Communication Is So Underestimated | Sophia Okeke

<p>Sophia Okeke is Executive Vice President and Chief People &amp; Culture Officer at The Center for Family Support. She worked in news before moving into HR, then spent seven years building HR for country offices in Sub-Saharan Africa, including a first town hall in Togo before she could speak French. She and Maddie talk about why communication is the skill leaders underestimate, how she measures whether a training program worked, and what she&#39;s focused on now: hiring for hard-to-fill care roles and using technology so her team can spend more time with managers and staff. She also talks about her first book, God, Me, and Coffee, and how it started with a devotional she wrote for her church.</p><p><strong>Takeaways</strong></p><ul><li>Communication is probably the most underestimated skill a leader has. Sophia writes her emails as herself first, then uses AI to tighten them up.</li><li>Before you build a training program, figure out the problem it&#39;s meant to solve and look at the data. Then you can measure it two ways: how it changed the person, and how it impacted the organization.</li><li>Bring the people you&#39;re training into the design, and ask peers in your HR network what&#39;s worked for them. You don&#39;t have to start from scratch.</li><li>For hard-to-fill roles, don&#39;t rely on job boards alone. Build connections in the communities your candidates come from. For Sophia&#39;s care roles, that&#39;s hospitals, churches, and community centers.</li><li>Keep performance reviews simple. In Sophia&#39;s words, &quot;people like easy,&quot; especially managers with a lot of direct reports.</li><li>Use technology to take paperwork off HR&#39;s plate, so the team has time to go out, meet managers, and sit with staff.</li></ul><p>Sophia&#39;s book, God, Me, and Coffee: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRWW5FYX">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRWW5FYX</a></p><p>Connect with Sophia on LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophia-okeke-a0b0b211">https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophia-okeke-a0b0b211</a></p>