Client Testimonal: Glassdoor about the Gold Medal Experience

We have had the pleasure of welcoming a leadership team from Glassdoor to our Gold Medal Experience. Here are Carina Cortez, Chief People Officer, Scott Dobroski, VP Corporate Communications and Molly McKinstry, VP Global Sales, who share some their personal highlights and what impressed them most working with us on this program.

Transcript

The Gold Medal Experience with Glassdoor has been really eye-opening. I feel like every day I had an experience or learning that I can take away with me. I have kind of been blown away by just how impactful it has been. Just the connection and parallel between, you know, this elite athleticism and training and kind of this Olympic mindset to our day-to-day as leaders and the work that we’re doing at Glassdoor.

We just completed a rowing experience. Something that really stood out for me from this is just the trust that you need to have in your team and needing to really be in sync with one another. It just played out on so many levels as you think about what you go back to the organization for. For me, without a doubt, hearing from the Paralympians was such a heartfelt, endearing, special moment. It really makes us realize how we can focus. How we can come together, support one another, be resourceful, and find creative solutions.

I think the biggest thing for me that I want to do differently when I go back to work is being much more focused on the plan, brief, debrief, learn. I could see the impact after every single event that we went through. Just seeing that so ingrained in the athletes and the sport psychologists, it’s an easy tweak to make that I think makes significant impact. We are, I think, pretty good on the prep and the plan and the doing, but we do not have rigor on that debrief and post-mortem. And knowing that all these elite athletes and some of the best in the world do that maniacally. We are going to do that too. I am going to do that too.

I absolutely have seen my team change over the last few days. I see some stronger bonds forming with one another, and I also see different language, the language of an athlete being used in some of the debriefs that we’ve done. It’s really felt this leadership experience is much more personalized, I would say, to what we need. So, we gave some feedback, submitted some challenges and things we wanted to improve on and it was really cool that in two to three days it was customized to what we need to get even bigger, better, and stronger together. 

Sometimes you leave an offsite and you’re like, “Do they even know our company? Or do they even know what we’re here to try to achieve?”. I felt like, during this experience, you all continued to tie it back to what we are trying to take away from the three days and I feel like we’re going to. The reason that I selected WDHB as my partner is that I have actually worked with them in the past. I’ve had the opportunity at other organizations that I’ve been with to go through this experiential learning. 

Being able to interact with athletes and doing something versus sitting in front of a Zoom presentation or meeting all day was just, I think, what we needed to get the fire back. There is no question – we are going to go to work on Monday better as a result of these three days.

Top 3 Points Made

Based on the video transcript, the top three points made are:

1. Impactful Learning and Parallels to Leadership: The speaker expresses how the Gold Medal Experience with Glassdoor has been eye-opening and impactful, particularly in drawing connections between elite athleticism, Olympic mindset, and everyday leadership at Glassdoor. They highlight the valuable lessons and insights gained from this experience.

2. Teamwork and Learning from Paralympians: A significant aspect of the experience was the emphasis on the importance of trust and synchronization within a team, as illustrated by the rowing experience. Additionally, the speaker notes the profound impact of hearing from Paralympians, which provided inspiration and lessons in focus, teamwork, resourcefulness, and finding creative solutions.

3. Applying Athlete Mindset to Business Practice: The speaker discusses the intent to implement a more structured approach to planning, briefing, debriefing, and learning in their work environment, inspired by the practices observed in athletes and sport psychologists. This approach, along with the stronger bonds formed among team members and the adoption of an athlete-like language in debriefs, is expected to lead to significant improvements in team performance. The leadership experience is praised for being personalized and directly relevant to their organizational needs, with a focus on making the team stronger, better, and more unified.