A conversation with CHRO Reini Chipman
Years ago, I was introduced to Reini Chipman, a wonderful human who has mentored me over the years. Reini is Head of Human Capital at Purpose Built and the founder of Trove Collaborative, a boutique services firm providing executive coaching, executive search, and executive team development.
Before launching Trove and joining Purpose Built, Reini spent over 20 years in executive and operational roles leading the people function within tech companies, including Community, Tala, Simple, Simply Measured, and Geocaching.
Reini has guided thousands of creatives, leaders, and teams to find their core beliefs, amplify their authentic voices and do the most impactful work of their lives. She is a values-centered coach and facilitator, heart forward leader, and relentless rabble-rouser.
Thanks for joining me for this conversation, Reini. Tell me: Why do you do what you do?
I always go back to where it all started in my early childhood. My dad helped me stand up to a bully when I was four years old. Ever since then, I’ve stood up for injustice and what I’ve perceived as a lack of fairness in the world. I’ve also been someone who can talk to anyone, who strangers tend to gravitate toward. These two attributes have been part of who I am for as long as I can remember.
The combination of not being afraid to take risks, having a voice in good times and bad, and the ability to talk to all types of people have contributed to my why.
Fundamentally, I believe that business is made up of conversations. In tech companies, we might think it's made up of zeros and ones, but at the end of the day, conversations are needed to creatively think about what kind of code we want to build. The work I do is to help people access conversations and navigate systems in work and in life. I used to be more of a highly visible and vocal leader inside organizations, but in the past few years I’ve been enjoying being a behind-the-scenes kind of person in a role as a trusted coach and consultant.
When I help people elevate and feel great, my bucket gets filled.
In your bio, you describe yourself as a values-centered coach and facilitator and a relentless rabble rouser. What do those terms mean to you and how do they come alive in your life?
In the fields of coaching and organizational development, a lot of the work we do is to help people think about their mission and vision, asking questions like “Why do you exist? Why are you here? and What legacy do you want to leave behind?” And all of these questions are important, but I’m more interested in helping people discover how they show up every day, which means being value centered - operating from a place of being grounded in one's values or virtues.
Being values-centered is possible for anyone: they just need to be tuned into it. I use something called values mining, which is a technique where I ask several juicy questions, clients share their answers, and then together we pull their top values out in a coaching conversation. It helps people shine a little brighter because they build awareness around who they are at their core, or their “essence”.
On being a relentless rabble-rouser, first of all, it’s a really fun phrase to say. Second, if we look at the opposite of the phrase, it would mean being a champion of the status quo, and I've just never, ever been into that. I'm always interested in thinking about what else is possible and asking lots of questions. Who's being left out? Why? Who's being bullied? Who's not listening? Who's talking too much? Who has which types of power?
Advocating for everyone takes rabble-rousing. You have to be willing to say something shocking or provocative or uncomfortable. There's an art and a craft to that and it's something I've tried to hone my entire life.
If you’re being provocative or are surrounded by people who are comfortable with the status quo, how do you navigate resistance that I imagine you must face?
It’s hard. It involves experimentation in terms of one's skillset, being grounded in who you are, and being open to being wrong.
I've learned over the decades that what we generally fear about stirring the pot is discomfort - we think, “Oh my, it's going to be so awkward and uncomfortable.” We don't want to be in an awkward situation because it's usually not very fun. And sometimes people get really mad. I've had people throw things and threaten me. It's scary. But what I've also learned is there's a reaction which is short term, and then there's a response which is longer term.
People who have a vision for how things could be better have to be okay with the fact that others may not get on board at first. It may take them a day to process and come back. I've had people come back to me five years later and say, “Oh my gosh, when you fired me, that was the best thing that ever happened to me because look where my life went!” Patience is critical and I've had to learn that the hard way.
The way we integrate conversations over time is really complicated and beautiful.
In what ways have you reinvented yourself throughout your life?
My journey has involved many twists and turns. I grew up in rural farm country playing hide and seek behind farm machinery and in corn fields. Then I went away to college and later ended up in Seattle, which has a very different culture than the Midwest. It was a tough transition - it was difficult to make friends and it took me a while to find a community there.
I went to grad school and joined a social services organization. Given how the organization went about its work, I quickly realized that I was perpetuating a racist, oppressive structure, which was problematic to me. I raised my concerns to the white woman running the organization and she said condescendingly, “Ah Reini… you're so idealistic.” And so I said, “Welp, I can't participate in this work,” so I left. Notably, six months later, she reached out and asked if I could help her understand how they could be in a less racist organization. That goes back to my previous point about patience!
From there, I decided to try the corporate world and became a recruiter, where I started learning about HR. And then eventually I moved into the tech space - learning about a new industry was a big transformation. It has a different culture and unique ways of building and scaling organizations.
My latest pivot has moved me away from the operational side of HR and toward executive search, advising, and coaching. A large part of my work day involves being in conversation with mission-driven and high potential leaders who are committed to their own growth, building something good for the world, and building high-performing teams. It’s super energizing and gives me a sense of purpose.
You’ve worked in Human Resources (HR) for most of your career. Given your experience and outlook, how would you change HR as a function if you could?
In order to reinvent what's possible with HR, we’d first need to examine some deep stories and beliefs that we're holding about the function and business in general. Here are a few questions that could get us there:
Why does HR exist? Why does it matter?
Do we believe that business is driven by numbers or conversations?
Is it okay to knowingly harm or allow people to be harmed in the workplace?
Can humans objectively evaluate performance?
Is continuing to celebrate independence the way forward, or are most of us longing for interdependence?
What are the basic requirements to be a CEO? Are there technical skills, social skills, baseline ethics and commitments that should be expected of people running business? We have to get a license to drive a car but anyone can run a business.
I'm hopeful that in the next 5-10 years we’ll see us changing our collective consciousness and a critical mass of leaders help us question what we believe and the stories we tell about business.
You’ve spoken before about something I think we all can benefit from reflecting on: shifting from a scarcity mindset to a sufficiency mindset. Can you explain this concept?
For years I've been championing abundance mindset - the idea that there's plenty to go around. It was sort of my “thing.” And then recently, a colleague pointed out to me that the opposite of abundance is not necessarily scarcity.
What we really want to be striving for is sufficiency: having enough. Which is hard in our culture, particularly here in the US, where we have a mindset of “get as much as you can.” We see founders of large companies making billions of dollars and we hold them up as icons.
That's not what we should be striving for. I think we should strive for having enough or maybe a just little bit more than enough so we can look after ourselves and the ones that we really care about the most in life. This new mindset has been a shift for me.
Another mindset shift you talk about is about certainty. Why should we worry less about being right?
Years ago, when we started talking about inclusivity in the workplace, one of my consultants introduced me to a book called Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz. The whole book dispels the myth that we're always right when we use lots of data. The bottom line is we're all wrong all the time.
I find that freeing. It's liberating to take a step back and realize that we're not always right, particularly in the white-dominant cultural theme of perfectionism. We need to take new information that comes at us all the time and challenge our thinking.
Who and what do you surround yourself with to continue growing and learning?
My child teaches me every day. And, of course, my friends and mentors, but more than anything, it's the people I disagree with. People who make me mad or uncomfortable.
There's a lot to learn from people who make you mad because anger is a useful feeling. It usually leads to discovery.