This isolved exec strives for greatness in himself and his team

Barry Gauch's outlook on success was shaped at a young age, when advice from his mother and a mentor merged to form the perspective he now shares with others: "You have to be passionate about what you're doing, otherwise you're never really going to be great at it." 

Gauch's first passion was baseball, and after being cut from a team in middle school, his mother encouraged him to dig in, work hard and try again — she also put on gear and helped him practice. The work paid off, and he went on to play baseball in college, followed by two years with the White Sox farm team before an injury forced him to make a change. 

Gauch was hired shortly after at payroll and HR solutions platform Paychex, where a manager would shape his view on how to communicate with potential employer clients about things like retirement plans and record keeping. It wasn't about what he was selling, it was why: for the well-being of their employees. When his mother, a career educator, asked him to look over her retirement information, things really clicked, he says. 

"I needed to connect the value of the employee and their work — what that does for the business itself, and why the business owner should invest in employees, whether it's benefits or whether it's good structure from leaders — and that really changed how I looked at how corporate America worked, and what I could do in my role at that time, [as well as my] leadership," says Gauch, now the VP of strategic alliance and partnerships at human capital management platform isolved.

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Despite thriving in his position and becoming very close to his team, Gauch stepped down from his executive position at Paychex when his mother's health declined in early 2023 so he could spend more time with his family. He wrote a LinkedIn post explaining his decision, and the feedback he received from people throughout the company was full of support and respect.

Later that year, Gauch joined isolved, and has established himself as a leader who cares deeply about the people he works with and the services his company provides.

"I wrote that LinkedIn post because I felt like I needed to explain to employees why it was important for me to take a step back," he Gauch says. "[My mom] instilled so many values, like desire, discipline, faith, that I thought were really important to communicate in a public way so that my employees, 400 plus, could see it."

He recently spoke with EBN about what he learned from putting family first, the value of coaching talent and feeling great about where he is now.

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How did the feedback from your LinkedIn post serve to cement your leadership strategy?
I learned that if you just make the extra effort to take care of every single person that you're responsible for, [like] getting to know their family's names, getting to know birthdays and anniversaries — all those little things go so much further than, in a lot of ways, giving them a 3% raise one year. Or if you make their life a little bit more enjoyable when they come to work, so that they believe in what they're doing and are passionate about it, they're going to want to work for you. Leaders need to get out from behind the screen and start to really care about the people they work with.

One of your passions now is coaching those who work with you — what do you want them to take away from their experience on your team? 
I would want them to say that they get purpose-driven work daily, that what they do matters both to isolved and to our customer base and their employees. I try to do a good job of connecting the dots. Purpose is a big deal, and I think that's true about  isolved [as a whole] and it was true about Paychex. I don't think all companies feel that way. I think some of them are just in it for the buck, and that's really hard for people to work within. [It's] hard to go home at night and not value your work.

Once you get past that and they trust that you're a leader who is going to have a purpose-driven environment for them, then the best way, in my view, to help an employee is to show them how to be successful and set the expectations accordingly, and when they do, you have to be the first person there to recognize that they've done a job well. 

A lot of people can identify skill gaps, but not a lot of people can coach. I think there's a huge difference, and I think what separated me in my career is I always try to coach versus just call out the weaknesses. You can coach strengths as well as you can coach weaknesses — you can communicate where they can improve and you can give them exercises and things they can do to improve. When the employee has knowledge of the skills they have to have in order to achieve at a high level, and you have a coach that can help identify whatever skill gaps are there and help them get there, that's really euphoric.  

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What are your upcoming professional goals?
"I really love where I am and I love the position I'm in. In the short term, I want to impact the people I come in contact with in a positive way on a regular basis, and then I want that to grow. I want to impact more people, whether that's at isolved or or somewhere else. If it requires me to go up the corporate ladder again, I'm certainly open to that, but at the end of the day, I get a good night's sleep knowing that the people I work with are passionate about what they do. They're equally committed. I love working with people like that. For me, it's about growing isolved and them putting me in whatever position they think is going to make the most sense."