[Transcript]
Narrator (00:00):
Hello HR professionals. Good news. This episode of the “Love Your People” podcast is valid for 0.5 professional development credits towards SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP and HRCI recertification. Stay tuned to access your certification code.
John Duisberg (00:22):
Welcome to the Love Your People podcast. I'm your host John Duisberg, and if you're new here, this is the show where we explore how people-first strategies help organizations and their teams flourish. Today's guest is Crystal Hanlon, Senior Vice President of Culture and Values at The Home Depot. Crystal's own journey is a powerful testament to their culture. She started with the company 40 years ago as a part-time cashier and has risen through the ranks to her current executive role now leading over 450,000 associates. In our conversation, Crystal shares how The Home Depot has successfully scaled its iconic value-based culture. You will learn tangible strategies for making culture real across a massive distributed workforce and understand why creating a shared purpose through community impact is a true game changer. Stay tuned for an incredible story of growth and servant leadership. Welcome everyone for another episode of the Love Your People podcast series.
(01:24):
I'm your host John Duisberg and super excited today to welcome Crystal. I'm going to be introducing her in just a moment. She has an amazing story and is an amazing leader, so just super excited for her to share today. But wanted to give everyone just a little bit of background. Maybe this is your first time on the Love Your People Podcast. So I just want to share where did this come from? How did we get here? What's our purpose? And so through the work that ITA Group does, we work with organizations and leaders all around the world to help them design and implement and run their employee recognition, employee engagement programs. Through that work, we just get to see amazing strategies that have been implemented over time, and we made a decision we are going to put a spotlight on those stories with the goal of helping other leaders, everyone here in the audience today to just learn from that so that you can take some of those lessons learned and apply it to your own teams and your own organizations to build that top workplace culture. So that's our goal is just to gain from all the experiences that our guests have to help you as you look to be that people-first leader inside of your own organizations. Okay, so it is my pleasure and I am so grateful and so excited to introduce Crystal Hanlon, the Senior Vice President and Culture Officer at The Home Depot.
(02:54):
I mentioned Crystal has an incredible story, literally starting as a part-time cashier and having a journey to now being an executive leader. Crystal, I believe it's over 2,300 stores all across North America, over 400,000 associates. So just a really, really large scale that you've had this incredible journey to be a part of and to now lead over. So welcome. Thank you so much for being here on the show today, Crystal.
Crystal Hanlon (03:25):
Thank you, John. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Super excited.
John Duisberg (03:30):
Absolutely. Well, let's jump in. I want to start, and I hope everyone out there, they've got their summer projects going on and they're going in and out of The Home Depot getting their supplies and everything, but give us the audience a little bit more background of your role, the scope that you lead today, and then lead into that journey, that story, the humble beginnings, how you started and just the journey of where you are today.
Crystal Hanlon (04:00):
Absolutely, and when you think about my job now, it's SVP of Culture and Communications, which means my whole life's mission is to connect the hearts of our people through culture and making a difference. And when you think about this chapter of my life in The Home Depot, I've been here 40 years and this is my favorite chapter because it really is something that makes a difference for 450,000 associates. And when I started, I was going to school at University of Houston to be a physical therapist. I never planned on staying at The Home Depot. And a couple of things happened to me back then that changed my entire life. One was, first of all, I needed to pay my bills. I saw now hiring sign, go in and I get the job for $5 an hour as a cashier. And they kept talking about culture and orange blood, that's what we say at The Home Depot, orange blooded.
(04:52):
And I kept thinking, this is kind of crazy. These people are crazy, but I need my paycheck until I had an assistant manager named Butch Moody who kept coming up to me every day and telling me the story of The Home Depot and what we can do with our future. And he was relentless. That was the first thing that happened. He didn't give up, and he fought the fight for me every day. And the second thing was: when we went out, you'll hear a little bit about Team Depot. We went out as cashiers and built a wheelchair ramp for a little boy that was handicapped. And when he rolled down that ramp we had created, we really didn't know what we were doing, reading the back of a cement bag, trying to figure out how to do it. But when he rolled down that ramp, his smile of joy and his parents in tears, it just changed my life because it was so rewarding to see that we had made a difference for somebody and it really meant something.
(05:44):
And so we became like a little baby family inside of family. I started to understand the orange blood and the culture. Then I started moving through the ranks of the company once I decided that department head, Assistant Manager, Store Manager, vice president in many different locations. I mean, I've done it all and I went from the store up. I was Merchandising Vice President, I was President of the North in the last role that I had, which is 150,000 people to be responsible for. I was in that role for seven years and it was one of my favorite roles because I believe leadership is serving people and making things better for them. And it truly was a rewarding experience. But by far, this one, this role is my favorite. It's running the foundation for The Home Depot. It's building the culture and the legacy of our future and touching lives every day. So it's been an unbelievable career. I'm so thankful I saw that now hiring sign. It's just been a beautiful, beautiful career. I love it.
John Duisberg (06:44):
Who would’ve thought from a now hiring sign to pay my bills to having an impact in people's lives. And I love what you just said, the role of leadership is to serve others. This concept of servant leadership, how can I best lift up others, is my number one responsibility. So I definitely, that resonates with me. Another thing, Crystal. So you mentioned the Assistant Manager/Mentor Butch Moody because we hear from other leaders the importance of engagement and culture at a manager level, the impact that a manager can have with the associates on that. And it sounds like that was a key part of you just starting to understand, okay, this is what this culture is all about, this is what the values are.
Crystal Hanlon (07:36):
I tell you, he changed my life and this gentleman didn't know me from Adam. He was just a great Assistant Manager who cared about the customer, was always up there, passionate and a good mood, and he kept coming up every day and telling me all the things I could do with The Home Depot and how successful I could be. And I used to tell him, I'd be like, Butch, leave me alone. I'm going back to physical therapy. And he never did. He would always come up. And I think it's critically important. I teach this in all of my seminars. An Assistant Manager or Manager can make a difference in the lives of those that they serve just by caring and being passionate and asking questions and helping people see a vision. Because if Butch wouldn't have done that for me, I would've gone back and been a physical therapist. And I tell you, I would've been very sad because I've had the best career ever by serving all of our people. I just love it so much. So I do believe being a Manager, you have to care about your people, get them engaged, ask them questions, hear their stories, because it matters, John, to your point, it matters. It's a critical piece of leadership.
John Duisberg (08:43):
Even like you said, just asking questions. What drives them the purpose? Where do they want to go next? How can I help them get there? This is a great segue into one of my questions that I just wanted to learn more about because I know the history of The Home Depot, the founders' core values and culture was important. And so I want to hear a little bit about how that, from your perspective, shapes the culture at The Home Depot, but also how do you now with over 450,000 associates, how do you keep this front and center? How do you keep this alive, so to say, across all of these associates that are distributed, they're spread out across all of these different stores. So talk to us a little bit about the importance of the values, how that shapes your culture, but then how do you then reinforce that on that day-to-day given the scope and the size of The Home Depot now?
Crystal Hanlon (09:42):
Absolutely, and I can talk real clear on this because Bernie, Arthur and Ken. Bernie was a mentor for me, one of the most amazing people on the planet. He was a founder. All three of them were founders. And when they built the values, they built eight values, core values that has led every decision we've made at The Home Depot. Even when I was a President in the north, if I had a tough decision, I would run everything through the filter of our values. And that gives you the answer you need because it's really just staying true to who we are. Our values are more than just something on a wall. We live it every day. When we were going through the pandemic, we made a lot of tough decisions and we made those decisions by saying, okay, what's the right thing to do? What is our values telling us to do?
(10:26):
That's when you can make tough decisions as a leader. And I'll tell you the way we keep it alive, it is so important. Leadership is local. We have 2,300+ stores and facilities and a leader makes all the difference in the world on bringing that culture to life. So what we have done is built a foundation of storytelling through HDTV. We have a studio, we tell inspirational stories of all of the amazing leaders that have come from the grassroots. 90% of The Home Depot's leadership team started on the store floor. 90%. And we have people out there that do amazing things when no one's looking. So we tell those stories on a consistent basis. We have community captains, one in each store that lives to tell the values and to teach the values and the culture and the Store Managers aligned with that along with our Assistant Managers.
(11:21):
So when you think about localized leadership, it's arming them with the basics of what culture is and then bringing it to life through our inverted pyramid and our values. We believe in, I mean our founders created an inverted pyramid where the customers are first and the associates are right there with them. And our CEO serves the customers and the associates just like we always have as leaders. And we teach that to all of our leaders out there so that they operate that way. Our associates are the most important; we have to take care of our customers. So we live the values on a consistent basis. We have something called apron strings where we do storytelling of greatness that is happening and that is publicized across all stores. And then we do that in our morning pep rallies. We talk about our culture and live the values. And it's just an amazing thing when you think about the foundation, all the different things that comprise our culture, it really gives us the vehicle to be able to get it resonating with other people. Everybody wants to be part of something bigger than they are. Everybody wants to be part of purpose, and that's what we do through our culture.
John Duisberg (12:30):
There's a lot that I'm just taking notes on. One of the things that you mentioned, Crystal, was leadership is local, kind of boots on the ground. They're with the associates day in and day out. And then I love the concept of storytelling. Because I believe people remember stories and they can relate to stories. I don't really know maybe what that core value means until I hear about how a colleague of mine as part of that story that is being shared. And I'm like, that's what it means in my role right now. Now all of a sudden it's real. It's tangible. So I love that. And then you mentioned that you said it was a community leader in each store as well. Tell us a little bit more about how that works.
Crystal Hanlon (13:22):
So the community captain is in every store. We have one in every store, every region. Even as a president, I was a community captain for the entire company.
Crystal Hanlon (13:30):
And what we do is we have that as our vehicle to teach and train our culture through a program called Team Depot. And Team Depot is what I talked about when I was talking about the wheelchair ramp. Team Depot is a group of volunteers that come from every location to different projects within the community, and they work with their nonprofit partners to identify what that project is. And then we have a sea of orange that comes together to build wheelchair ramps, to change veterans homes, to do all kinds of different things in their communities to make the communities better. And that community captain is responsible for finding those projects, working with the teams to get the volunteers in the stores. And you will find when you do things like that and you go out as a sea of orange, you'll see sometimes 100, 200, 300 people in orange.
(14:21):
And sometimes our vendors will come out there with us. And when you see a project, we just did a home for 1,700 homeless people in San Antonio. And when you see we had 1,000 of volunteers, when you see the difference we make, we built bunk beds for people that didn't have that were sleeping on the concrete. I mean, we did things together that changes lives. And that's what the community captain does. They find the projects, they work with their store leadership teams to identify those best projects, and go out and make a difference with Team Depot. And our associates love it because they get to volunteer. And they go out there and give their sweat equity to make a difference in someone's lives. And that builds our culture. So the community captain's responsible for that piece, and also capturing the storytelling and peer-to-peer recognition because recognition reinforces the greatness of our culture. So we do a lot of that through the community captains. It gives us that platform to touch 2,300 stores and 450,000 associates.
John Duisberg (15:24):
And I know I'm kind of thinking tactically, but that's part of where my brain was going. How do you logistically bring this together? And it sounds like you have to have this overall leadership in terms of the value wheel, but then you're empowering leaders at a local level.
Crystal Hanlon (15:45):
And the other thing is, when you think about it, you have to have a definition of culture for everybody to understand what it is. Because when you have a new associate or a new leader, it's difficult for them to convey, okay, what is culture to you? And so what we did when I first took this role is I got a leadership panel with all of our leaders and say, okay, let's all the vice presidents and presidents, let's identify what are we going to say culture is when asked, because everybody's got a different definition. And we decided to make it simple. So what we did was say, our culture is service and safety for our associates, our customers and our communities, and we bring it to life with our values wheel and our inverted pyramid by walking the talk every day. So that way you have a central platform. So every leader knows, okay, this is our culture, but it's just a sentence unless you bring it to life through localized leadership. So that's what we did. We identified what is that statement, and then how do we bring it to life through actions? And we've got examples after examples of people doing that in their stores then in many cases, or maybe an hourly associate.
John Duisberg (16:50):
I like asking the question, hey, what are we going to say when we're asked what culture means? And just having clarity around that. I mean, it makes sense. And you touched on the impact in the community and my personal story here. So my family goes to the first Saturday of the month, the kids' workshop, and literally my son is banging hammers and painting probably the table more than the project. So that's just one example. I know there's so much. You've got The Home Depot Foundation, the Homer Fund. So tell us a little bit more just about just the impact I guess that you're having on these communities and how that's part of the culture. And it sounds like this is part of one of the main reasons why you even were attracted to make this your career in the first place was that kid in the wheelchair.
Crystal Hanlon (17:53):
I really was giving back. I'm telling you, when you think about what means something in life, ask yourself the question when you're the happiest, and it's not just when you're buying an object or a new car and all that, it's when you can make a difference in someone's life. And that culture is real with us through the foundation. We serve our veterans, we serve our skilled labor force, trying to have skilled laborers come into the workforce. We do a lot on Team Depot like I've already talked about. And then I mean, just the foundation itself, the amount of work that we've done to help veterans who have served this country is unbelievable. We gave $550 million just in the recent years to make veterans’ homes better and to make a difference in their communities. I mean, it's unbelievable the work, when you see it and you see what we do, it's just exceptional.
(18:45):
And that gives us our why and our purpose. And then when you think about what we do for disaster relief, we're the first on site for any disaster. We work with our nonprofit partners, we also work with the leadership teams and the local communities, and we are first on site with everybody trying to make a difference. And it's really, really special. I mean, if you just think about the horrific things that have just happened in Texas, think about what people are going through. We've already got people on the boots on the ground with Team Depot trying to help people in that community and make a difference with our nonprofit partners. And I'm telling you, it truly means something. It truly is heartfelt because you see people at their weakest moments coming together to make it right for somebody next to them. And that's what we do with The Home Depot and we do it across the entire country.
(19:36):
And then you mentioned the Homer Fund. I'll tell you about that. The Homer Fund is a very special program, and Bernie and Arthur get all the credit for starting this program over 26 years ago. And the only reason Bernie and them started it, an associate called, and they used to answer the phones, Bernie Arthur used to answer phones from associates and customers. An associate had called Bernie and said, I don't have the money to bury my parent. And Bernie's like, he helps this particular associate. And then later he gets with Arthur and Ken and says, we've got to start a fund. So they each gave $5 million to start a fund. But the best part of this Homer Fund is that now it's a volunteer program with the associate base. The associates give—every one of us give to the Homer Fund And then when people are struggling or needing help, we can be there for them. So I run the Homer Fund and the stories of horrific situations that people go through; to be able to be there in their weakest moments and help them is just unbelievably rewarding. So we do that as well, and that gives us a lot of momentum from a heart and care perspective. We're bigger than just a company. We bring it to life in all these different ways. So special.
John Duisberg (20:48):
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier your initial experience with that young kid in the wheelchair. It was almost like the volunteers, I think you said you became a family within a family where now you've, you've gone through something together, you've all had this kind of emotional experience, if you will. And so now you're part of this, you're part of this together. I think you said you started to bleed orange.
Crystal Hanlon (21:18):
I did.
John Duisberg (21:19):
And to me that's kind of like the special experiences that start to shape culture. But it's like these community leaders are coming together, identifying where these volunteer needs, I guess, can have that impact. But then it's those experience of the volunteers that then start to shape the overall culture.
Crystal Hanlon (21:43):
That's why we try to get every new associate in some way, shape or form. It's a volunteer program, but we try to open it up because once somebody goes on a Team Depot project or once somebody's helped by the Homer Fund, or once somebody serves at a community project, I mean, it honestly ties us together with our apron strings. And when you go out on a project, it's not about title. Whether as a cashier or as division president, it did not matter about title. We are all out there in orange shirts. Nobody cares about anybody's titles. We care about going out and making a difference for somebody. And that is a way to bring people together. Everybody wants to be part of something that is rewarding and meaningful, and those things allow us to do that. So that's so special.
John Duisberg (22:26):
Yeah. No, that's amazing. Amazing. Crystal, I know that we had a few folks from our team, I think, joined you in painting and down in New Orleans recently. And they shared that they had a wonderful experience. So thank you for your leadership on that.
Crystal Hanlon (22:41):
Oh, we did. They were wonderful. Your team was awesome. And that's another thing, we work with a lot of vendor partners and nonprofit partners that we're all out there together. I mean, moving mulch, painting chain link fences. I mean, that was a nightmare. Building bunk beds for people who don't have beds. I mean, you just can't imagine how it feels until you're participating in one. It just makes a difference, and it's kept me with this company for 40 years.
John Duisberg (23:07):
That's amazing. And just kind of going back on our conversation, I mean, literally starting as a cashier, having a leader take an interest in you and act as that mentor about, Hey, here's what our values mean. And then you had the actual hands-on experience of volunteering and seeing the impact in someone's [life] on a personal level and then taking that and then saying, okay, how do we scale that? Well, you do it by making leadership local. I'm trying to paraphrase a lot of what you shared and having the inverted pyramid where it's like from day one, our customers and our associates are number one. And our job as leaders is to serve them. And then the way you bring that to life you mentioned is telling stories and just making sure that these amazing things that are happening when no one's looking, potentially, get highlighted. And that's how you bring those values to life.
(24:16):
So I'm just kind of thinking about some of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation, Crystal, so thank you. I really appreciate you just sharing and your experiences from the humble beginnings to now as we wrap up the interview of our conversation today. We always like to leave our audience with maybe a key lesson learned or something that they can take potentially and apply for their own teams and their own organizations. So we'd love to hear as we wrap up, what is one of those key takeaways that you'd be willing to share with our audience today?
Crystal Hanlon (24:55):
Oh, absolutely. So for me, it's find your why. Why are you doing what you're doing? If you're just doing your job for a paycheck, that is not happiness. You've got to have a why. What makes you motivated to get up every day and to make a difference? What are you doing to do your why, regardless whether you're a leader—everybody's a leader in some way, shape or form with their family or at work. What are you doing to identify your why and find purpose? Because once you do that and your company aligns with those values, you'll get up and be passionate about it every day. And that's what I would suggest is spend some time understanding what is your why and what do you want to do, and find a company that aligns with that and lives the values that resonate in your personal life, because that will give you the fuel you need to have a beautiful career and make a difference. That's what I would do.
John Duisberg (25:53):
I love it. I love it. Crystal, thank you so much. So that was wonderful. Just so grateful for you sharing your experiences leading The Home Depot with terms of culture and the associate experience. So super grateful for our audience today as well. Just another wonderful episode of our “Love Your People” podcast series.
As we wrap up today, remember this: the insights you've gained are only as valuable as the action you take. Leadership and culture transformation start with each of us at ITA Group. We help people and brands thrive together because creating a workplace where people feel seen, valued and inspired is how we drive meaningful change. For more strategies, tools and insights to help you lead with purpose and build people-first organizations, visit itagroup.com/insights. Thank you for joining us, and until next time, keep leading with your heart and making a difference as a people-first leader worth following.
Narrator (26:58):
Thank you for listening to the “Love Your People” podcast. As promised, this episode is valid for 0.5 professional development credits toward your SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP and HRCI recertification. To claim your SHRM credit, please visit itagroup.com/SHRM-podcast. For your HRCI credit, visit itagroup.com/hrci-podcast. Complete the quick form to receive your certification codes.