one or two team members. Then you do have to have an IT set up session and ideally have. Draginja Lass (40:08.92) Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (40:11.922) the all this, all the lock-ins, all the tools that you're going to need already set up for you. So because there is nothing worse than bothering with this nonsense on day one. And then I would always, always, always recommend to have a session led by the CEO or any other C-level member where they talk about the culture, about mission, about purpose and values of the company, because that's where the kind of personal connection with the purpose will happen. And especially if you have a C level executive who's like super charismatic or who really exudes this kind of passion for the purpose of the company, that's magic. It will transfer, absolutely. And probably, especially in a remote or hybrid environment. This is probably my number one advice. Make sure to invest in an in-person onboarding where the entire team meets for at least for two full days. I know this is a lot of money, but it will pay off. It is an absolute game changer in terms of feeling welcome and creating lasting connections that will in turn increase the engagement, the passion, the Draginja Lass (41:20.654) this. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (41:40.524) Yeah. The, the loyalty to the team, to the company and will inspire the new join us to, to work really hard to get into, into the feel of things. And they will, they will get so much more support out of it because they, yeah, just because of this personal connection. We are human beings after all, we are not. And I don't get me wrong. I love remote work. I've been working remotely for most of the last seven years, but I. I will never, I will never say just do it remotely because we crave connections and there are opportunities to create incredibly important connections and those first two days. If you get that right, you have done a lot of things right. Lars Nielsen (42:35.48) And I can only say here, just to wrap that up, Paulina, can just say here, this is going to come off like a big sales pitch for Culture Code Foundation. And I'm not affiliated in any way. I don't give a kid back on anything. It is run by Paulina and Eric, as we mentioned, the person we mentioned before. If you're struggling with onboarding, just like get in contact with Paulina and Eric and just say, like, can I get a copy of what you did at Softmate? Because it was the best onboarding I ever tried. It was so professional. Eric, and he is always a busy guy. He was on like an online call the second day, you know, talk to you like, hey, welcome to the team. I'm glad you're here. If there's anything, just reach out and so on. And I think I actually wrote him one or two messages within the first couple of days. And he always took time to write you back. This is the CEO of a... At that time, company of what? 35, 40 people and a fast growing company as well. So we were super busy. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (43:37.422) 40,000. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (43:42.508) Yeah. I mean, to tutor Eric's Horn a little bit more, we're now co-founders. And so we founded the Culture Code Foundation together. And we obviously, we are trying to do things, not just by intuition and experience, but also based on scientific evidence. And we read a lot of books on culture and how to do it right. And we have like this one favorite book that we both read. Lars Nielsen (43:46.348) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (44:10.522) that we both read and we started working on the company before I officially, before I quit my, my old job and before I officially joined. And then on day one, I had a book, the book that we use all the time. I had it on my, sitting on my desk with a personal note from Eric saying that how glad he is that we're doing this journey together and that we can make the world better place together. And just those tiny, I mean, we're co-founders, right? He's not my manager. He's not my boss. Lars Nielsen (44:37.612) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (44:40.046) We're just, but still he sent me this tiny little note and this tiny little sign. I was like, that get those kinds of things get you connected so quickly and easily. And it doesn't cost anything. Lars Nielsen (44:53.632) And Paulina, for everybody that's just listening to the podcast here, can you please tell us what the title of the book is? Because you're just showing on the screen. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (45:01.996) Yeah, I think I've, I think I've actually mentioned it before in one of the other shows. So it's called Win From Within from James Haskard. And James Haskard is a former Harvard professor and he's been doing research on company culture and the effect it has on overall efficiency in a business and like the results of company for more than 30 years, I think even close to 40 years. And he's published the book at age 92. That's pretty incredible. Draginja Lass (45:31.354) Thank you. Lars Nielsen (45:32.802) highly recommended from us. We need to start wrapping up here. So just to kind of recap everything here, effective onboarding needs structure, relevant information, dedicated support, clear expectations, and perhaps most importantly, empathy. It's about setting people up for success, not testing their survival skills. Draginja Lass (45:52.963) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (45:59.806) Yes, exactly. And it is an investment that will pay dividends. Lars Nielsen (46:05.853) It will for sure. Dragi, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It takes courage and I know it will resonate with many listeners. Draginja Lass (46:15.47) Thank you for letting me share it. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (46:17.934) Of course. Lars Nielsen (46:18.454) And Paulina, as always, insightful. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (46:23.694) My pleasure. And thank you. And from my side as well, Raghi, thank you so much. I loved having an in-person guest here and I loved you with your incredible story to have this honor of doing the premiere, so to say. Lars Nielsen (46:25.752) And to all... Draginja Lass (46:42.584) Yeah, thanks too. Lars Nielsen (46:44.824) And to all listeners out there, you want to connect with Pauline and I would say also Dragi, we will leave the links in the show notes to their LinkedIn profiles. Also, there'll be a link for the Culture Co Foundation. So please just reach out to Pauline through that one if you have any questions. As always, thank you everybody for listening and we will listen or we will talk. What do you call it on a podcast? We'll talk to you, but you're not talking to anybody. We will talk to you next week. Thank you very much, everybody. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (47:20.622) We'll talk at you maybe. Until then, take care and all of you out there, cultivate a culture where people can thrive. Lars Nielsen (47:24.14) We will talk at you next week. Thank you very much for listening in. Draginja Lass (47:35.844) Yes. Lars Nielsen (47:36.041) Exactly. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (47:37.496) Thanks everyone. See you soon Lars and take care Dragi. Draginja Lass (47:42.532) Take care.