Why Community Matters With Kajabi CHRO Dena Singleton
On this episode of Redefining Work, I’m joined by Dena Singleton, chief HR officer at Kajabi. We discuss learning priorities for HR leaders, the parallels between employee and customer experience, and what connection and belonging look like in today’s workplace.
Dena is passionate about cultivating communities of creators and learners. This makes her a perfect fit for Kajabi, a platform that frees creators from the back-end work associated with building content and courses so they can focus on sharing their passion with the world.
As CHRO, Dena empowers employees to bring Kajabi’s mission to life — and she also has a direct line of sight into the content and topics most important for HR leaders today.
Listen in to hear what Dena believes HR leaders should prioritize and why driving business results requires a distinctly human approach to work.
You can also listen/share the episode directly syndicated on any of these channels: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Focus on Community, Diversity and Leadership
While the headlines about the future of work focus on technologies like artificial intelligence, Dena believes HR’s priority should be being human and bringing people together. This is especially important for remote and hybrid organizations, where tech can connect people but doesn’t necessarily build lasting community.
“How do we figure out how to build culture and community for organizations when we're not all together anymore?” Dena says, The answer lies in psychology and anthropology — studying what makes us human and how we can leverage that as leaders.
Dena encourages HR leaders to look at humanity’s differences, too. “I’d like to see a course on how do we build diversity in the workplace, and what is our understanding of what diversity is — diversity of thought, diversity of how we work together — because I think that is hypercritical,” she says.
Finally, HR leaders need to focus on growing leaders — “both in the people who are leading teams, as well as the individual contributors who are on teams,” she says. This is a timeless curriculum, but it’s immensely important to update the fundamentals of people leadership for the new world of work.
Achieve Better Business Outcomes Through Belonging
Dena sees strong parallels between supporting creators on Kajabi’s platform and supporting the company’s employees. “I want to create the best culture that we can at Kajabi because I want to create the best business that we can,” she says.
To deliver your mission and vision to your customers, you need to look within. “We live in service of our creators and our entrepreneurs,” Dena says. “And in order for us to do that, we have to have a group of employees who feel like we live in service to them as leaders and as managers.”
One of the “right things” companies can do for employees is create a work environment that feels safe and comfortable, especially for people who menstruate and give birth. “Biology happens,” Dena says. “We should be able to come to work and have these conversations freely and not feel embarrassed by them. We should have leave policies, we should have support networks.”
Normalizing potentially uncomfortable conversations is the first step toward policies that support employees during challenging times. Your workforce should feel comfortable taking personal leave, for example, without worrying about perceptions or whether they’ll be penalized. When your policies support your people, they’ll show up better when they come back.
Evolve Connections at Work
Effective workplaces are built on healthy connections, and that starts at the top. Dena’s connection with Kajabi’s CEO is based on a foundation of trust and open communication. “He gives me great feedback about things that I can do to be a better partner to him,” Dena says. “I give him great feedback about what he can do to be a better leader to us.”
Dena didn’t leave this relationship to chance. When interviewing for the CHRO role, they discussed values and how those showed up in company processes — specifically, employee surveys. After that conversation, she knew they were aligned on what mattered most to both of them.
Dena wants to see these types of trust-based connections blossom across the organization, even as shifts in remote, hybrid and in-person work arrangements complicate workplace relationships. “I'm looking forward to us figuring out, ‘How we do the next iteration of connectivity as companies?’” Dena says. “Because I still think we need to figure out how we better onboard people, how to better connect people.”
Dena is putting her trust in a different type of connection to solve this problem moving forward. “I'm looking forward to meeting with my fellow chief people officers and figuring out this hard problem of bringing people together, virtually or not virtually,” she says.
Follow Dena’s lead: Tap into your community of HR leaders to find the expertise and perspective you need to tackle these human problems together.
People in This Episode
Dena Singleton: LinkedIn
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