In this episode of Elevate Care, we meet with Amy Rojas, an experienced business and HR executive, to explore how leaders can unlock their potential and cultivate high-performing teams. Amy shares actionable strategies, including the importance of setting clear expectations, removing barriers, delivering meaningful feedback, and celebrating achievements. She underscores the vital role of trust in building strong teams and offers practical advice for navigating change while keeping teams engaged. This insightful conversation highlights the essential groundwork needed to create a thriving organizational culture. Don't miss Amy's expert guidance on fostering leadership and teamwork excellence.
In this episode of Elevate Care, we meet with Amy Rojas, an experienced business and HR executive, to explore how leaders can unlock their potential and cultivate high-performing teams. Amy shares actionable strategies, including the importance of setting clear expectations, removing barriers, delivering meaningful feedback, and celebrating achievements. She underscores the vital role of trust in building strong teams and offers practical advice for navigating change while keeping teams engaged. This insightful conversation highlights the essential groundwork needed to create a thriving organizational culture. Don't miss Amy's expert guidance on fostering leadership and teamwork excellence.
Chapters
00:00 Unleashing Leadership Potential
02:12 The Four Pillars of High-Performing Teams
05:30 Building Trust Within Teams
10:43 Navigating Change and Engagement
16:28 The Power of Foundational Work
About Amy
Amy Rojas is an accomplished business and HR executive with a proven track record of driving success by aligning people strategies with business objectives. Her career began in fostering business growth through product innovation, later shifting her focus to achieving organizational excellence through its people. With undergraduate and master’s degrees in psychology, Amy brings unique insights into human behavior as a powerful tool for leadership and team development.
Amy’s extensive HR expertise spans Talent Management, Global Talent Acquisition, workforce planning, and building high-performing teams. She is skilled in crafting integrated talent strategies that create measurable impact. Her leadership has been integral in managing transformational changes, including culture development and navigating mergers and acquisitions, always maintaining a people-centric approach.
Certified in executive coaching by the International Coaching Federation, Amy specializes in guiding senior leaders and teams, fostering trust, and unlocking their full potential. Her dedication to excellence extends to areas such as change management, HR operations for business success, and senior leadership development.
With her deep understanding of business and human behavior, Amy helps organizations thrive by creating empowered, innovative cultures. Her commitment to delivering results leaves a meaningful and lasting impact wherever she contributes.
Connect with Amy on LinkedIn
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's episode of Elevate Care. I'm your co-host, Liz Cunningham. Today, we'll be hearing from Amy Rojas, a seasoned business and HR executive who is passionate about unleashing the ultimate potential of leaders in a number of ways. She has provided value to a spectrum of leaders from Fortune 100 to small nonprofit organizations. This episode is part of a short form series where Amy uncovers practical strategies for setting clear expectations, removing obstacles,
delivering impactful feedback, and celebrating success, the core pillars of building a high-performing team. You'll learn the tools to address conflicts and create environments where teams can flourish. Let's jump in. So a tiny bit of background on me. I spent many, many years more than I will name the number two in the corporate world and on the commercial side of business and had a lot of opportunity to help companies be successful through their product or their service.
And over the years, it became more obvious to me that it was exciting to look at how to help companies be successful through their people. So in my both corporate practice, but also in my since consulting practice, I focus on all of these different remedies, interventions, programs, and a variety of different ways to really help people be successful, whether as a leader or as a very successful, highly effective team. So what's interesting is people spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of energy on
big engagement strategies. One of the things that I utilize in my programs is a very foundational model. is, I call it basic, but I don't want to undervalue it. But it's a four part model that is just the grounding of what's critically important as a leader to engage your people. And what I often find in my coaching practice or in the work that I do as a consultant is managers just don't do this. And so they just don't get around the basics.
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So it's really essential that all four parts are followed. And what I really profess to the clients that I work with is that bringing them all together is important, but also making it a part of your regular leadership. It's not meant to be something that's added on as a huge, have to do this now. So the four parts are quite simple. There's a lot behind each one of them. So we start with setting expectations, clear expectations.
This doesn't just mean setting objectives. I hope that most companies, they don't all, but I hope that most companies have an effective objective setting process. They use smart goals. They use a lot of the tools and practices that are available to people. This is more about the nuances. This is more about how do I expect you to work? This is more about how do we relate? This is more about team norms and how do we support each other? So oftentimes in my practice, I find that a lot of the issues that arise in teams
come as a result of mismatched or uncommunicated expectations. And so really setting clear expectations and all of the nuances behind that is job one. The second step is about removing obstacles. We don't really think of obstacles as clearly as we should. We often think of there's an obstacle to a deadline, there's an obstacle to a financial resource.
but there's so much more to it. And what do we do about it? And how do we as leaders make sure that those fantastic expectations that we've set are achievable? So that's job two. The third piece of it is effective feedback. I often say to people that while the entire model is important, feedback, if you can do just this alone, has unbelievable value because people want to be developed and they want to know how they're doing. So in this part of the model, there's a very clear feedback.
tool that's used, a very clear feedback process. It takes a lot of the emotion and the awkwardness and the fear out of giving feedback. And people really learn to ingrain it. At first, it's a little awkward, it's a little difficult at first, but people then learn to ingrain it they're so thankful to have a way to talk about feedback. And really to look at feedback as a gift and not as such a hard thing. And then the final piece of it is about celebrating success. So, and we don't just mean having parties or giving awards.
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There are so many different ways that we can relate to someone and give them the recognition that they want. So oftentimes we give people recognition that's in a form they don't want it. And so learning what's important to your people. The one thing I see often is that people will be publicly recognized in a large group of people and there's nothing that they want less than to be publicly recognized. So learning how to recognize our people and what's important to them and then delivering it in a way that's really valuable to them.
So that's the basic model. As I said, it's pretty foundational, but what's behind each one of the boxes is really where the money is. And not only that, we talk about how hard it is to deliver feedback. When the feedback gets too big, it's that much harder. So it's not only easier for the person to receive it if it's on a regular basis and you're dealing with each high and each low because you just want small blips rather than having a deep dive down. And then that conversation becomes very difficult. But if you do it on a regular basis and you have a good
formula to use to do it, it's very easy and it's very valuable to your people. Part of what we're talking about in the model is that the the feedback piece of the model has a very specific formula to it. many people have done research and they've seen the three-step model, the five-step model. I actually use the seven-step model, but it takes the emotion out of it so that awkwardness kind of goes away. It gives someone a way to deliver feedback that doesn't feel uncomfortable and it's a proven model that shows that the chances of them
responding to the feedback exponentially increase by the way the feedback is given. All of these things feed into becoming one team and becoming one team feeds into all of these things. So when I talk about the feedback model, for example, or excuse me, the engagement model, for example, at the very center of that model is trust. And we know that from five dysfunctions of a team that trust is at the center of any good team. So that you have to start with that. A lot of the work that I do,
gives people a language to talk about trust. It gives people an opportunity to look at trust in the workplace and figure out is it big, is it small, is it intentional, is it unintentional? All of these things help us to put it in a place that we can manage it better and know what we need to do about it rather than sitting with it, which is what we often do. So building really strong trust is at the very center of any becoming one team of any strong team, knowing that you can trust people to do what they're supposed to do. There are three basic kinds of trust that I talk about.
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But one of the most important one, well, we'll speak to all of them. One of them is competency trust. People just want to trust that you're able to do what you're supposed to do because I can't get my job done if you're not getting your job done. So it's just the general, I trust that you're going to do what your job says you're going to do. And then there's communication trust. So I trust that you're going to say what matters. You're going to say what needs to be said. You're not going to say things that don't need to be said. So being a good communicator is a big part of trust as well.
And then there's contractual trust, which is you and I have a contraction. You expect me to do certain things in a certain amount of time, and I'm going to meet those contracts. I'm going to meet those commitments. So that's a very core center part of being able to be one team, which then breeds the second thing you talked about, which is collaboration. And once you're able to create trust and then even equally important, I was going to say even more important, but equally important is having one vision.
So everyone is striving toward an ultimate goal and each person has their reason to believe. So this is so critical that people actually understand what the ultimate goal is and how their work helps to make that goal happen and a purpose within that goal. After you have that, then you can work on being sure that you own each other's success, that there's accountability to that ultimate goal, that you have respect for each other because you're meeting the three levels of trust.
And therefore you have each other's back, you have accountability, and you're going to step in and help if there's a, you know, something that isn't getting done. So that's how you become, really become one team. The final thing I'll say, and it's just kind of a side note, but it is important. There are very specific ways that you can surface underlying issues that aren't being talked about. And I don't mean in a big dysfunctional way, but every team has those things. There are just things that are annoyances or in the way.
that just don't get talked about. And there are some very specific ways that you can surface those things, own them together and do something about them. So that's the last way I'll talk about how to be one team. In a team that is one team or operating as one team, the trust itself should provide an opportunity to do that. I would say the second thing I would really advocate for leaders to do is to create, is to model that behavior themselves. And so to be...
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able to be vulnerable to speak to when there's an issue, to speak to when they own an issue, so that other people are comfortable speaking to issues. But there are actually models, activities that you can do where you get together and anonymously you put all of your issues on the table. It starts off, the beauty of this process is that it starts off completely anonymously so that people are very free to speak to whatever it is they need to speak to. But by the end of the session, everybody's owning it together.
People have stepped up and taken on each issue. They've decided which issues they want to address as a team. People have taken on leadership of the issues. It's all out in the open. It's an amazing process. And even the best teams can benefit from it. Often people don't even do the work to identify and agree to team norms. They exist by default. And that's where some of the issues surface, is that there are team norms that occur that haven't been spoken. And so to actually just put it on the table and do the work to say,
Let's collectively create our team norms. And I do another exercise with teams that says, where are we today? So let's evaluate today. What are our team norms? Let's just put them up on the board. What are the ways that we act? Good, bad, or indifferent? And then let's talk about what good looks like. What do we want them to be? And we evaluate the from here to there. It's always very eye-opening just to speak it out loud and then to have a commitment of which ones they want to change or which ones may have surfaced as a result of doing the first part of that.
Trust is fascinating because we start building trust when we are an infant. At the very, very early age of are we getting what we need to survive, we start building trust. And what's fascinating is when we get older and come into the workplace, we have built all of these expectations around trust. We have had experiences, we've had teachings, we've had trainings. We've had all sorts of things that have established our level of trust and whatever that is. It directly connects to the notion of expectations that then creates expectations.
So what happens in an organization is I have my level of trust, you have your level of trust, but we don't talk about those things. And so something happens and we decipher it in a way that looks backward, that looks backward into the way that we have experienced things over our lifetime. And then it becomes a bigger issue. So what I advocate for teams is again, I said earlier is to have this language around trust. And there's again, a simple model. There are models for everything. There's a simple model that really helps you put things on a trust continuum.
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that speaks to is it intentional or unintentional? Is it major or minor? And you can actually identify by thinking through what has happened. If you end up in the unintentional minor box, you can kind of say, okay, I can write that one off. But people don't often do that. They sit with it, they get upset about it, they hold a grudge, they don't wanna talk about it because it's awkward. So it's really nice to be able to put language to it. And then there are...
interventions and things that you can do to say, then what do I do about it? If it is intentional and major, then what do I do about that? So giving the team a language to speak to it and giving them a model to be able to identify when they have that feeling of a betrayal of trust helps them to plot it on the model and say, okay, what now do I want to do about it? And the emotions often come from all of these experiences we bring with us. They come from who we are on the inside and the other person may be very different. So being able to speak to that and
and get underneath that emotion and then have a way to work through it is incredibly valuable. And we should just say out loud, every team has trust issues. Even if trust at the center is very, very strong, we are all individuals and we bring all that to any team dynamic that we have. having a way to address them, to speak about them and to do something about them is invaluable. You know, if we go back to what I was saying about accountability and ownership, you know, if we all have
an end goal in mind. We're all striving toward the same ultimate goal. And you know, what often happens is companies have a very large vision and people in the workers that are doing the work on a day-to-day basis may or may not have a connection to that ultimate vision. They may know it's important for the company. They may know that it's how you need to grow or continue to evolve the company, but they may not know how their work connects to it. So going back to what I was saying about really having that
personal connection, doing the work to, in marketing terms, we call it a WIFM, to the what's in it for me, to make sure that everybody has a what's in it for me, helps to create that productivity. And then the other things we talked about are if you have that ultimate vision, everybody has their part to play in it. And then you are living up to the trust model. So you're living up to the competency and the communication and the contractual trust. Then when things go wrong, everyone's going to jump in and help each other.
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instead of be angry. If you're not living up to your part of the bargain, when you're not doing your work, I'm gonna get angry and go tell someone else about it and be frustrated. But if I trust you, and I know you're doing the best you can, and you're living up to your part of the trust model, then I'm gonna jump in because ultimately we're all striving toward that larger goal. So that all breeds productivity. That all breeds we wanna win, we wanna be better, we wanna help each other, we believe in our mission and what we're trying to accomplish. And then,
Honestly, if you go back to the engagement model, if those things are in place with your leader and you are setting clear expectations and you are removing obstacles and you are giving really good productive feedback and you're celebrating success, not once a year, not year-end awards, but on a regular basis, all of those things will breed significantly more productivity. I would say that the single biggest thing is having that clear vision. So what happens often is people are striving towards something and it changes all the time.
And when it changes all the time, it's really hard to get on board with it. It's hard to stay engaged. It's hard to trust your leaders because you're going down one path and then you take a right turn and then you take a left turn and then you're asking, where am I and what are we actually trying to achieve now? I had a clear goal, but now it's changed. So helping people to navigate those changes because guess what? They're going to happen, whether we like it or not. So I'd say the first thing is having a really clear vision and making sure everyone can connect to it.
is absolutely one of the key things. And then, you know, there are communications, there are tools around impact analysis. I do a pretty extensive what's in it for me exercise with people going through big change to make sure that there's enough of a what's in it for me for people to actually be energized around it. And there isn't always a clear one. It isn't always I understand why we have to overhaul our enterprise software. Some people might say, I really don't understand that.
But at the end of the day, has to happen. So figuring out how to tease out why it should be important to them, tease out whether it's, again, if you have that joint accountability and people are having each other's backs, you should be interested in it because it's gonna help this department be more successful and that in the end will impact you. So there are just ways to, I'm kind of beating around the bush, but there are just ways to get around that to help when it comes to change to really increase that engagement and keep people on board with it.
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Maybe the most critical one is to not undervalue or underestimate the power of foundational work. So sometimes just doing the basics can go such a long way. And we all get busy and we forget and we move on and we just don't pay attention to some really simple things that can have a really, really significant impact. Thank you for joining us today on Elevate Care. If you found this episode valuable,
please consider sharing it with a colleague and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can learn more about this episode and our show on our website at amnhelfcare.com and follow us on social media to stay updated on new episodes and the ever-changing world of healthcare.