Heidi Saucier

Reflections from a conference

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the National Management Association’s annual conference in Sugar Land, Texas. I’m a member of the board of directors, and this year’s Board Secretary. Next year, I’m excited to serve as the organization’s Board Treasurer. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the organization, founded by Charles Kettering in 1925. I’d like to share some nuggets I gained during my time at the event.

We had several amazing and insightful speakers during the conference. The first person I heard was Josh Linkner, a Detroit native and well-known author, speaker, and entrepreneur. His talk focused on innovation and creativity, important elements of leadership and navigating through the professional world. Among the examples he shared, the one that resonated with me most was the employee that came to him with an idea to address some legal and logistical challenges with an ad campaign he was leading. That idea was the game changer and missing piece to the puzzle he and other leaders had been trying to solve. Additionally, he shared that the idea was from an individual contributor who because of the culture he created, was comfortable approaching him and giving him the recommendation. It reinforced in me the importance of seeking diverse perspectives and being open to new ideas even if they vastly differ from yours. You can find the full story that he’s shared with others previously here.

Shayla Rivera, a former NASA engineer who truly made a career pivot moving to standup comedy and motivational speaking, was another one of the speakers. Her focus was on storytelling, something that is near and dear to my heart. Sharing her career journey and leadership topics she learned along the way, she kept the audience engaged and laughing. Among the takeaways from her session were these two quotes:

“What you are unaware of controls you. What you are aware of you can change.” This reminded me to be mindful of how to approach my personal development and areas of improvement as they are identified. Once you are aware of something, it’s up to you what happens next. It has parallels to the Johari Window that helps individuals identify blind spots and receive feedback from others to also help you be more aware of areas in your life that would benefit from change.

“We spend so much time focusing on what we put in our mouth, but not what comes out of it.” This is such a true statement! Physical health and nutrition are very important things, but so is our emotional health and professional presence. We must continue to think before we speak and seek to understand rather than being quick to react and not taking the time to self-assess before responding to someone. Hearing this from Shayla, it challenges me to do better. If you want to learn more about Shayla, check out her website.

Another great highlight of the week was a leadership panel that focused on career development journeys. Three leaders, including one of my mentors, Patrece Hamblin, shared their experiences and insights on what individuals need to consider when looking for career growth and opportunities. Each talked about identifying where you can bring value in your job, and that opportunities are more than job promotions. As I look back on my career journey so far, I recall several opportunities that were key to my development. There were times when I was stretched to begin instructional design work and learn from others to build my skills when at the time I had minimal experience. I was asked to lead in different ways through my NMA chapter, which taught me delegation and strategic planning. In my current role I’m getting involved in projects that help me gain a bigger picture of our key stakeholders and external customers that help me identify ways that we can better support these groups. Seeing how these and other experiences continue to shape me into the leader I am today, the comments of the leaders on the panel resonate with where I have been and where I am now in my career. Roderick McLean from Lockheed Martin also said something that is crucial in development. “Believe in yourself,” he said. “Not everyone is going to believe in you.” As one that battles imposter syndrome, confidence in who I am and my abilities is a key weapon along with the reminder that it’s ok if not everyone is supportive. I must move forward with the goals that I have set in place, being open to feedback but also being true to who I am and my values. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of this amazing organization and to gain the insights I did at this year’s conference. Did any of these resonate with you? What organizations have helped you in your personal and professional journey? I’d love to hear about it!

Heidi Saucier

Influential leaders

I would not be where I am today in my journey had it not been for influential leaders. Several individuals have contributed as mentors, partners, and encouragers. Through each relationship I have gained insights, new perspectives, and connections that have and continue to support the path I am on to achieve my goals.  

At the top of the list is Jennifer S. She started as a peer when I was a sales trainer, then became my leader. Knowing my potential, she pushed me to go beyond what I thought I was capable of. For myself and our team, she brought new insights on goals. One of these was encouraging us to identify a “word of the year” that connected to those goals. Some of my words included realign, cultivate, and strategic. These words reflected areas of growth and improvement I wanted to focus on for that particular year and really made a difference in how I identified key objectives. Jennifer also stretched me to be better, often candid and encouraging in her feedback. I recall one instance when she had to have a crucial conversation with me. She shared a personal example of dealing with something similar, and what she learned from the experience. She also assigned me projects that not only took me out of my comfort zone, but aided in skill development with instructional design, facilitation, and professional presence. She continues to be an encourager to me in the current path of my career journey.

Another leader that stands out is Patrece, one of my current mentors. We served on a board together and I was intrigued by some details she was sharing related to our budget. I reached out to her for insights on financial acumen, as it is one of my goals for career development. As we’ve built our mentoring relationship, the conversations have gone beyond financial topics and moved to identifying connections and learning from each other. We have found that we have some amazing commonalities that inspire each other in areas where we are looking for guidance. She also holds me accountable to my personal goals, which helps me stay committed to publishing my blog posts. Connecting with Patrece has reminded me that mentoring is a two-way relationship and both the mentor and the mentee can teach each other key topics and skills that benefit each other in the end.

These are two examples of amazing leaders that have helped in my personal and professional development over the years. I’m grateful to them and others. Who are some of your influential leaders? How have they made a difference in your life? I’d love to hear about it!

Heidi Saucier

Defining Leadership

What is leadership? How do we define it? If you do a Google search, you will find many definitions. I was recently asked to give my definition of leadership. To me, it is how you guide, influence, and support those entrusted to you. No matter the circumstances of how an individual comes under your leadership, you are given a critical responsibility to every person that is under your helm. It is important to self-assess your leadership on a regular basis to help you grow and improve. As part of that assessment, here are some questions you may want to ask yourself:

  • Are you pointing people in the right direction?
    • As a leader, people trust you to make the right decisions and give proper guidance to your team. Collaboration and empowering your team to be part of the decision-making process will also lead down a successful path. At the same time, you lead by example. Do your words and actions line up, or are you demonstrating behavior that could cause confusion or a negative perception?
  • Are you showing others how to be better people?
    • This is also part of leading by example. It can also include storytelling to share your experiences. When others hear of your successes and mistakes and what you have learned along the way, it could be the one thing they need to move forward in a decision. It could also make someone feel like they are not alone in the situation they are facing. When you do make a mistake, be honest with your team and discuss how it can be corrected. In some instances, it may become another opportunity of collaboration where your team members may have insights to bring the best solution forth.
  • Are you cheering people on to growth or are you giving orders based only on what you want accomplished?
    • There are leaders the encourage, and there are leaders that discourage. The leader that encourages their people to grow and find opportunities to learn new things makes a difference in their team and among their colleagues. The leader that discourages often experiences more turnover, decreased team morale, and resistance when attempting to bring forth change.

As you think about your leadership journey, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions. If you have not thought about your definition of leadership, take some time to reflect on that as well. Please share your definitions in the comments!

Heidi Saucier

Doctoral Journey part 5 – Wrap up and defense

Continuing the story of my dissertation journey, I’m nearing the end of the experience. Taking the information from my qualitative and quantitative data, I finished writing two of my three papers. My third paper took a different approach in the form of a thought paper. Also known as a position paper, it allowed me to share my views of my topic with research to support. It also brought a call to action to those that make decisions related to supporting remote and hybrid workers. Once my papers were completed, it was time to prepare for the culmination of my doctoral program – the dissertation defense.

The defense was a presentation of my research, summarizing the three artifacts I wrote and sharing the importance of the results. The group that would hear my defense was my dissertation committee, consisting of my advisor and two faculty members that I had asked to support me in the journey. I could not share every little detail of my papers, so I had to choose the key points with guidance from my advisor. My presentation included background on my topic, the purpose of my research, the methods used in my research, who would benefit from my findings, and a summary of each artifact. It was still a lot of information to present in 25 minutes, so I had to be as precise as possible. After creating my presentation, I reviewed it with my advisor and practiced ensuring I was within my time limits and prepared for any questions the committee may ask me.

Finally, the day I’d been working up to had arrived – dissertation defense day. I got on a Zoom call and presented my dissertation summary. After the presentation, I was asked a few questions to clarify points I had shared in my research. Then, I was sent to a virtual waiting room while the committee discussed my presentation. After many minutes, they brought me back to the group and gave me the news that I had passed my dissertation! It was a very emotional moment for me as I reached the moment of celebration and accomplishment, remembering all that I experienced along the way both academically and personally.

Following my defense, I finalized my paper to submit to the offices of the graduate school and prepared for commencement. On May 3, 2024 (which happened to be my 48th Birthday), I walked onto the stage and received my doctoral hood as did one of the friends I had made in my cohort. My mom was able to join me for the celebration, which was a great honor to have her with me.

Over one year later, I still reflect on the journey and am on the next steps of my goal to get my articles published. For this reason, I am not sharing details of my research currently. I hope to share the story of that journey in the months ahead. In the meantime, my future posts will focus on learning and development and leadership related topics.

I hope that this series of posts gave you insight into the doctoral program experience. If you are considering this path, I’m happy to answer questions to help you with your decision. Even if you are not looking to get a degree, feel free to share questions and comments you may have related to my experience.

Heidi Saucier

Doctoral Journey part 4 – Data Analysis

If you’ve been following the doctoral journey posts, you have learned the experiences I had to prepare for my dissertation writing, including the collection of data. In this entry, I will share how I evaluated and analyzed the data collected from my surveys in preparation for writing those sections of my dissertation articles.

My survey had two purposes. First, many of the questions contributed to my quantitative study with respondents sharing their perceptions of organizational support by scoring Likert-based questions. The remaining questions allowed for open-ended responses that allowed respondents to share their first-hand experiences receiving organizational support in their jobs. That data contributed to my qualitative study.

For my quantitative study, I extracted the Qualtrics results to an Excel file. Portions of  that data were loaded into SPSS, a software tool that allows for multiple types of data analysis. I chose to provide insights through a descriptive analysis that explored my research questions and inferential data analysis that sought to determine if key characteristics affected an individual’s perceptions of organizational support for onboarding and development as a remote worker. The descriptive analysis allowed me to see the overall responses to each survey question collectively and identify if responses were more positive, negative, or neutral. The inferential analysis allowed me to take those same questions and dig deeper into the data by seeing if the answers changed based on someone’s role, gender, and their competency levels related to technology use. I felt that SPSS was a helpful tool in my data analysis and offered several ways to represent the data graphically which gave me a few choices for how I wanted my results represented in my dissertation.

The data for my qualitative study consisted of verbal responses to the open-ended questions included in the Qualtrics survey. To analyze this data, I used an online tool called Delve. It allows you to load your qualitative responses and apply codes to the text to identify trends. The tool also has AI functionality to simplify the process, but I did not use this in my analysis. For each code, I included definitions to help guide coding. After the results were coded, I had a list to review and determined which codes had more responses. This brought out trends and themes where I could share commonalities in the experiences of the respondents based on their narrative. In addition, I was able to create a transcript of the coding that I added to the appendix of my qualitative paper. This data helps tell the story of the experiences a group of remote workers had in getting the support they needed from their company, leaders, and peers.

With the data analyzed, I was ready to move forward with the completion of my dissertation and get closer to earning my doctoral degree. In my next post, I’ll share about the finishing steps of completing my dissertation writing and preparing for my defense.

Which type of data do you find more useful when you are researching or hearing a presentation with data? Share your comments!