About Jim Carling:
Jim serves as Vice President Human Resources for the Communications Solutions Segment, Channel Business, and Enterprise Functions at TE Connectivity and is based in the United States.
In this role, Jim is responsible for leading the development and execution of the organizations’ talent, culture, and organizational effectiveness strategies to drive high performance and business growth.
Prior to joining TE Connectivity, Jim worked in positions of increasing responsibility mainly focusing on Organizational Performance, Employee Engagement, and Strategic Talent Initiatives.
Listen to the full discussion here:
Connect with the Guest:
Jim Carling: LinkedIn
Some of the highlights from the podcast:
- Jim’s career journey at TE connectivity for 14 years
- Practical tips where HR and talent can be a maximizer of business instead of being a back end function
- Using feedback from ground up and data to bring about organizational transformation
- Addressing the confidence gap of 1000+ female leaders in his organization
- 1 thing that had the most impact on Jim’s career
Show notes:
- [1:32] What has kept you at TE Connectivity for so long and your driving force in your career?
- [2:08] Around 2008, I got the opportunity to join TE Connectivity. I had the great opportunity to join the organization at an inflection point. Like many large companies, we have a matrix organization. So navigating those connections and helping others kind of find their success is something that’s always very helpful to an organization like ours.
- [4:09] So I guess the constant increase in responsibilities and getting to do new things is what’s responsible for you staying in TE Connectivity for 14 years?
- [4:20] Absolutely. You know, I’m an individual who thrives on crazy situations and changes. We then had the crisis, a lot of the opportunities that I’ve had have been growth situations, turnarounds, different situations that took a fair amount of energy to connect with the individuals in the organization as well as the leaders to continue our growth strategy.
- [5:22] Tell us more about being an instrumental member in your team to help the business grow and your journey making this happen.
- [6:30] Every organization have their own elements, depending on where you are in your career journey and where it may feel more like support. But there’s always opportunities for us to lean in and find value and help our leaders and our organizations find success together.
- [6:52] What practical tips would you give to fellow talent leaders, HR professionals, and at the same time to companies as well in having that relationship to have this synergistic side kind of partnership, where HR and talent can be a maximizer of business, instead of being a back end function?
- [12:15] What my HR team and I were able to do is kind of summarize and shine a light on some opportunities, organizationally that would connect with our employees, as we’re continuing to kind of rebuild and drive the strategy forward with our customers.
- [13:12] Start as a business leader first and then a functional leader second.
- [16:57] How did you manage talking to 1,000 employees and how did you make sense of all the data and feedback which you collected through these conversations?
- [17:50] So for me, I had four or five questions that were very simple. And I just let the audience take it wherever they want. Every organization is different but when you know what you’re kind of going after, it can help drive the progress.
- [23:12] Tell us more about the journey of connecting with approximately 1,000 female leaders to empower them and to discuss options for recognizing and overcoming gaps in confidence and what is your role?
- [27:49] Men and women, we all have these inherent strengths. When you understand those and you’re comfortable with leaning on those, it can help to reverse some of those confidence gaps. So that’s been an amazing revelation for me and just putting two things together and with that, I continue to have those discussions with our female leaders throughout the organization and around the world.
- [30:19] Which skills as a talent leader, whether they are technical soft skills, do you believe are the most important for professionals to get into senior level leadership roles now, as well as the coming years?
- [32:25] I would say open and honest and transparent communication are always extremely beneficial, seek to understand, ask questions, embrace advice, appreciate the lessons learned from others that have walked in the same shoes before you, and understand where the organization is going.
- [35:35] What did you change in your professional life that you either started doing or stopped doing, which had the most impact in your career?
- [36:24] I think there’s a lot of value in being comfortable with who you are and what you want to do, as you go through it. So blue collar humble is something that over the last 10 or 15 years has resonated with who I want to be as a leader, with the mindset of servant leadership, and helping others is one that resonates with me. Those are a couple of things that have been more defining for me through my career, that have helped me refocus the way I help others.
Quote from the Episode:
About the Host:
The host, Shub Faujdar leads our Organizational Development business and is curating frameworks to transform your organization’s workforce by working with world-class facilitators and trainers from the Supply Chain space. As with everything in Alcott Global, our frameworks and programs are specially created to meet the needs of the industry and then further customized to the needs of each organization.
Alcott Global connects and upgrades the supply chain ecosystem by finding the right talent through executive search, developing talent through learning solutions, and meeting supply chain technology needs through a comprehensive crunch base marketplace.
The supply chain executive search has been our focus since the very beginning, offering recruitment services for top-tier supply chain roles at every level of the end-to-end supply chain: plan, source / procure, make, and deliver. Our consultants have years of experience in placing top talent, in North America, LATAM, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and APAC, and besides speed, one of our biggest strengths is our network within the supply chain industry, and we capitalize on it to find the best solutions.
Through the years, we have grown as an organization and our offerings with it. One of our initiatives, the learning solutions- training and supply chain academy, is focused on transforming leadership- self-leadership, executive presence, influence capital, and business acumen. Through Supplify, we aim to match corporations with the top technology companies to solve their supply chain and logistics challenges with a focus on innovation and digital transformation.
We are in constant touch with the leaders in supply chain, inviting them to inspire the supply chain professionals in thought-provoking podcast episodes and events, and showcasing what is possible at the yearly Leaders in Supply Chain Awards.
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