GoDaddy’s Solution to Employee Engagement, in Partnership with Achievers

Episode recap: 

Today’s show focused on workforce transformation and employee engagement, featuring lively discussions with Kristian Gaetano from Achievers and Janelle Jordan from GoDaddy. They explored the importance of recognition in driving employee engagement, the impact of AI-powered recognition tools on organizational culture, and strategies for creating inclusive work environments. The conversation covered personal leadership practices, successful recognition initiatives, and the transformative power of feedback in fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion.

Guest Bio:

As COO of Achievers, Kristian Gaetano leads all post-sales functions, ensuring customers receive exceptional experiences and long-term value. His focus is on delivering for customers, building a world-class team, and driving customer retention and growth 

As Sr. Program Manager, Employee Experience, GoDaddy, Janelle Jordan is passionate about building positive workplace cultures. In her current role, she leads efforts to boost engagement, recognition, and diversity, including GoDaddy’s global recognition program, Everyday Champions (EDC), and its employee resource groups 

Quotes:

“What gets recognized gets repeated... Recognition doesn’t just help us feel good—it actually helps employees feel and contribute more to their organization.” – Kristian Gaetano
“Feedback is a gift, and it's also a skill. It’s powerful for leaders and individual contributors to learn how to be better at giving and receiving feedback—both positive.” – Janelle Jordan

Key Takeaways:

• Practice daily recognition—even a simple message can have a big impact.
• Ask team members how they prefer to be recognized for more personalized appreciation.
• Reflect on your leadership style to identify triggers and lead with empathy.
• Make recognition more visible and meaningful within your team or organization.
• Start tracking the business impact of recognition on engagement, retention, and performance.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Book Announcement
00:47 Welcome to the Love in Action Podcast
01:21 Today's Topic: Workforce Transformation
01:53 Meet the Guests: Kristian and Janelle
03:46 Janelle's Leadership Journey
05:44 Kristian's Leadership Journey
07:07 The Importance of Recognition
09:30 Empathy and Leadership
12:38 GoDaddy's Values and Recognition
14:43 Challenges Faced by Managers
20:46 Success Stories and Impact of Recognition
27:20 The Role of ERGs at GoDaddy
30:03 Leading with Humanity, Love, and Trust
32:32 Final Thoughts and Takeaways
35:23 Closing Remarks

Conclusion:
Recognition isn’t just about feeling good—it’s a driver of performance, engagement, and retention. When people feel seen and appreciated, they’re more motivated, productive, and likely to support their peers. Empathetic leadership and consistent, meaningful feedback create the kind of culture where people thrive. Treat people like people—not just roles—and lasting success will follow.

Resources:

• Achievers on LinkedIn
• Achievers Website
• GoDaddy
• GoDaddy Life Blog
• GoDaddy Life on Instagram
• Kristian Gaetano on LinkedIn
• Janelle Jordan on LinkedIn

Transcript

Marcel Schwantes 00:00 

Hey, it's Marcel. I am geeked up about my new book that just got released worldwide. If you haven't heard it's called Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss. Now, if you love the podcast, you're gonna love the book. I spent several years researching the best skills and behaviors of people leaders that engage employees and drive results through a humane approach of empowering humanity, developing trust and getting the best out of people. It's out now. Get it wherever books are sold. Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss. Check the link in the show notes and grab your copy. Welcome to the Love in Action podcast. I'm your host, executive coach, speaker and author. Marcel Schwantes, I believe that when we show up with our full humanity to work and lead from a place of love, joy, purpose, care and inclusion. It's going to make a radical difference in your leadership, your business and your bottom line. This is a show about actionable, practical, love, the verb as a leadership and business strategy. Let's get rolling.  

Hey guys, welcome back. Glad you are here. Okay, let's get right to it. All right, we got a lot to cover today, so let me start this conversation with a question. If 2025, is really the year of workforce transformation, think about it, why are so many organizations still stuck with disengaged teams, burned out managers and recognition strategies that barely scratched the surface of what people truly need to thrive at work. So to help unpack this challenge, or these challenges that I just stated, I'm going to be joined today by two incredible guests who will draw on 20 years of experience to offer you guys valuable insights and advice on leading with empathy and building a great employee experience. And I'll be speaking shortly with Kristian Gaetano, Chief Operating Officer at Achievers, and Janelle Jordan, Senior Program Manager employee experience at GoDaddy, so a brief description of what my distinguished guests actually do.  

So as CEO of Achievers, Kristian leads all post sales functions, ensuring customers receive exceptional experiences and long term value. His focus is on delivering for customers, building a world, world class team and driving customer retention and growth. As Senior Program Manager employee experience at GoDaddy, Janelle is passionate about building positive workplace cultures, Janelle And I have something in common, because I'm passionate about that too. In her current role, she leads efforts to boost engagement, recognition and diversity, including GoDaddy global recognition program everyday champions or EDC and its employee resource groups, and they're both here, and we're gonna dive right in, folks. Kristian and Janelle, welcome to the love in action podcast. Thank you. Happy to be here. That's great to be here. Likewise. Okay, so hey, tradition on the show, we start like this. You Ready? 

Kristian Gaetano 03:40 

Ready. 

Marcel Schwantes 03:41 

What's your story? And ladies first. 

Janelle Jordan 03:46 

Okay, so my approach and my passion is typically human centered and human led, and but that hasn't always been the case. I will say that I am fortunate enough in my career that I had two leaders who really cared about and had a genuine interest in fostering my growth and tapping into my potential, and they gave me some pretty open and honest feedback on my leadership style that really changed the course of my life and showed and how I show up in the workplace, and ultimately why I'm in the role that I am in today. And I can say real quickly, when I was at JP Morgan Chase, I had an a leader who was joining my calls and said, You know, I gotta just tell you this right now. I need you to slow down. You are you? Are you are great at getting to the point, starting kicking off the agenda and driving and executing through those meetings, but you got to slow down and acknowledge the people in the room.  

And what might seem so easy for some people really took me a little bit of time, but when I actually did that, and I took time to ask about their weekend acknowledge that they were actual people outside of the company, it really changed the dynamics of our team. And then I and most recently. When I was leading a project team at Deloitte, same thing, same feedback, I had a manager say, you're great at getting the work done, you're great at achieving the outcomes, getting delivering quality deliverables, but you don't always take the time to acknowledge the people that are doing the work. And they said they're missing opportunities, left and right. And man, that really struck a chord in me, and I can tell you, I have spent every single day since I got those two pieces of feedback ensuring that I am recognizing the folks who are doing the work slowing down and taking an opportunity to really show empathy in the workplace and building connection that way. And it's literally the reason why I'm driving recognition at GoDaddy today. 

Marcel Schwantes 05:40 

That's good. That's good. Kristian, what's your story? 

Kristian Gaetano 05:43 

Excellent. My story. It's pretty broad question, but high level. I grew up Northern Ontario, so imagine you have 10 hours north of Toronto. So whatever you're envisioning, just go a little bit further, kind of middle of nowhere. I always aspired to, kind of get to move into the big city. And I started working at a really young age. My first job was at McDonald's, and I fell in love with how businesses operated. I was really, really keen on how, how you build systems and process with an organization. And I fell in love with the fact that you can actually get a lot done if you've, if you kind of tinkered with and build a high, highly a high performing team.  

And so I did my university. I went to school for psychology, and HR kind of started off working in some big brands, working as an HR practitioner, but I really found my groove when I joined achievers in the HR tech space, where I felt like I could actually have the impact I was looking to have on driving performance and culture at scale. And so I've been with achievers for about 15 years. I joined originally as a customer facing role, and 15 years later, I'm now the CEO of the company, which I'm really, really proud of, and I get the privilege now to kind of watch organizations transform their culture. So working with fantastic customers like GoDaddy and seeing Janelle kind of drive the strategy and how helping them to change the way that they work is something that's super inspiring to me. And so outside of work, I love working. I'm kind of, I'm big into fitness and big into travel. Those things don't always go really well together. But yeah, really, really excited to be here today. 

Marcel Schwantes 07:05 

That's great guys, yeah, and I know that employee experience and recognition and building a high performing culture that's going to play out in our conversation. Okay, we were all together, what just couple of weeks ago in Toronto, right? And that was at the achievers recognition next conference, we shared stages, and such an awesome experience for me, being there with you both and so many other great people, learning and getting to meet people and so anyway, I had a blast. So this year's theme is, shape your workforce. Kristian, I'm going to start with you on this one. What does that tagline mean to achievers?  

Kristian Gaetano 07:49 

Yeah, that's a great question. So first, I want to say thank you to both of you for rocking the stage I recognition next. We just went through a debrief, and the feedback was phenomenal. So thank you both super energized by it. I know it's the energy is still palpable from the event, so it was wonderful. But when we think about kind of shaping our workforce, when I think about that, what that means for achievers, for us, it's really kind of a promise that we're making to our customers to make sure that we're providing them with the thought leadership, the science and the tools that are required to help drive behaviors and drive positive change within their organizations. We know from lots of research and just from our experience that recognition is the primary driver of behavioral change and behavioral reinforcement. In fact, at achievers, I think we talk about this all the time.  

We have a saying that what gets recognized gets repeated, and we see this play out time and time again within our customer base, and we see a lot of the research and the data that tells us that recognition doesn't just help us feel good, but it actually helps employees feel and contribute more to their organization. And so, you know, employees that are recognized even just once a month, which isn't a huge amount, if you really think about it, just one recognition a month, they're, you know, they see 2.5 times more engagement. In their engagement scores, they're three times more likely to or to feel that they have, you know, a really strong manager, they feel better about their overall compensation. So from my perspective, it means, you know, it feels really good to be able to help organizations drive results like that within their business by using a framework is as straightforward as recognition. 

Marcel Schwantes 09:22 

Yeah. So two-part question here, because I want to play with what drives the kind of people that that are going to recognize their employees, their workforce. So I want to bring empathy into the discussion. How do empathetic leaders factor into this, this whole, the bigger picture of recognition? 

Kristian Gaetano 09:40 

Me, I can start if you wanted, and then Janelle, you can jump in. You know the how does rec, how does empathetic leadership lead into this? It's really, you know, other organizations, a lot of leaders specifically, are looking for ways to become better leaders and better managers in the organization. And so you. The ability to understand kind of how your employees are experiencing, kind of the operating reality, where there are, where the where the challenges that they're facing in their role, what are the opportunities and development that they're letting looking to lean into that's really enabling leaders to be more empathetic and understanding the realities of those employees, and then using recognition as a way to acknowledge the even sometimes the small changes or the small wins along the way is as employees are really looking to kind of go after the goals they're looking for. It's really a vehicle to kind of take the, take that kind of ample empathetic view and actually do something with it, and actually continue to encourage managers that are that are working. 

Marcel Schwantes 10:41 

Yeah, do you know? Do you have any input on the on the empathy piece and how that ties into recognition? 

Janelle Jordan 10:46 

Of course, of course. So I want to start by sharing a little bit about GoDaddy, right? So GoDaddy, his mission is to empower entrepreneurs everywhere and make opportunity more inclusive for all. That's pretty powerful. And that mission really starts with our employees and our leaders. I would say we promote empathetic leadership through our premium first approach. I'm proud to share that in our most recent GoDaddy voice survey. That's our annual group engagement survey, we scored an 89 out of 100 on the question my manager supports me. That's pretty powerful, right? So what does that say? That indicates that our leaders are doing the right things in promoting empathetic leadership, being supportive, listening, helping their teams feel heard and feel unfelt and seen, and fostering that culture of trust. I see this every day in my organization.  

One of my first experiences was the very first town hall that I attended at GoDaddy, where I watched our CEO actively engaging with our employees throughout the entire hour, and answering questions in real time and fostering what felt like just a natural conversation with our employees. And we also do this through everyday champions. The global recognition program that that I lead, we give our managers the tool to go in and recognize and use recognition as a lever for building trust and fostering resilience within their communities. And we empower every single one of our employees to lead with empathy through the everyday champions program and giving them the opportunity to use recognition and put that feedback on a platform where we can amplify all of the wins that might go unnoticed, right? And give our employees the opportunity to help cultivate that culture, 

Marcel Schwantes 12:35 

yeah, well, I'm glad you brought it GoDaddy. You briefly described GoDaddy, but I wanted to just kind of piggyback on GoDaddy’s values, because I'm not familiar with GoDaddy’s values. So maybe you can tie in recognition to and how that sits within your company's values. Is there sort of a correlation? 

Janelle Jordan 12:55 

Yeah, absolutely. Recognition is the fabric that weaves our values together. I mean, let's be honest. It is, it's, it's deeply rooted in our culture of gratitude at GoDaddy, and it's demonstrated and celebrated in our platform everyday champions. That's our global recognition program. So when our leaders show up and recognize their teams through everyday champions, they're setting a tone right. They're reaffirming to our employees and building confidence and motivation and helping our employees see feel seen and valued. And again, Kristian mentioned this, that when employees are recognized statistically, they are more likely to repeat that behavior, right?  

So we see our employees living and demonstrating our values, we make the effort to acknowledge that in real time, we reinforce our commitment to our values, and our values are joining forces. So collaborating across teams and time zones, it's working courageously, experimenting really big. It's owning their outcomes, whether whether successes or failures are just of some of those, some of those. And so our culture of gratitude happens at every level of our organization. At GoDaddy, and it is amplified broadly. We showcase examples of our leaders and employees embodying our values in spotlights, in town halls, in all hands on our GoDaddy life, socials and blogs everywhere that we possibly can to show that it's, it's more than something that we do, it's who we are. 

Marcel Schwantes 14:25 

Yeah, that's great, yeah. So a recent Gallup study highlights that ineffective managers are a major factor in this crazy what is it now? 438 billion disengagement, crisis. Whoo, anyway, so Kristian, I'm gonna give you this one. Okay, what's, what's really going on with managers in 2025 I mean, the needle hasn't moved much so and, and, by the way, is achievers tied into what achievers is doing, as far as, like, maybe coming up with some new approaches to help turn this thing around. 

Kristian Gaetano 15:01 

Absolutely well, if you've noticed, but there's a lot happening in the world. And so, you know, everyone brings everything that's happening in the world into the into the workplace. And we know managers are traditionally been spread exceptionally thin. They wear lots of hats, and that's only kind of been exacerbated, probably, with some of the recent things that are going on in the world. So we saw that from that Gartner report. I think it was 75 was 75% of managers report being feeling spread exceptionally thin, meaning that they feel like there's no more that they can take on. And the trouble is that we know that managers are the key of driving success and employee engagement.  

So a lot of what Janelle spoke to the ability to have managers lead with empathy. They need to have the capacity to do so. And so what we're focused on is, how do we enable managers to be more effective? How do we present them with solutions that doesn't put more on their plate, but actually helps them to execute more strategically and a little bit more efficiently? And so we know that from the data that one in three managers feel as though they're confident in how they're recognizing their teams. And so as we've been thinking about what are the different tools we can bring to managers to make them more effective, there's two kind of main areas we're really excited about. The first is we have a whole new work stream where we're leaning into AI. Every company's talking about it, but we're really talking about this concept of achievers intelligence, and how do we actually leverage AI to make to help managers become more effective? And we have something called our AI powered recognition assistant.  

And so what this does is it helps to go and actually look at all the different recognition activity that's happening across an organization. So Janelle, you know, obviously GoDaddy is quite a large organization. As a leader at GoDaddy, it will surface like here's some great things that some of your employees are doing that we feel like you should recognize, right, that are that are primed for to be recognized. And it'll help Janelle as a manager, actually start to construct a recognition and provide highlights and tips on how to make that recognition more effective. So it's not replacing kind of the human, empathetic aspect of sending recognition, but it's helping Janelle kind of surface the things that she should pay attention to, and so that's something that we're finding is really highly effective in helping managers be more effective.  

The second is, we have this whole space within our platform called the manager toolkit, and it's a place where you can actually go as a leader to see how you're doing from a recognition perspective, in terms of recognition sent, are your teams under you? Are the individuals receiving recognition for the work that they're doing? What is the recognition they're receiving? So you can jump in and either comment or like or boost it, where you can actually pile on and amplify the impact of that, but it'll also give you hot spots to let you know maybe how your team is doing in comparison to other parts of the organization around recognition, or even data from our third party benchmarking that we get from the achievers workforce Institute, so that you can be coached as a leader on how to leverage recognition more effectively.  

And so I know personally my meetings, some days, my meetings are back to back to back, but I have an opportunity before I get into some of the one on ones with my team to go in and just see what have they been recognized for? Because it can open up a conversation. Allows me to go deeper, and it gives me, as a leader, more visibility, and some of the great things that are happening 

Marcel Schwantes 18:07 

within the business, yeah, yeah. Well, I know as a coach, I constantly am always banging the drum on the belonging and the inclusion play piece. So we know that treating people well and making them feel heard, feel seen, is really crucial for a healthy company culture. So Janelle, I'm gonna have you answer this one. Okay, because I want to, I want you to tie it into GoDaddy specific, specific to the data, and what's the data pointing to. So have you seen any measurable business results from making things like belonging and inclusion at work a top priority. 

Janelle Jordan 18:44 

Yeah, this is a really good question and a tough question, and it's interesting because we we just talked about how we were all at recognition next together in Toronto, and I was surrounded by peers who do the same work as me. And this came up a lot. It's like, we're all we're all striving towards connecting, belonging to the business outcomes. We know the data is there and the statistics are there, and the research is there. So GoDaddy measures belonging through a combination of things. Our employee surveys, which I just talked about, are GoDaddy voice, life cycle analytics, recognition data through the everyday champions program. And we're trying to connect those things to retention and engagement and performance. We know it's there. We're really digging in deeper, looking at how belonging impacts those three things we know.  

For example, Harvard Business Review stated that folks who feel a strong sense of belonging report a 50% 56% increase in their job performance. We want to measure that within our own organization, and we're really going to work hard to do that, but I can say excitedly that last year, 84% of our employees participated in our GoDaddy voice engagement survey, right? 84% that is well above the average in the industry. Typically, it's 70% so that tells us that our GoDaddy employees are engaged. They feel a strong. Sense of support and trust in within our teams, and we also know that employees who feel cared for are three times more likely to be happy and recommend their company as a good place to work.  

And I'm proud to say that at GoDaddy, we've seen a consistent increase in that number year over year for the past three years. So some data that correlates that we're doing the right things. We're moving in the direction that's great, to be honest. We want we want to get better. We want to get better, and we want to get stronger. And we're excited about partnering with companies, especially achievers, who's leading us and supporting us and guiding us and consulting with us on how to do that. 

Marcel Schwantes 20:38 

That is a great success story in a case study right there. And speaking of success stories, Kristian, have there been any, any surprising examples, you know, across industry, since you track all that stuff, where recognition actually drove, like crazy unexpected impact, and like any wow moments that you can refer to here. 

Kristian Gaetano 21:01 

Yeah, well, of a couple. The first is, it's really inspiring Janelle, to hear the ways that you're really like, raising the game at GoDaddy, and some of the innovative things that you're doing, like the story around your customer service week campaign, the impact that that's had on the engagement is just that is a wow moment for us. There's a couple different areas, like there's a couple that come to mind. But I'm always surprised with just how quickly these recognition strategies can have an impact on the business. And so I know we've had a we had a really large retail customer once come to us because they were having a challenge with retention, right?  

We know retail, in some cases, is like 100% turnover within some of the retail environment, and they did so well right out of the gate that they actually had to re forecast their year because they saw such a massive drop in attrition, which is a good problem, I think, for the CFO to have. They were like, Okay, this is not a bad problem, because we know there's so much goodness that comes with retention, but we work with airline customers who are using behavioral reinforcement through recognition to get the airplane door closed five minute faster, on average, which is saving between 20 and $30 million a year, which is super, super impressive. And in the one story that I always think about, we have a really large healthcare provider in the US, and they've actually leaned into external recognition, meaning that they're allowing their patients and their families to leverage recognition as a way to say thank you for the service that they received.  

And we know, especially in healthcare, with nurses and nurse practitioners, it can be a bit of a thankless job, right? You're just, you're kind of putting up fires all day long. And so the impact that that's had on the nursing staff in particular, and helping them to reconnect the work that they're doing to purpose, it's why they joined the profession in the first place, and it helps them to kind of get up every morning and come back and do the hard work, hearing their stories, and the impact that it's had is, like, truly moving. And our vision at achievers is to change the way the world works. And those examples are the ways, the times that I wake up in the morning being like, Okay, we're on the right track. Right? These things are working, and we're moving the needle forward. So there's, there's probably a dozen more examples, but those are a couple that just came to mind. 

Marcel Schwantes 23:02 

Yeah, Kristian, you'll appreciate this, because even as a coach, I didn't become a full believer in the Gospel of recognition until I started to partner with achievers to create content, and because I started to dive into the data and the insights and all of the things that point to recognition to drive impact. And it wasn't until I ran into you guys that I became a full believer in the fact that, yes, this stuff works, and because the data, the data is showing it.  

Kristian Gaetano 23:30 

So it's funny, I've lived in the space for so long. And Janelle, I don't know if you feel this way too, but sometimes I find that, because we live and breathe this every day, it's interesting to see how this spills out into your personal life, right? I found that it's having this toolkit around using recognition has helped me with my relationships with my friends and family. It's changed the way that I interact with folks in the world. And you can actually see the response that people have when you are more mindful and recognition. So I know this is really particular with the work that we're doing with our customers, but it's really interesting to see the amplification that this has just in the world in general. 

Marcel Schwantes 24:03 

Yeah. And I'm so glad that you brought up external recognition, too, because I learned about that at the conference where I met you guys. And I don't know who it was that didn't did a part of the product demonstration on, on, on what, what you're coming up with. And I heard about external recognition, and how important that that is now, and that is a thing and so for all of you listening, if think about that, not just to peer to peer recognition or boss to employee recognition, but what are your customers and other stakeholders saying, right? And you want to capture that data as well now. Okay, Janelle, speaking of peer to peer recognition, we often talk about, you know, humane leadership at the top, but it can also show up in those other levels within the organization, maybe sort of like the, you know, in the front lines. So how. Have you seen peer to peer recognition in action at GoDaddy? And how has that shaped your culture? 

Janelle Jordan 25:08 

Yeah, I love this question, and Kristian kind of teased it a little bit, because I'm going to talk a little bit about the customer service Appreciation Week. Peer to peer recognition is it's not just a feature of our program, right? It is a powerful force in our culture, and I mentioned this before with our recognition strategy, we believe that recognition and appreciation should be democratized and at every level of the organization, right where our employees are living their values and we're rewarding them for that. So I would say our employees have not only embraced it, but they've amplified it as a way to build trust and collaboration and connection, especially in this environment where we have really big, global and remote and dispersed teams, right?  

So one of the most powerful examples of how this has shown up at GoDaddy was our 2024 customer service Appreciation Week, where we dedicated an entire week to recognizing and appreciating our care and services employees. Our care guides our frontline employees. They make up more than half of our organization, and this was the first time that we had done that. What was special about this is it was really innovative and creative in the way that we kind of gamified recognition. But it was very, very, very leader led, and our leaders were visibly engaged and leading the recognition. And so we saw a 51% surge in engagement through that campaign. But more importantly, our care guides participated in sending peer to peer recognition. More than half of the recognition sent was peer to peer recognition, right?  

So that just shows you that, like it was an absolute culture shift for that organization, and I'm proud to say we measured that impact for the for three months past that campaign, and we were able to sustain that so think about that. We were able to sustain that engagement for the three months following that one week campaign that's so powerful. So we, you know, we spotlight and through our everyday champions program, like I said, wins that would otherwise go unnoticed. And it's contagious employees who get recognized, they recognize others. So we feel like peer to peer recognition. It's like a thank you relay, right? It's like a thank you relay, and it's helping us build that high performing organization that we're all striving for.  

Marcel Schwantes 27:19 

Yeah, yeah, that's great. And Janelle, in addition to leading GoDaddy recognition program, I know you also lead the company's ERGs or employee resource groups, if you will, tell us a little bit about your approach to ERGs and how they map back to things like recognition and even your leadership the empathy piece, right? 

Janelle Jordan 27:43 

Yeah, I love this question. It goes right back to our mission, right? So nurturing a culture of diversity and inclusion is at the heart of who we are at GoDaddy, but our mission is to make opportunity more inclusive. For all that starts at home. We know that diverse teams make us better, and our ERGs are huge components to how we foster that culture. At GoDaddy, our ERGs are more than just communities. They are the engines driving inclusivity, driving leadership development, driving connection, right? So our ERG is what I feel we have 11 ERGs here at GoDaddy. They're like the ground for where we grow and nurture those, those the leadership that we want to see at scale, right, those behaviors like empathy and inclusion, and that's where we see that human first approach. That's where we see those inclusive behaviors, and that's where we see accountability.  

Again, recognition is a powerful way that we sustain our ERG engagement and reinforce our culture. Here at GoDaddy, for example, we celebrate all of our ERG leaders and all of our ERG members in real time, in everyday champions. We recognize their effort and their impact, and we do that in a way that's visible, so that it shows the entire organization that inclusion is it's more than just words, right? It's a core business priority for us, and we by using everyday champions, I believe that we're making inclusion visible and repeatable, right? Again, we're amplifying the behaviors that we want to see more of. It creates a tangible reward for work. That is hard is challenging again, that can go unnoticed, that can be taxing, especially for those underrepresented communities. So recognition is just such a powerful, a powerful piece of how we support our ERG community, but how we continue to foster inclusion in the workplace. All 

Marcel Schwantes 29:38 

right, guys, well, we're gonna bring it home, unfortunately, but here's how we typically wrap up by asking our guests how, how leaders lead with more practical and actionable love, and hence the title of the podcast, right? Love and action. But since you're both here and you're both leaders, and I'm gonna. Kind of put you on the spot a little bit and ask you instead. So personally, how do you each lead with more humanity, love and trust in your day to day? Roles? Janelle, I'll start with you. 

Janelle Jordan 30:14 

Yeah, I think this starts with the self, right? I think empathy begins with ourselves at home. It's for me, it's a practice. It's a daily and consistent practice. It's slowing down, it's internal reflection. It's observing my thoughts. It's observing my feelings. It's asking myself questions to better understand my triggers, my biases. It's practicing self love. It's giving grace and compassion. And then when I get better at practicing those things within myself, I'm able to project that into the world and I see them. I'm able to more naturally and easily bring that empathy to others, and give that grace to others, and slow down and be able to be present with others in a way that I think makes it feel makes that empathy feel real, 

Marcel Schwantes 31:04 

Yeah, and it's modeling those behaviors as well, right for other people, and that's how we hopefully create other leaders that lead that way. How about you Kristian? 

Kristian Gaetano 31:13 

Yeah, that's great Janelle, I loved that. I really love that concept of leading yourself before you have the opportunity to lead others. And so I really, I really value that, and I love that. I think for me, it's, you know, I need to do a better job of what Janell is speaking to. For me, I it comes back to making sure that I'm creating an environment in which people can feel like they truly belong, like reminding myself and reminding the team that we all work at achievers. We work at a great company, but we're all humans, like full 360 humans that come into work every day, and we know from the pillars of belonging. You know, we need to make sure that people feel welcomed and known and included and supported and connected.  

And so for me, it's about checking in to say, like, am I creating that environment and having listening sessions with folks who I'm actually asking the question, like, how are we doing? Where are you feeling that? You know, we're hitting the nail on the head in terms of where you belong, and where can we be doing better, and then consistently adjusting the environment so people are in that right environment when which they can thrive. And so for me, it's really, it does take a bit of a slowdown, as Janelle mentioned, sometimes we're hard drivers. We need to take the step back to say, like, how is it working? Are we creating the right environments in which people can thrive? And are we asking folks, are we creating it in a way that works for them? And so yeah, that's where, that's the way I'm looking at it. 

Marcel Schwantes 32:30 

That's good. That's good. All right, folks, bring us home. What is that one thing that you want people listening to take away from moving forward, and I'll start with you. Janelle. 

Janelle Jordan 32:43 

Okay, I want to close with the importance of feedback, and that feedback is a gift and it's also a skill, and how powerful it can be for leaders and individual, individual contributors to learn how to give, to be better at giving and receiving feedback, both positive, right? Which is that recognition and that appreciation, but also constructive, and that it can transform people and teams, personally and professionally. And that giving feedback, you know, and it requires bill, it requires being present and fostering trust and psychological safety and courage, but I just they can be so powerful and creating that belonging and that connection in the workplace and really driving measurable results. So I want to close by saying, get better at giving and receiving feedback. And it truly is. It truly is a gift, both positive and construction constructive, and our employees are desperate for it. Yeah, they really want to grow. They want to get better. And, you know, we talk about driving towards building high performing organizations, I just can't say enough about the gift of feedback. 

Marcel Schwantes 33:55 

Oh yeah, there is something innately wired in every human being to want to experience that kind of, that kind of recognition, right? And that they are again, going right back to knowing that they matter. And so that's, that's really good. How you stated that. How about you, Kristian? 

Kristian Gaetano 34:12 

Yeah, I think for me, it's, it's interesting. So there's so much evidence that recognition is a primary driver of satisfaction, in general, business results, engagement, that sense of belonging. And yet I talk to some folks, sometimes especially prospective customers or people in my friend network, they're like, We don't have a platform like achievers. What can I do? And so my big thing is you just have to start practicing. Of course, there's tools and platforms that help to amplify and help to kind of do this at scale, but from a personal leadership perspective, you just have to start.  

And so I encourage people to look at recognition as part of your daily practice. Once you leave a meeting before you zoom to the next meeting, or you're kind of jumping up to walk to your next appointment, take the moment to say like that, did that individual have an impact? What was I really impressed by and practice by even sending them a team? Teams message or a Slack message or saying it face to face at first, sometimes it can feel a little bit awkward, especially if it's not all part of your organizational culture, but by you leading by example and starting it will have a ripple effect. And so don't wait six months or a year or 20 your business case built, built for a tool. Just start like today by leading it and using recognition as a personal driver. 

Marcel Schwantes 35:23 

Bingo. Okay, guys, if our listeners want to learn more about your companies and anything that you got going on special right now, but also if they want to connect with you personally, where can they go? 

Kristian Gaetano 35:39 

I mean, from Achievers perspective, a couple options. The first I would say is follow us on LinkedIn. Okay, tons of content that we're putting out. Follow me personally on LinkedIn. That's where I love to connect with folks in the community. Also, you can check out our website at www.achievers.com we have all kinds of great information there. 

Janelle Jordan 35:59 

Yeah, I would mirror, I would say the same. You can find me on LinkedIn, and you can follow GoDaddy on LinkedIn and all of the socials, Facebook and Instagram. We have GoDaddy. We have GoDaddy life. Our employer brand team does an amazing job of putting everything that we're doing inside the organization outside for the entire world to see, as well as spotlighting all of our incredible customers that make up our company, and so I would say, just follow us there. 

Marcel Schwantes 36:24 

This was a fun and rich conversation. I'm glad we did it, and it's great to see you both again since Toronto. So appreciate you being here. 

Janelle Jordan 36:31 

Thank you, Marcel, absolute pleasure to be here and great to see you again, Kristian. 

Kristian Gaetano 36:37 

Thanks for having us. 

Marcel Schwantes 36:39 

Yeah, and gang, you can keep the conversation going on social media with #loveinactionpodcast, and look for my show notes on my website, as well as a YouTube link for you to watch this very episode. All of that can be found at marcelschwantes.com. For Kristian and Janelle and yours truly. Remember, in the end, love wins. We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Love in Action podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it, subscribe and leave us a review until next time. Don't forget. The future of leadership is love in action. Believe it, practice it, and watch your leadership and business flourish.