What We Can Learn from Niecy Nash
by Mike Mangino on July 27, 2018

As a person who runs every day, I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. A few weeks ago I heard Sam Sanders interview Niecy Nash and was struck by a comment that Niecy made:

SANDERS: So you've thought a lot about relationships. In your experience, what is that piece of advice that everyone should follow when it comes to relationships but they never can, the one thing we always screw up on in relationships?

NASH: One, I think, is be what you want to see because you're always going to attract a measure of what you are. And if everybody in your life is crazy, you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror and you say, good morning, crazy.

SANDERS: (Laughter).

NASH: Because you invited...

SANDERS: The crazy. Yeah.

NASH: There is something about whatever you're putting out and who you are at that time. The more whole and healthy you become, the better the boys and the girls will be that show up.

To me, this gets to the heart of culture. Your workplace will reflect the behavior and attitudes of the people that work there. I’ve seen this time and time again. I worked at a company where the tech leads were amazing during a crisis. It’s not surprising that every day was filled with crisis after crisis. At another place, the head of IT loved to argue. Every decision involved arguing.

As we’ve built HubTran, we’ve thought a lot about the kind of people we want to work with. We’ve talked a little about this with our values, but our culture conversation goes much deeper that that. As Niecy points out, what’s important isn’t what you say, but how you act. We know we’re looking for people who are curious, driven, empathic and kind. We also know the best way to attract those people is to act that way ourselves, we are working to be the people we want to work with. I’ve written about our book club to show our curiosity. I’ve written about the need for empathy when performing customer support. I’ll talk more in the future about kindness and being driven, although hopefully meeting us will be enough to show those traits as well!

I hope you work at a place where you want to be like your coworkers. If not, please reach out. We’re always looking for great people to join us!