Brian Cloyd Vice President of Global Community Relations

Transcription

1 Brian Cloyd Vice President of Global Community Relations Brian Cloyd is vice president of global community relations for, the global leader in the office furniture industry. This role, which Mr. Cloyd assumed in September 2006, is an expansion of his previous position as director of corporate and community relations for Steelcase North America. He is responsible for coordinating Steelcase efforts in the areas of diversity, government relations and public policy, corporate relations and community giving and volunteer programs. He also works with the environmental team to ensure that Steelcase s sustainability strategies are included in the broader point of view. Mr. Cloyd became director of corporate and community relations in November In that role, he was responsible for all community and corporate relations at the local, state and federal levels. He joined Steelcase in 1978 as an employment representative. Since then, he s held various positions in employment and human resources, including employment supervisor (1980 to 1984), employee relations manager (1984 to 1986) and manager, human resources, planning and assessment (1986 to 1994). In 1994, Mr. Cloyd was promoted to director, human resources, for Stow Davis Furniture, a position he held until From 1996 to 1998, he was director, human resources, for the Steelcase Design Partnership, and from 1998 to 2000, he was director, diversity and staffing services. From 2000 to 2002, he served as director, North America human resources, responsible for all human resources practices and process for Steelcase North America locations. Before joining Steelcase, Mr. Cloyd worked for the City of Grand Rapids as a supervisor. His primary objective was job training for economically disadvantaged people. Mr. Cloyd serves on the boards of directors for the West Michigan Center for Arts & Technology, Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, the Student Advancement Foundation, and the Workforce Development Council. He serves on the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce Board as vice chair for diversity and as a member of the diversity advisory committee and the regional issues committee. Mr. Cloyd is a member of the board of trustees for Northern Michigan University and the advisory council for Grand Valley State University College of Business. Additionally, he is co-chair of the Education Reform Initiative and a member of Michigan Business Leaders for Excellence in Education. Born March 17, 1951, in St. Louis, Mo., he earned a bachelor s degree in history from the University of Detroit in In 1976, he received his MA from the University of Detroit in public administration. Q&A with Brian Cloyd What are some steps that you took to get to the position that you are in now? When I was in college I was thinking about going to law school after I graduated. I had taken a couple of courses and decided that I did not want to and that was probably the smartest decision I made. I went to graduate school and got a master s in public administration, and at the time, I wanted to get into city government, city management, and actually did that for a couple of years, and realized that wasn t what I wanted to do either Vault, Inc.

2 I was offered a job by Steelcase in the human resources department. I spent about 25 years in human resources, which was a great experience. I did everything that you could imagine, every discipline in human resources from specialist to generalist and various areas, and had a very good career. Interestingly, I never used my master s degree in public administration; it was actually something that got me in the door. What I did use was the minor in organizational and human behavior, and I spent eight years in training development, succession planning, [and] human resources planning. I was HR director for a couple of divisions at Steelcase: I was a corporate HR director for staffing and diversity; I headed up the human resources function for our North American division, [and] then got a little international experience. That was my last assignment before my current one, and during the time that I was head of HR for our North American division, we were going through a recession. For the office furniture business it was like a depression the entire industry went through the largest economic downturn in the history of office furniture. I was the head of HR, so I had the dubious responsibility of creating the process that we used for doing layoffs in manufacturing and downsizing in salaried positions. During that time, we were compressing all over the organization. So for the last year when I was in the assignment, I also took over responsibility for part of our international division. I was responsible for Asia Pacific and South America, but during that time, we retracted our workforce by about 45 percent. Our competitors were going through a similar thing. During that time I also had corporate responsibility for diversity. For most of the time that I was with Steelcase, and it increased as I got more involved in the company, I was [always] involved in community organizations, whether it was [the] United Way, or I chaired the local community foundation for a couple of years and was on that board for eight or 10 years, and always managed to get involved in community organizations, so I was well known in the community. The CEO and VP came to me and said, Steelcase has always had a good relationship in the community and has always been very involved. Since we ve gone through this downsizing, we ve had less involvement in the community and we want to get back to work, so we d like you to take this assignment to be director of corporate community relations. To be honest, I was not ready to leave HR, but I also knew that it was important for the company what happens externally is just as important as what happens internally. Because of my knowledge and involvement in the community, I knew I could hit the ground running. So I agreed to do that. And kind of a side note, after I had pulled together a strategy and started getting involved more, I had a meeting with them and I said that morale was pretty low inside the company, but in our community, it was even lower, so we had a lot of work to do. We spent a lot of time on how to rebuild the confidence of the community. And the focus was primarily in the Grand Rapids community, although I had responsibility a little broader than that. After three years, the company recovered, we got back into profitability, [and] we were doing some pretty exciting things in the community. Part of my responsibility is in local government relations, and I was asked to take on the expanded role of global corporate community relations. Steelcase being a global company, we probably have about half of [our] total employees outside the United States, so we have a couple pockets in Europe and Asia where we have significant operations, and we needed to be looking at what was going on outside the country. So, after longer than I dare to count after college, I find myself in a job that involves representing the corporation. Part of what I do is representing the corporation, either the CEO or the organization as a whole and then I m also responsible for government relations-local through federal and even international public policy. So after many years, I find myself in this position where I m actually using my degree in public administration, because about a third of my work now is in public relations and public policy. What are some things that you learned on the job and not in the classroom? I would say that 90 percent of your knowledge base comes [from] the job. Some of it is an accumulation over time. You learn what works in the organization that you re in. In graduate school you learn the theoretical things, or in the case of law school, you learn how to be resourceful. On the job, you learn application and the application in some respects is more important than the theoretical base. I don t want to say [the] theoretical base is not important. Learning how to think, how to process infor- Visit the Vault Diversity Channel for diversity program profiles of 100s of top employers, insider advice from executives about workplace diversity and more. Go to 53

3 mation, how to be resourceful to find information, is really critical. If you don t have that when you come into the job then you re not going to be successful. But the application is far more important because you have to apply what works in the organization. Especially in business, everything is focused on the needs of the customer, and that drives everything, whether you re in human resources or you re in sales or engineering. So understanding that customer and applying it to what you do on a day-to-day basis so you satisfy those people and make money for the company is what it s all about. Do you think there is a glass ceiling in your industry? If so, how can minorities avoid hitting that glass ceiling? There s a glass ceiling not just in my industry, but in industry in general. It s part of the cultural makeup of our country and our society. How do you avoid that? The first thing is understanding the rules of the game, and that s often very difficult, especially for people of color, because the rules of the game are not written down; there s no book that says these are the things you should do, these are the things that you shouldn t do. Sometimes the majority community has a better understanding and the reason is because they ve grown up in a culture that doesn t have the same level of obstacle that it does for people of color. It does tend to be more intuitive for someone in the majority than it does in the minority. I ll give you an example. When I first started working at Steelcase, we were a formal company. The expectation was that you wore a suit every day, especially if you worked in [a] salaried position. I was 26 and I had a suit that I thought was really nice and I wore it to work one day, and the suit was a three-piece suit; you know, back in the 1970s, [with] wide lapels, but it was also plaid. Very plaid. I got the suit and thought it looked great and when I walked into work, a friend of mine African-American, had been with the company for several years pulled me aside and said, I heard you coming from the time you got out of the car. And she laughed about it and then we talked. I think the issue is that that s one of the rules of the game, and you have to understand what the rules are. You have to understand in this case that while there is a dress code that you wore a suit, there are certain types of suits that work and certain types of suits that don t work. You can t get too hung up about style and what you like versus what works and what doesn t work. I call it behavior modification. You don t have to give up your values there are certain values that are critical to your being, and those are things you don t want to give up but you don t want to get too much into, something of value when, for example, it comes to style, because that s not important in the larger scheme of things. If you think about style as an example, there are other people that have styles that are pretty bizarre too. I used to think that one of the complicating things of casual dress is that it throws everybody in a tizzy because it was much easier when you knew to wear a dark suit and a white shirt and made everything pretty uniform. When you went to casual dress, people didn t know what to do, and it showed. People would come in wearing different styles and you could really see people s personalities, and it took awhile before that leveled out, before there became a corporate style for casual dress. But people make assessments of other people based on some strange things style, accents, what they like to eat. So for people of color, it s just an issue of being aware of the environment that you re in. Again, I m not saying you should change or reject the idea of the melting pot, or that you should assimilate and be like everybody else, but you should be able to pick and choose how you re going to orient yourself to the organization. Those are the superficial pieces of it, but then you look at skills and behaviors and those types of things. With that, there are two pieces that are very important. One is technical competency. The balancing part is how you relate to other people, interpersonal skills. Those two things absolutely have to be in balance; you can t be over one and under the other. In other words, you can t be someone who has a high technical skill and has very low interpersonal skills. The technical is your competency, how well you do the job; if you re an accountant, you have all the skills for the job. Interpersonal skills have to do with how you relate to people, how you communicate, how you treat people and so on. You could be a really nice person and get along with everyone, but [if] you have no technical competency, that doesn t work either. It s having both of those things in balance Vault, Inc.

4 What is the most rewarding aspect of your career? What would you most like to change? Since I ve been at the same company for all of my business career, one of the most rewarding aspects is that I have worked through the organization consistently not necessarily advancing, but moving through the organization and getting different experiences. If I were to count up all of the different assignments that I had or job titles that I had and divided it by the number of years I ve been here, I would probably say that I m about three years in each assignment on average. That s afforded me a broad knowledge of the organization and the people that are in the organization. It s allowed me to have a very solid reputation. In terms of something I ve done in the organization, I ve always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit and actually thought at one time of leaving the company and starting an office furniture dealership. I didn t do it for a number of reasons, but I always had this entrepreneurial feel. A couple years ago, when I first took this assignment in corporate relations, I had an opportunity to do something very similar to that. I found an organization in Pittsburgh run by Bill Strickland, a nonprofit organization that he s been doing for about 30 years that focuses on helping at-risk kids stay in school, graduate, go to college, and helping underemployed and unemployed adults find jobs that are well paying. When I came into this, one of my first tasks was that we wanted to replicate that here in Grand Rapids. So I partnered with a retired Steelcase employee and we created this nonprofit organization and it was like starting a business. We started from scratch, we had to build a business plan, we had to raise money, we had to establish the programs, so on and so forth. A year and a half later, we have a successful operation going that s gotten a lot of visibility, a lot of credibility in the community, and it s starting to get the same national attention that Bill Strickland s organization is getting. So that was pretty fulfilling. What impact has your career had on your personal and family life? Do you have any special techniques, methods and philosophies that help you maintain a work/life balance and be a successful professional? I ve been married for 34 years and my wife is an attorney so we have pretty hectic lives. Before kids was different, obviously, than during kids and very different from after kids. Before kids, we worked very hard and I would say that we played pretty hard, too. I had male buddies that I would go hunting and fishing [with], and then we had kids, and I simply walked away from that. It was more important that I spend time with my kids. So my wife and I continued to work very hard, very long hours, but we talked a couple of times a day to find out who s taking the kids today, who s doing what, what s on your schedule. We have two sons, and we put both of them in day care, but we went to every single event. More times than not, both of us were there. I remember one time, being completely frustrated that I might miss a soccer game because I was in Colorado, and the meeting ended early, I got on the first plane I could, so I made sure I got back. Now the kids one just finished college, the other one is finishing college, so our lives are different yet again, but we still function the same way. We both have periods of time where we re working very hard, but we always stay in touch, we always make sure that we know what the other is doing. With us, family comes first. You have to work, but when you re at home, you re at home. Friends and that type of thing are secondary. That s how we do it. How are you able to set aside time to do that? I take my BlackBerry on vacation, I take my computer, but one time a year, I don t. One time a year, we go to the Caribbean and my excuse is that you can t get it outside the country and even if I could, I m not going to do that. But other than that a BlackBerry is a convenience. If I m on vacation, I ll get up in the morning and I ll spend a couple of hours on the computer and then I ll shut it down, and I feel much better that I don t have something hanging over me that has to be done, and I can enjoy the rest of the day. I mean, the reality of life is that, if you re in a profession, it s a 24/7 type of profession, and you have to work hard at balancing your time. It doesn t have to be a negative if you do work on a Sunday. There will be times when I m watching football and working on the computer, and other times where I ll say, I m done and shut it all off. A lot of it has to do with understanding what your life is. It s kind of like The Godfather. There s a scene where one of them says, This is the life we chose, and the reality is that this is the life you chose. Visit the Vault Diversity Channel for diversity program profiles of 100s of top employers, insider advice from executives about workplace diversity and more. Go to 55

5 Because of the job I have now, it requires a lot of evenings out because there are a lot of charitable organizations that have events. So I might have four days a week that I have to go to an evening event, and my wife will come with me when she can. When we both end up home, we ll spend a little time talking. You find ways to escape from it all periodically. Back when we were raising our kids, there were a lot of women that were saying that they didn t want to give up their career, so child care really grew, and there are people that had good experiences with that and who had bad experiences. We had generally good experiences, and then the current generation came along and there s been a lot of discussion about whether you should continue your career, or stay at home and be a full-time mom and the impact on the kids. It really comes down to that everyone has a choice. What makes it easier, I think, for the mother because the burden is still on the mother, regardless of what we say is the extent to which the father can say, I have a stake in this too, and I m going to play my part. That makes a world of difference. I look at my kids and both of them graduated from college. We had a running joke when they were little and we still do it even now, that if something happened that involved their lives, I would say to one or the other, So is this one of those things that in 10 years you re going to be talking about [with] your psychologist, you know, this is why I had a bad childhood? We always made light of it, so it works out. Who is/was the most inspiring person to you in your career path? There s probably more than one person and for the most part, they re women. I would say that I had a couple of really good bosses that were men, but the people who really influenced me the most not just in terms of work first and foremost was my mother-in-law, who I was really close to, and she died earlier than she should have. She was a community activist and a politician. She passed away 25 years ago and there are people in our town who still remember her, and once every couple of months I ll get in a discussion with someone who will start talking about her and the impact she had on them. She was just one of those people who was very straightforward, very direct, and you never had to guess what was on her mind because she told you, whether you liked it or didn t like it. She had a tremendous impact. The second person was my wife. We dated all through college; we re both like-minded in terms of what [is] important to us, what [is] important to our families. And then even further back than that my great aunt was really an interesting woman. She was a teacher her entire adult life and she retired when she was about 75 or 80; she just would not stop working. She had a master s degree, she was a dissertation away from a PhD, from Wayne State University in Detroit, and that would have been about 1930-ish, and African- American. She was just an incredible woman. So the theme is that I like strong women. What advice do you have for a young person considering a career within your company/industry? For young people going into this industry, make sure that you take advantage of every opportunity that you can, whether it s learning in a formal sense or learning in an informal sense. Make sure you understand the balance between technical proficiency and interpersonal proficiency, and make sure that you continue to learn. The business world is now different than it was when I first started, and even before that, change comes every single day and you have to be prepared. You should embrace change, How can I be different, how can I continually improve myself? I m kind of like a Maslow follower, that you should always be looking to self-actualize, knowing that it s a never-ending quest. You need to do that because you re only as good as the last good thing you did. I think that particularly for people of color and this should not necessarily be a negative you re never going to be as good as you need to be, and by that I mean that the world is not fair, and it s probably not going to be fair for awhile. Once you understand that, then you know that you always have to be on top of your game; you can t come in and coast. You can t come in and say, OK, I ve made it I m a vice president, so now I can sit back and relax. It doesn t work that way. You have to prove yourself every single day Vault, Inc.

6 If you were not in your current position, what would your dream career be? The interesting thing about life now is that people live longer and they can work longer. I have to believe that I m in much better shape at my age than my parents were when they were my age, which means that people are living longer and they re sharp and alert longer than the previous generation. I anticipate retiring sometime in the near future, but retirement for me is not that you go sit on a rock and look out into space. The dream job for me is doing something that I could take advantage of the knowledge and the skills that I ve accumulated over the time that I ve been formally employed. I have a strong passion for education at all levels. I would probably do something where I could consult or be in a nonprofit organization where I could give back to the younger generation to make sure that they had more advantages than when I was coming up. I think that should be the dream of everyone. When you re parents, you want your kids to have more than you had. We talk periodically to our kids about accumulating wealth and passing it on to your heirs. Wealth can be monetary, but it also can be intellectual and emotional. It s important that you give back to people. My recreational passion is water, and I love everything that has to do with water, whether it s on top or underneath. I could conceivably see myself having a dive shop and taking people out scuba diving. Visit the Vault Diversity Channel for diversity program profiles of 100s of top employers, insider advice from executives about workplace diversity and more. Go to 57