The “Discuss Employee Spotlight” is a Q&A series dedicated to showcasing all of the amazing talent at Discuss.
For this month’s profile, we talked with Tiana Dietz, Director of People Operations, who joined the Discuss team in September of 2021 and is based out of Louisville, Kentucky.
- Tell our readers a little bit about your role at Discuss.
I like to say that my job is to make work not suck. It sounds funny, but it’s true: We spend so much of our lives at work, and there’s just no reason it can’t be fulfilling, engaging, AND fun.
I handle any and everything people related at Discuss – from benefit questions to strategic direction for our organizational structure to thought partnership with leaders throughout the organization. - What project are you most proud of in your time at Discuss?
We recently went through a process of determining our core values, and it was such a joy to work collaboratively with not just the leaders in the company, but every single person here, to decide what those values were. We had conversations and surveys and revisions and arrived at 5 values we all agreed on and that felt really authentic to who we are as a company and as human beings.
We set out to select values that not only reflected the work we want to do and how we want to do it together, but also would function as tools to help guide our difficult decisions and our work every day, and I think as a team we did exactly that. - Which of Discuss’ core values are you most inspired by? (Empathize, Collaborate, Obsess, Out Innovate, Excel)
For me, it has to be Empathize. We’ve built a culture here where everyone, from the top down, applies empathy to everything they do. It starts out with assuming positive intentions, which is something we talk about and live out constantly, from our interview process through every interaction we have, and it informs all of our work individually and collectively. Empathy is so key to the work our clients and customers do, and it’s essential to making Discuss a place where people can bring their whole human selves to work. - Tell us about your team and the mindset (and approach) you’re instilling and what you are most proud of at Discuss.
Currently, I’m a team of one, but I like to think of everyone who works at Discuss as my team. In that regard, it comes back to bringing your whole human self to work, to assuming positive intentions, to approaching the work we’re doing and the way we’re doing it with a curious mind, a desire to help, and an openness to evolution. I talk a lot about how to receive feedback – when I get critical feedback, my first response is always “thank you” because I believe that someone giving critical feedback is being vulnerable in a way, and they’re helping me learn and grow and improve. If there’s one thing I could instill in everyone I work with, (and heck, even everyone I meet) that would be it – to greet feedback as a gift and a chance to grow. - What is something unique about you (a fun fact) that few people know about?
I once lived in 4 states in seven months – I was a union organizer and moved from Seattle to Pittsburgh to Milwaukee to Chicago all in the span of seven months. It was a wild time, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Oh, and I have tattoos of artwork by 4 different contemporary/modern artists.
