Top Firms By Job Satisfaction: What Sets Weaver Apart with Demetrice Branch and Linc Ashby

Before we jump into the episode, I want to give a special thank you to this week's sponsor, Live Oak Bank. Live Oak Bank truly understands the unique needs of your accounting and tax business and specializes in providing customized financial solutions to support firms like yours. At Live Oak, they grow with your business and want to be your firm's financial partner. Whether you are buying, building, or simply looking to grow your accounting and tax firm, they will design a loan package that supports your business goals. Their accounting and tax lending team offers numerous financing options nationwide. Ready to achieve your business goals? Visit liveoak.bank.com today to connect with a member of their team, member FDIC. And now back to the episode. Hello and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I am joined today by two guests, both from Weaver. We have Demetrius Branch, the Chief People Officer, and Link Ashby, the Chief Talent Officer of Weaver. Welcome to the pod. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Yeah, my pleasure. So what kind of brought this about, every year at Big Four Transparency, we publish, the best of the best awards for the firms where employees are self-reporting the highest levels of job satisfaction on the data that we collect on Big Four Transparency. And Weaver this year ranked number three overall in all of public accounting with a score well above the kind of average of other public accounting firms when it comes to employee job satisfaction. So one of the things today is to dig into what you all are doing differently, what kind of leads to this and, you know, a little bit of your personal stories as well. So maybe to start off, Link, you have a very interesting background. So you were actually a pastor before being the Chief Talent Officer at Weaver. How did that come to be? Well, it wasn't a transition from pastor to Chief Talent Officer. I took on the Chief Talent Officer role, I guess, Demetrius was at about three years ago. Demetrius was my boss when I came to Weaver and was actually the first person that I interviewed. The rest of the story is I was in the middle of COVID. I had been a pastor in a couple of different churches and also worked in a couple of private schools. I coached a lot of sports, was a chaplain, taught world religions. And I had been in a church that I had helped start for about five years. And we're all questioning everything for different reasons in the middle of COVID, right? And there's an elder at our church who's a really good friend. I've known her for 20 years. She is a professionally certified executive coach with the International Coaching Federation, which is kind of the international gold standard in that space. And that's what I currently am, but was not five years ago. But she had been telling me she thought I would really enjoy it. She was actually the director of coach training at Rice Universities within their business schools, a certificate program. So I kind of became curious, again, because of the impact of COVID, of considering a pivot. So I joined one of their Zoom virtual cohorts. Along with that, I had known for many years a couple of partners at Weaver. We live in the same part of town in Houston, coached our kids in youth sports. Our kids went to the same public schools and discovered that they were actually curious about hiring an internal executive coach to do leadership coaching within the firm, whereas most executive coaches are external to the corporations, companies, firms that they work with. And I've just found this to be really true over the five years I've been at Weaver, and I think it's one of the things that sets us apart. There's just a lot of creative, innovative thinking that begins at the top, and it really does truly trickle down into all the different offices and places in our firm. So yeah, I interviewed with Demetrius, and then I also interviewed with some of the other firm leaders. I think they created kind of a title for me. My first title was Director of People Engagement, which is probably a better title than even Chief Talent Officer in terms of my day-to-day responsibilities. I have the privilege of just engaging with our people, especially our leaders, connecting with them, giving them a safe relationship to talk about things that are of concern, challenges, things that are stressing them out, could be at home, could be at work. It's confidential. And then we may or may not enter into an official coaching engagement or relationship. But over five years' time, I've just gotten to know a lot of our people really well. And Demetrius and the firm took a chance on me, and I'm very grateful for it. And then about three years ago, Demetrius was the Director of HR, and she still oversees all of our main HR functions, but they sort of multiplied her to Chief Talent Officer. But in terms of what we do on our day-to-day, she's the HR queen. She's been at Weaver for 20 years. So I'll stop talking. I used to be a preacher. I can be long-winded, but that's the genesis of the position. That's cool. I don't think that's a position that's super common in firms. I mean, there's often a talent officer, but it's probably more based around technical training and things like that. So Demetrius, maybe more for you, what was it internally that you and the rest of the team identified as a need to bring in that level of executive coaching and identify the need for that? And what are some of the signals for firm operators listening that maybe it's time that they consider that? Yeah. We have been, for a few years, talking to other firms and talking about mentorship and coaching and how can we have a dedicated team to just coaching. And so I think when Link had that availability, it was a no-brainer and it was actually no pressure. The CEO sent his resume over and was like, hey, you don't have to hire, but just tell me what you think. And so we, you know, talking to other professionals, you really need to have, you know, to be coaching your people and bringing, helping them get to the next level. And we early on identified that coaching was not for people that were, you know, like struggling. It was for, you know, our people that are high performers that are moving to the next level that need, you know, to find out and maneuver, you know, their way into their next path. So it kind of just, you know, happened, you know, and then it's been really organic with Link. He's a easy person to get along with. The voice captivates you right off the bat. Coaching is just a great element for him and, you know, he really commits to visiting all of our offices, talking to our people, even if it's just, you know, off and not a scheduled meeting. They really enjoy that and you probably hear his name just as much as any other leader that helps motivate our people. That's really cool. And the commitment to coaching and mentorship within Weaver seems to go far beyond just sort of the executive level. It's my understanding. I think everyone is matched with a coach. Is that it internally? Not everyone. We are growing pretty fast. We hope to one day have enough coaches. Our CEO has even shared this on one of our annual town halls that we want to have trained and equipped enough internal coaches where anyone at the firm, if they want to start an official coaching engagement with one of our coaches, they're called Weaver LEAD coaches. So the LEAD is an acronym for leaning in with curiosity, engaging with a growth mindset, adapting to constant change and developing yourself for the sake of the others that you're leading. We have 50 Weaver LEAD coaches. I log a lot more hours doing the actual coaching than they do. Demetrius is one of our coaches, our CEO, our national office leaders, our national practice leaders, partners in charge of various industry groups and offices. We have a lot of very high level leaders that serve in this capacity and it's a really cool way for them to give back to the firm. Where you are able to opt in and draft a coach is when you're promoted to manager, which we launch every fall at our Weaver LIFT event and managers, senior managers, directors, partners, even those that are admitted to the firm at that level, have the opportunity to draft and work for about nine months with one of our trained coaches. Sessions are usually monthly or bi-monthly and it just gives them someone that, again, we have a coaching agreement that protects the confidentiality of the relationship. If you're a tax manager, you're not going to be coached by someone in tax. You're going to draft the coach cross service line, either audit, advisory or operations. So there's no conflict of interest in terms of reporting structure. But we do have, I mean, each summer we have cohorts, you get 70 hours worth of coach training and we're hoping to just increase. We have 18 in this summer's cohort, so we'll go from 50 to 68 this summer. Yeah. So that's definitely a major commitment to the coaching aspect. So from your perspective, how has that morphed the firm? What is it that is kind of the main topic of the coaching? It sounds like a lot of it is around mindset and openness to learning. Is that correct? Especially since it's across service lines, right? So if you won't have someone in your own service line coaching you, so it's obviously not technical. Yeah. And this is the beauty of it, most coaching is very misunderstood in the marketplace. And Demetrius, I want to be real short and brief in my answer here, and I'd love for you to share from your own experience. You were one of our first coaches to be trained. How has it also helped you as a leader? So coaching, Dominic, is not telling people what to do, but that's most people's assumption. It's actually not giving advice. So when you pair someone in tax with someone in audit, it's actually helpful because that audit coach is not going to be as tempted to tell the tax senior manager what to do. Of course, there is a lot of overlap, but it's more partnering in a caring, supportive relationship with someone to the end that we're focused on their future and what they want to accomplish, but I'm not acting as a mentor. I'm not telling them what I did to get me where I am because they aren't me. They are them, and I'm going to respect them for who they are. They bring things they're excited about, challenged by, into the session. And then the coach is there to ask good questions, actively listen without thinking about what they're going to say, but just to understand. So active listening, asking good questions, and just not talking that much so that the person you're coaching arrives at what they want to do about what they wanted to talk about. So Demetrius, that was longer, of course, than I always think it was. I still have to work as a coach on listening more than I talk. It will forever be a skill that I'm learning. So, but Demetrius, if you'd share from your own experience. Yeah. One of the things that's hard for me, because, you know, sitting in HR, people come to you all the time for advice, so, you know, that's just a skill set that I have that I love to talk. But coaching is not, like Link said, it's not about giving the answer. It's about creating a space where people can work it out themselves. And so a majority of us have gone through some element of coaching. A lot of our senior managers and managers have gone through coaching. So now our team members, you'll hear a lot of partners say, our teams know now when we put the coaching hat on. It happened just last week in a team message, you know, a colleague texted me a message saying, hey, this is what, you know, so-and-so had this question and, you know, what do you want me to say? I said, what do you want to say? And so just, you know, asking them a question back and then they come back in a different mindset of working that out on their own. And I think that was the biggest thing is holding our people accountable and letting them know that we trust them, that they're making the right decision. And we're here to support them and brainstorm with that. So it's been a real game changer for us as leaders, to be honest with you. We love it because, you know, we've been having to come up with the answers for our teams for so long. And they really have the answer. We have a lot of talented individuals here at the firm. If they weren't, they wouldn't be here. So that's kind of. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's really interesting. Because like, you know, in my experience, I feel like a lot of HR policy or attempts at instilling culture have been very prescriptive, whereas this feels very much the opposite of that. And, you know, I could see how a background as a pastor would actually make sense in this environment where it's where it's a lot about, it seems like psychological safety and right leading people to the right answers and things like that versus, again, here's the policy we would like you to adhere to, which I find very interesting and unique. I think that's cool. And it's easy to lose sight of this type of thing, I think, especially in environments like in public accounting in most places where it's kind of go, go, go. It's this performance culture. And so taking a step back to be very intentional about the type of environment you're creating, I think is very interesting, for sure. Absolutely. On Thursday, I'm leading a session, it's a webinar, Audit and Actions. It's an audit conference. And my topic is ask and listen in a culture of do and tell. Yeah, that's a great summary of what I was describing. Yeah, it's very much doing and telling. And listen, a lot of our work we have to do, we have to tell others what to do and how to do it. We're not, through our coaching program, trying to emphasize coaching so much that managers don't manage. You have to manage projects, you have to lead people. But it's a huge added benefit to develop the skill of asking good, clear, open-ended questions. And then embracing the silence that sometimes follows when you ask a good one, and not rescuing the team member who just wants you to tell them what to do. But instead, give them the space to kind of figure out what they want to do and share that with you. And then you just can partner with them to hold them accountable to them doing that. It's really a good way to teach teams how to fish and not just giving them the fish. But it does get uncomfortable at times to ask a good question and wait. Wait with a mindset that they can experience. So we talk about it in the coaching space, having a coaching mindset, the acronym CON, like you're a con artist, C is for curious, O is for open, and N is for non-judgmental. We train our coaches to provide a curious, open, non-judgmental space for the coaches that you're coaching. You mentioned psychological safety, the highest level of it, challenger safety, this is based on Timothy Clark's book on psychological safety. He calls the creative innovation threshold, it's challenger level safety where everyone on a team, there's a culture of rewarded vulnerability. If you're a brand new associate and I'm a seasoned partner, but you've got a way to do something better, then it behooves the practice for you to feel the freedom to question the status quo. Why are we doing it this same way all the time? Here's a new way to do it. But they're not going to feel that freedom if the leader has not created psychological safety. Yeah. Yeah. So how does that all get balanced against some of the typical downfalls of the industry, I think, where, oh, the budget on this file is only so much, just look at last year's working papers because I can't have that much of my time hit this mandate, right? I think that sometimes stands in the way or is a little bit at odds with taking that approach. So how do you manage that difference and find that balance and even instill this in the first place? Because, I mean, Weaver has a long history, likely before this coaching initiative was implemented. So how do you kind of reconcile those two? The majors, I'll defer to you because you have so many years experience at the firm. How would you process this in light of your 20 years at Weaver? I think it's at the heart of who Weaver is. You know, when you talk about, you know, our core value about helping each other succeed at work and in life, we really care. So if it's taken 10 minutes to help, you know, a senior lead helping an associate figure out this complex, you know, regulation, they're doing that to help them, you know, get to the next level so that they can move further in their career. Like we really care about each other being successful in our careers. Or if it's a new mom or a new dad coming back and trying to figure out how to transition, you know, from being, you know, work-life balance to work-life integration, we're here to support them in that journey too. We have resources, you know, or we're being vulnerable and transparent. There are a lot of conversations that go on, well, this is, you know, how I did it. Don't feel guilty that you've got to restructure your day and you're possibly leaving the office at 430 to pick your kids up by six, you know, with all the traffic and everything. Helping them see that we as leaders, we're raising families too, and we have the same things that they're, we're dealing with the same types of issues that they're trying to deal with. But we've learned how to maneuver those and not feel the guilt. So all of it is about being transparent. And that's what you see from the CEO to the COO down to all of our leaders. They're very transparent in how they get the things done that they need to get done. And then we care. We, you know, you talk about, you know, asking the right question, listening to our people, and then acting on that. We are going on this, you know, roadshow with our COO to all of our office locations to ask, like, how, since we've done all of these changes within the firm, how is that affecting you? What are some of the changes you want to see in the firm? He pinged me December 17th saying, Hey, you want to go to, you know, can you come to Houston? Can we do this listening session? And we've done three of them so far. And he's, we already have a good list of things that we need to act on. And he's holding me accountable and other leaders like, Hey, our employees said this. And I, by August, we have a first iteration of this change. And I know some of it may be a longer roadway, you know, but I want our people to see that we care and that we're making this change. So all of that plays into it, really from the top. I mean, yeah. I mean, how many, how many firms have a COO leading an effort with the chief people officer to visit offices for listening sessions on how everybody's really, so you just, you find in this space of like, well, what we're talking about is culture and how do you really transform a culture? Well, it's really tricky and it's hard to measure. I mentioned Timothy Clark, the psychological safety book that he's a social psychologist. He defines culture as the way we interact, the way we interact. So at Weaver, I feel like what our leadership and more and more of the whole firm is recognizing our culture is the sum of every interaction that is happening all the time between everybody. And if that's true, creating a culture that emphasizes coaching and the particular competencies of asking good questions and listening to understand and not respond, holding space for silence. Do these things take time? They do on the front end. And then you actually become more efficient and effective over time, but it comes later. So you really have to have the long game in mind. I think the persistence of openness to feedback and seeking it so consistently and things like that are probably a very important factor here because I've seen it done at places where it's like, it's that time of year we have our one feedback session and it ends up becoming very kind of hostile and charged because people don't feel like we're all on the same side and none of this is going to be actioned anyways. Whereas when you're actively seeking it out that much, maybe the first time you do it, it's kind of charged because people have all these frustrations to get off their chest. But then if you come back to me a week later and I've already vented everything I have to vent, then it's kind of probably just like, oh, okay, like now we're probably having a more real conversation, right? And those things, they still happen. I mean, you get, Demetrius, I'm thinking about the round table a few years ago that got all kinds of sideways, but we do something about it. So what were some of the like major changes that have happened within the organization as a result of these listening sessions that, you know, maybe you're very proud of? Some of the things that haven't come, you know, we haven't developed yet, but in real time, we had a firm town hall, like John had his town hall. They invited me and the COO was there and we talked about, we shared with the firm like what we've heard to date. And one of the big things was around providing meals. And we had put some structure around meals where we wanted our leaders to have more intentional time. So if you wanted to have lunch or order in dinner, like you would do it as a team and you would take your team out and have time to like have these honest conversations. And so that just kind of was snowballing. And right before that meeting, you know, we had some other meetings and he'd made a decision like, okay, we're going to go back to bring in some meals into the office. And so we were able to share that with the teams and, you know, they think I've done something. I didn't do anything. That's your leadership, you know, saying, yeah, we're bringing the meals back. And so I don't take credit for it. And I say, no, that's all your COO doing that. That's David. He cares. He's heard your voice and he wants to, you know, react to that change in real time. Some of the other things that we, you know, as we grow so fast and things are happening, we have lost them. You know, we've got some really dynamic leaders and maybe, you know, tax is doing one thing. Our advisory team's over here. Here's our audit team. How can we have this consistent approach to everything that's coming out from our operations teams? So employees know, like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't you don't feel like you're a tax associate. You feel like you're just an employee of Weaver. So that's some of the longer roadmaps that, you know, things that we're working on to make sure employees feel that, you know, they know who Weaver is when they're joining. A lot of them, they have really great feedback and they feel like they know. But there's always there's this element of we can be better. And so we're just fine tuning things that may have been, you know, some pain points with growth. That's cool. It just makes me think of when I was at Deloitte, the meal logistics and things like it sounds not that big, but like for some people that matters hugely. Like I remember one busy season I was working in tax and we'd always had a Starbucks order every day at 2 p.m. during the really busy times at tax. And they got rid of it at one point and like it was darn near like firm wide revolt over it. And it's like sometimes it is the little things that like really make people feel valued. And then the change to it can just feel almost insulting. So it's good to have folks listening to that level to what a lot of CEOs or CEOs would probably hear and be like, like, what? Why is this the issue? But sometimes that can really matter. Yeah, the meals one is an interesting example, because. What I think what our CEO was able to powerfully communicate was we don't mind providing meals if you eat together. Yeah, but what we're concerned about is coming in, getting your meal and like leaving and going to work from home or isolating yourself in your office, which sometimes that needs to happen. But no problem resourcing connection. Yeah. So that was kind of the pivot like they're returning. And it's happened like I do visit a lot of our offices. It's been during busy season. That's what I like to go because people are amped up and stressed. And that's when good coaching can happen. And from what I've experienced when I've been in offices and they've had meals, people aren't, you know, grabbing food and going to eat by themselves. They're they're getting food and they're sitting down. They're breaking bread with each other and supporting each other as they do the work. I think another really cool example that the majors and I both got to experience together the under our CEO to brag more about him, David Rook. We over the last three years, he has worked tirelessly to build five offices in India. So we have five offices now in India. And he is very committed to duplicating everything in the U.S. that we do culturally in India because they are there. There are people that they are like resources. He sees that, which is so. And so we were at the matrix and I was a long flight. But what was so amazing was a lot of public accounting firms are are starting these offices and in India. And I'm in a room with with thirty five managers where we're duplicating our Weaver lift leadership training event for managers, senior managers and directors. We're onboarding them all into the coaching program. And I have our CEO, our CEO, our CPO, Demetrius, our national office leader for tax. We have the highest level leaders in the firm, and they're all sitting at roundtables with six people in our India offices. They're not coming for photo ops. Yeah, they are coming to get to know our people and create their what we're doing here. And to me, that's a beautiful cultural sign of why we do what we do. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's very much the right approach that a lot of firms get wrong. And I've I've heard from people using sort of some of these outsourcing agencies where there someone had told me they were in in India for a wedding and they're like, oh, I'm going to pop by my my offices. And they were kind of appalled by some of the conditions and things like that, where they were like, this is not the standard we want for people who are the employees of our firm. Right. And then they ended up adopting the actual approach that you have, where they they went down themselves to establish a presence there and do it right. Yeah, no, I think I think that's really cool. So you alluded to a conversation that happened about private equity without sort of airing your, you know, your conversations here. How has the onset of private equity in the industry changed how you need to kind of manage talent at your firm? Like, have you found that to be a change to some of what's going on internally or, you know, people starting to have conversations about equity or phantom equity or things like that? Has that been a disruptor for the talent equation within Weaver at all? I mean, it's happening now in over 50 percent of firms. So, yes, it's a disruptor. But I think where we have navigated that disruption really well is the word that Dimitris used earlier, transparency. Our CEO has been very transparent about about this. And involved all the partners and. We I mean, it's no we're remaining independent and it does. It creates talent opportunities as much as it creates talent challenges. I think what we're experiencing is those that have, you know, eight to 12 years of experience at firms that have taken P.E. deals. They're not getting much of a benefit in that, especially in terms of their future. No, I think there are good reasons that some firms or I was with 30 managing partners and CEOs of mid public accounting firms and law firms a couple of months ago to facilitate conversations on various topics. And and this was one of them. I met some managing partners where it's been a really good game changer for them. I don't we have not entertained it because. It just doesn't it doesn't fit us, but it doesn't mean it's not a good fit for everybody. And I think we are seeing a lot of young leaders in firms that have taken P.E. deals that are really attractive to an independent, still independent firm like ours. And we're and we're getting people in that eight to 12 year experiential level who will come in as directors or even in some cases come in as as partners. But the major side, I think I interrupted you. Being independent means that we can stay transparent. We don't have, you know, someone, you know, and our just our employees recognize like we're we're making the decisions based on how they feel and what they want to see in an employer. And we can drown out that outside noise. We're not tied to, you know, a big brother saying, no, you can't spend money on this initiative. We really want you to focus here. So for us, I think it's a really big differentiator. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen it very much go both ways in conversations on and off the air. I've had some conversations with CEOs of some large firms who've taken P.E. who are like, no, genuinely like it's been really good. And I've had conversations off the record as well with some folks who are like, I'm a little bit worried about maybe where this is headed. So it does feel like it's a little bit, you know, sometimes it works out really well. Other times it doesn't. But it does become what will be increasingly rare as a value proposition for the talent at the firm. Right. Which is very interesting. So P.E. or other, Demetris, just like you've been with Weaver for 20 years. How have the kind of talent challenges, I'll say, evolved maybe over the last decade? Like what are some kind of new emerging trends that you're finding HR leadership needs to be grappling with? Increasingly so in kind of today's era. You know, with A.I. and, you know, the P.E. conversation, you've got to really help your people get to work faster and work on bigger and better things. And so that's probably the biggest thing that we're focused with right now, you know, with talent. And with all of the technology, I will just tell you, you know, you interview a candidate and they tell you all of these great things that they can do and then you hire them. And with the expectation that that can get done right now with the technology, you know, you can kind of, you know. Test that out before you hire someone or ask the right questions before you hire someone to see if it is the right fit. But it's, you know, I think it's going to continue to evolve. We were just trying to fill seats maybe two years ago. And, you know, you're the talent war and we were hiring and probably overhiring. Now we that slow just a bit and we're trying to hire for a culture fit. Like we want the best person that aligns with us and our strategy. And that's going to pour into us as we pour into them. Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you both so much for taking the time to come on and share, you know, what makes you as individuals, but also the firm unique. I think the approach to coaching feedback conversations is very interesting. This is definitely like a new topic. I'm often deep in the weeds of, yeah, the compensation and how are you going to do equity, phantom equity, things like that. And it is good to sort of take a beat and, you know, take a look at some of the underlying things that make for a great culture. So I really appreciate you both coming on and sharing. And I'll make sure I link your contact information for anyone who's interested in a little bit more of a discussion with either of you. But, yeah, thank you both so much. Thank you. Yeah, please. To any listening, if you're curious about what would, you know, a coaching centric approach at your firms look like in terms of transforming culture, please reach out. I'm happy to set up a conversation, tell you more of the story, partner with you, because we really believe in this. It's had a tremendous positive impact. And so we want to see it duplicated at other firms. We still want to win number one, though, the next time you do this survey. I want to know who those other two firms are that we need to. All in a friendly competition.