Why courage is the missing piece in employee experience with Jason Anthoine

Amber: Hello everyone and welcome to the AX Conversation. In this episode, I sit down with industry veteran Jason Antoine, who tells us about his 40 plus years in the industry, what's changed, what's still the same, and also how courage could be what unlocks progress for internal comms and employee experience in the next decade. Let's get into it. Hello, Jason, and welcome to the EX Conversation. Well, thanks so much for having me, Kaz. It's good to see you as always. Good to see you too. Was first introduced, actually, I I first saw you on LinkedIn. kind of talking about some thought leadership and insights in the space. But the first kind of glowing recommendation I got f for yourself was from Joanna Parsons, who I know was worth delivering. Yes. Such a delight. I love Joanna. Yeah. And then and then from that we had you at our conference at Unite. or before that actually, no, we had you at our event in Atlanta. Atlanta, yeah. So you're in my hometown. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then then we had you at Unite. One of the things That's consistent, is you're very you're a very clear communicator. You explain your point very well, and you've got the experience to back it. Tell me a bit about that experience and ⁓ your time in the industry and where you've worked. ⁓ gosh. ⁓ how long is this podcast? I I think this is my 37th year in communications. Almost all of that has been in. internal comms, employee experience and culture change. ⁓ and so I from day one, my very first job, I had to do just corporate communications for a bank, which meant internal comms and external comms. ⁓ and I quickly realized that I do not like doing press releases and calling reporters. But I really like doing the employee newsletter and writing things for leaders. ⁓ so From that moment on I've really sort of stayed on the internal comms and culture change side of of corporate communications. But a lot of that experience has been, you know, with what we call here in the States, you know, Fortune five hundred companies and as I like to say, the less fortunate five thousand. Like it doesn't really what matter what industry or even what size your organization is, you know, as soon as you hire employee number two, you have these kinds of internal comms ⁓ challenges and opportunities. And so I've spent a good bit of time in companies like GE and Siemens and Newell brands and Coca-Cola and you know a lot of big brand names that folks will recognize, but also in a lot of companies that, you know, most people have never heard of. but they all have the same sort of challenges, ⁓ reaching their employees and informing and engag involving and inspiring them. ⁓ and so I've just, you know, I've spent my whole career really helping organizations be a lot better at that. And there's a whole lot of reasons for that. But to me the main reason is we all spend forty plus hours a week doing this stuff at companies. And so, you know, we ought to enjoy it. We it we oughta be getting a lot out of it. And so if there's stuff I could do to help make that a better experience, then that's really, you know, that's really What I like to stay focused on. Yeah. And I have a kind of so I've worked in kind of employee experiences, telecommunication, intranet ⁓ s ⁓ maybe now for coming up ten years. Which is basically my whole career, but but like what I've You're an old veteran now. In that time ⁓ I've already started to see some repeated themes come up and cycles that happen. If you were to zoom out on your time, what are some of the things that just don't seem to go away? And what are some of the things that maybe are new, if there are any? Right. Well, that's a great question. Cause, you know, I've got a whole span of almost four decades to kind of draw from. But I think the one thing that never goes away is We have a hard time reaching our employees, which sounds ridiculous now given all the technology and the platforms and different ways. But, you know, first job right out of school, it was not unheard of for me to on a Mac Macintosh classic type out some kind of thing, print it, and then put it in an inner office mail. In an envelope and stick it in an outbox and the mail person comes by and picks it up and then takes it to another floor in the building. You don't know if they've read that thing or not. You don't know if they're ever gonna get back to you. This is absolutely no. And so you would think, you know, nearly forty years later there would still be, you know, a way to find out and if they are or aren't or whatever, but it's it feels like we're just co constantly kinda stuck in that doom loop of of not really knowing, did they get it? Did they get it? What are they gonna do now that they've got it? Like that seems to be a constant issue cross, you know, across the years, despite advances in technology. I know there's ways to see if they've read it or not, but what did they think Phil Sayer do as a result of reading that thing? That's still kind of that takes manual effort, I think, to go and find that out in addition to whatever the platforms we are. that we're using. And then I think the other one is is that on the leadership side of organizations, it feels like there's a lot of of leaders who just continue to kind of define their role more as managers. Mm-hmm. Like to me the distinction is you know, leaders kinda set where we're going and how we're going to get there and then inspire people to be able to do that versus managers who just kinda, you know, make decisions by spreadsheet. Mm-hmm and I don't think we need people to be making decisions by spreadsheet anymore. That's what the AI robots are for. Right. And so I think the opportunity for us is to figure out, you know, how can we help the leaders be actual better leaders? Mm-hmm. ⁓ sort of like my cat is doing behind me right now. John is being a leader in disrupting this podcast. Well, you know. That's exactly right. So I think, you know, that's our biggest opportunity is to help the leaders be better leaders. They're pretty good at being managers or they wouldn't have gotten these jobs, but we have to help them be better leaders, which means building stronger relationships with their employees. Mm-hmm. Has has the kind of idea of leadership changed in that time? Because I feel like it it has, even in my short tenure. How has it changed and yeah? That's a ⁓ that's a great question. ⁓ I I think it definitely has. I think you could get away with just sort of thinking of it as being, you know, a highfalutin manager. ⁓ but now I don't I don't think you can. And I think also if you look at the C suite, for example, there's a chief human resources officer, there's a chief financial officer, and they're kind of broken up into these functions, but And maybe in the past that was great, but I don't think that works anymore. Like the HR person has to know a lot about finance. The finance person has to know a lot about HR. And so, you know, in the past where you might be able to kind of be like a really tight specialist, now you have to be a generalist as a leader. And now the on top of understanding different parts of the business, you now have to understand technology and AI and how a manufacturing facility is going to be set up for workflow and efficiency. And you also have to know demographics and psychology and ⁓ behavioral science to understand both how your customers and your employees are acting and reacting. And, you know, they don't teach all of that in in one go at universities or technical schools or wherever it is they they may have gone. And so it's just incumbent upon them and us to sort of broaden that that realization of the role of of leaders and all the different facets that that come with it now. It's so interesting because I ⁓ I felt like I kind of ⁓ so before my before I worked at Unilew I worked for a different ⁓ kind of large public transport company and one of the ⁓ one of the kind things that came back through the employee survey was that we want ⁓ members of our Steve Suite kind of feel more authentic, more real, more connection. And so the answer to this was to schedule ⁓ a series of workshops with some of the knowledge workers where the C-suite would come in and kind of like ⁓ either ask questions about those employees or talk about themselves and ⁓ It was just an awkward thing, wasn't it? I think I think by the end of the workshop, so I I wasn't in internal cons, but I worked close to the internal cons team, so I got to sit on quite a few of them. And I think people left more disenfranchised than they started. And so it's kind of like a weird thing to actually like articulate, but there is kind of the someone actually asked me recently like whether I preferred ⁓ about previous colleagues, whether I prefer leader A or leader B. And leader A is ⁓ much less opinionated, very kind of more vanilla, like nothing ⁓ nothing too ⁓ nothing too controversial. and but actually maybe a bit more more personable on the surface. Leader B is less personal than the service, but very opinionated, has a clear vision, ⁓ ar articulates that vision very well and sets the direction and but much less personable. And my gut instinct was like, ⁓ I much prefer well, I I much prefer leader B, which a clear revision direction, maybe a bit more controversial, but at least it's something to believe in. So I don't know whether these kind of like leadership dynamics, whether they're playing out in real time and it's evolving, but ⁓ it's certainly like an interesting thing. It really is. And it's funny you mentioned that because I think, you know, a lot of times when when folks like us want to get employees and leaders together, everybody, you know, sees the value of that I think. But but I think leaders in particular, you know, they've been trained to judge themselves based on whether or not they could give a TEDx presentation. You know, we've just put so much expectations on on leaders to the point now where they think, Well, if I'm not a rock star you know, leader, I'm not really effective. And I don't think that that's necessarily true. Like in your example, you know, you might prefer the personality maybe of leader B, but you might also prefer the operational acumen of leader A. And so to me there's room for different types of of of ways that that leaders approach, you know, their work and their employees. And they don't all have to be the same. And they don't all have to be rock stars. ⁓ and I don't know that the leaders fully understand that. And I don't know that we do a good enough job helping them embrace who they already are. Just be who you already are and we can help, you know, make that the best that it can be. We're not asking you to be something different. We're asking you to be yourself and that's always good enough. And so I think, you know, the more we can kind of lean into that, I think the more cooperation and the more comfort level our leaders are going to have and in truly being themselves. That's what employees want. They don't expect polish and, you know, all this, you know, kind of stuff like that. They just want you to be yourself. They're themselves. Just meet meet them where they are and be comfortable in that, I think. That is so interesting because actually I had like a bit of realization there, which is in my head, now you can kind of look at look at a kind of leadership team as almost like a band, like the spiced girl sequeled. Understand have different pros and cons, and you ⁓ a kind of effective communicator might bring out some of that and make sure that the people see the realness and that they have different value to add to that group. And that's so interesting. No, you're exactly right. You know, Spice Girls or the Rolling Stone or whatever the the example of Rubik's Cube, you know, it has different colors on different sides. Like it could be a whole lot of different examples, but it's all those things that come together that that make the thing really work. And if the you know if every side of the Rubik's Cube was red, you would there would be nothing to solve, you know. It's because it has those different colors on it that you know when it's scrambled and you know when it's not. And I think the same thing here with the leaders. There's a lot of value in everyone being individual and and bringing themselves, not mirroring others, but you know, really embellishing what they have to offer. Is that ⁓ was that analogy kind of to do with the disc profiles? Yeah, there's so many of those things out there, you know, and ⁓ you know, pick one, ⁓ they're they're all about as good as the others, but you know, but I think the the point is just have a mix of folks and and not only you be comfortable at as with that as as the trusted advisor, but them be comfortable with that. ⁓ gosh, I'm not as good a speaker as the CFO. ⁓ okay, that's fine. But you know more about this over here than the CFO could ever know. And people want to know, want to hear that. That's okay. Just be yourself. And the kind of final bit I wanted to talk about your career was ⁓ this more recent move as part of leading Arceti inside. That's a really interesting market move. I found it interesting at the time. Tell me a bit about that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I've been kind of running solo here for a while, ⁓ with a lot of ⁓ fantastic ⁓ contractors with me, people who are helping to solve problems for clients and things. And so I've got a friend who's been running a a B2B marketing firm in Atlanta about as long as as I have been doing, you know, internal comms aware of each other. We've been in PRSA and IBC and things like that together. ⁓ but our paths never really crossed because, you know, marketing is one thing and internal comms and employee experience is kind of another. ⁓ however, last year he called and said, Hey, I've I want to talk to you about this opportunity. So we met, and what we ended up talking about was the fact that there really isn't any separation anymore between what a company says in the marketplace and who they are in the workplace. And we both kind of came to that conclusion at the same time. And ⁓ so us getting together, it'll be a year, ⁓ next week, I guess. ⁓ his firm acquiring my firm, I think brings a different sort of of conversation to both our separate clients on the HR and Corpcoms and maybe internal com side and then certainly on the marketing side, where, you know, not maybe somebody could make the case that in the past all that was kind of separate, or maybe we just were treating it that way 'cause it was easier. It's not separate anymore. I mean, you have employees who are customers. You have customers who used to be employees. You say things inside your organization that you used to think never got out. They always did. Yeah. But now you know that all that stuff gets out. And so what you say inside gets shown outside. And so that leads to sort of this concept around brand equals experience squared, which is it is the combination of the customer experience and the employee experience. And it's those two things that really define the brand. And so if you're spending all your time defining yourself in the marketplace without spending any time defining yourself in the workplace, you're not gonna be able to meet the the the expectations that you yourself have set. And so now that to me, those things, if they ever were truly separate, they're not anymore. They're right up they're right up next to each other now and they're almost the same thing. And so this opportunity, you know, working through Arcettie really just sort of amplifies that. Conversations we're having with CMOs about culture and how that helps define the brand that we're setting up in the marketplace are incredible. Never would have imagined that the C you know, the CMO would really care about culture. And then the same thing with CHRO, like what sort of culture do we need to define here? So that we are able to deliver on what our CMO is defining as our brand. ⁓ and it's just made it ⁓ a lot more interesting to work with a firm that has been focused on that so much. And then of course we've been focused on the opposite and now we're together and we're just having totally different kinds of conversations with clients and prospects. ⁓ I I was just about to ask about that. Is the is the kind of like type of work that you're working on now different because of maybe where it comes from in the org or ⁓ isn't it a kind of sign of the times that some of that conversion is meaning that ⁓ the work that's more important is different like yeah what are some of those themes? Right. So I think you know on the marketing side, ⁓ it's just speaking from an internal comms ⁓ person perspective, they get all the money, they get all the resources, they get all the team members. Like why don't we ever get any of that stuff? And the the main reason why is they're able to really, you know, define ROI and and show exactly, you know, the impact that they're having. We are now kind of, you know, just dipping our toe in those waters ⁓ on the internal commside. ⁓ but it's been really interesting because, you know, the the CMO might call and say, Hey, we've we've got this initiative and we think it might involve employees. So we go in and have that conversation and then lo and behold, yes it does, of course it does. And then that's an opportunity for us to bring maybe the internal comms leader or the change leader or the CHRO into that conversation in a way that maybe the marketing team might not have realized they should bring those people in. And then of course the opposite happens. You know, my team and I might be having conversations with the change folks or folks, you know, deep down in the operational side of the organization. And some things that are happening there are impacting customer experience or on time delivery or quality or whatever the KPIs that they're measuring. And so we're like, okay, well, let's try and figure out the types of things we need to do, but we really need to bring the people in from marketing to help us understand the impact that this thing not running right is having on our relationships with our customers. And so all of that just sort of felt like, ⁓ that's a great ideal, but I don't know that we'll ever get there. We're there. We're having that is happening now. And it ⁓ in a way that it to me it wasn't really happening maybe two, three years ago. ⁓ you actually y what you just said ⁓ pinged off something in my mind, which was probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite quote from Unite, which I actually wrote down somewhere and I got it up whilst you were speaking, which is driving revenue, controlling costs, mitigating risk. Everything is in the leader around those three things. So everything we as communicators should do should be tied to those three things. And I just thought that was so great because it so clinical communicated and ⁓ sometimes you can get lost in all the mess when actually like anchoring those things and that should drive what you what you're doing really. One hundred percent. And you know, our friends in marketing have been doing that for a very long time, which is why, you know, they're a little bit ahead of us on being able to get what they need. ⁓ but that's okay. We're closing that gap. And I think it's because they've been focused on those three things. This the revenue we've drove or the cost that we're able to save or the risks we're able to mitigate. We do the same thing. We do the exact same thing and have always done the exact same thing, but we've never talked about it using the leader's language. And those three things are the the most important components of of how leaders speak and what they understand. And so we've never really s positioned the type of things that we have d always done in sort of those three buckets. But now it's easier, you know, platforms like yours, other KPIs, there's plenty of ways to measure not just the outputs but the outcomes and those outcomes typically ladder up into one of those three buckets or all three of those buckets. Now it makes it a lot easier to to really sort of prove the value and have the the you know ladder right up to the KPIs that matter the most ⁓ in the organization in the same way that that marketing is able to do that, which to me brings marketing and internal comms even closer together because now we're speaking the same language ourselves and directly to the leaders. And really, that's what matters the most. Like it's great if we can get, you know, all these likes and shares and butts and seats at the town hall meeting, but what did anybody think, feel, say, or do after that? That's all the leaders care about, and especially how it lines up in those three things. And the more we can demonstrate that, the more value we're provided. Cool. That's probably a nice segue into your kind of passionate area. So I always encourage the guests to come with a specific area that they're passionate about. And before that, I know you sent me ⁓ quite a bold take actually. Yeah. So somehow I've gotten the reputation of having all the bold takes and that that's fine. I'm I'm glad. I told you the cyber leaders I like are bold. So ⁓ Yeah, that's right. I'm I'm leader B in your example. Yeah, exactly. ⁓ but yeah, I I you know, I th one of the things I've seen over over the years, not just recently, but you know Forever, but it's really kind of, you know, kind of jailed recently is that the to me, the bottleneck that we all experience on the internal comms, employee experience, kind of culture change side, ⁓ that keeps us from having the kinds of success that we know might be possible. I don't think it's necessarily skill sets. I don't know that it's necessarily platforms or technology. I don't know that it's necessarily even budgets and resources. I to me it comes down to courage and having the courage to, like we just said, be bold and say, you know, these are the expectations that my team and I have based on whatever the senior leaders have decided they want us to accomplish. Great. Here are the things that I'm going to need to be able to do that. And if I don't have those things, all of those things, then I might only get to thirty five percent of that goal or seventy-five percent of that goal. But if you want me to get as close to a hundred percent as possible, I can show you how we can do that and then I can tell you exactly what it is that we need. And if we don't get that, then you're gonna need to lower your expectations about what it is that we can produce as a result. That takes courage. Mm-hmm. That takes people realizing that we we can just whine and complain and just be victims of the situation, or we can step up and say, if this is what you expect, then this is what we expect. This is what we have to have to be able to deliver that. The flip side of that is same thing with leaders. I don't know that they themselves feel as courageous as we would like them to sometimes in how they talk about the work, the role that employees play. play in a in accomplishing whatever our tasks are and and our goals and objectives. ⁓ it just feels like ⁓ there's a lack of courage there as well that they have trouble calling a spade a spade. They are sometimes reluctant to hear, you know, raw and unvarnished and one hundred percent true feedback. And even if they do hear that, they don't seem to be able to figure out a way to react to it. And to me all that's just a lack of courage. Like if we put five people in a room and say, Here's the problem, those five people will figure that out. We put twenty people in a room, we'll never get to a solution. Just because of groupthink and all these other things. And what breaks that breaks through that group think and gets people to really be bold and act is is courage. Somebody's gotta stand up and say it. Is that is there a kind of irony that courage is always kind of ⁓ part of your communication skill set, no, as it were. And so is there kind of like a divide between the way in which communicators and employee experience deal with their role and the people that they deal with versus how they deal internally? A hundred percent. Like think of the example that you just had about leader A and leader B. Perhaps in a town hall situation, leader B would be the one that you would want to put up there and to lead the town hall. However Leader A has the bigger title. we're gonna have to let Leader A get up there, even though he's probably not the best at doing this. But Leader B, she's really strong. It'd be great if we could have her instead. Say that. What you have to say that. Yeah. Now that doesn't mean you have to be ugly about it, but you have to let Leader A know you have fantastic skills. And we need those in a lot of other areas. In this area, Leader B has the best skill, so that's why we would like to do To work with her on this. Is that going to hurt people's feelings? I don't know. And I'm really not worried about that. We are here to have things be effective, and if it can be more effective by using leader B versus leader A, then you have to have courage to say that. And the leader A has to have courage to admit that that's true, and then we let leader B do it. Mm-hmm. And do you think this kind of ⁓ courage is ⁓ you kind of actually kind of rightly called out that sometimes in a lot of my conversations that actually we skew towards ⁓ white collar workers and maybe not towards blue collar workers. What sort of led you to this? Like how did you come to this realisation that courage is needed? Where where does where did you get that knowledge from and how have you seen that kind of be the thing that unblocks the progress that we need? That's a great question. And I think, you know, regardless of, you know, blue collar or white collar, whatever type of mix you might have in your organization, to me it is it is most pronounced whenever you do any kind of survey. Everybody loves to do engagement surveys and satisfaction surveys and you know, call ⁓ whatever you want. ⁓ are they valuable to a certain extent? Most people lie. They're not gonna tell you the truth anyway. So if you wanna make decisions based on half truth, that's up to you. But ⁓ I think the what happens is whatever the survey is and we ask and employees say, ⁓ we we collectively would like to see A, B, and C. I don't know that that could be more clear. We've asked the questions, they've given us clear answers. We would like to see more work in A, B, and C. And then the leaders look at that. All right, they said we need to do A, B, and C. And then they don't do A, B, or C. Or if they do ⁓ they just kind of have to Why? Why? Why is that? It's because they don't have the courage. Don't tell me you don't have the budget. Don't tell me you don't have the time. Don't tell me you don't have the resources. You don't have the courage to admit that maybe what we were doing hasn't been as successful and our employees have come up with ways for it to be more successful. What can we do to help make that happen? Instead, there's hemming and hawing and dragging things out and by the time you even get around thinking about how you might do it, it's time to do the survey again. And then people are like, Well, I'm not going to answer any more of these questions. You don't even do any things I've already told you to do. And it's primarily because of courage. I g it's just it's not budget. It's not skills. It's not even I want to do it. Nobody stands up and says we are going to do it and here's how and when But also is there kind of like an element of like ⁓ cutting off your nose to spite your faith? Does that sound I don't know if that that's ⁓ whether that's translate, but like I feel like sometimes because of ego and politics people tend to double down and down and actually it takes some of Hang on, let's just turn the ship around, admit that you're wrong or do something different. That's right. And I think that's that's r really it's really that concept that you just articulated is really difficult in in my world, you know, being on the outside of an organization, being kind of a consultant and kind of a trusted advisor, is that to be successful, people have to admit that what they're doing isn't working. That is the hardest part of trying to sell anything in, whether I'm a consultant working for an agency or whether you're an internal comms leader working, you know, inside the organization. The absolute hardest thing that you have to do to sell anything is is for people to admit that what they have been doing isn't right. And that is people, especially leaders, especially certain kinds of leaders, they don't want to admit that. They don't want to admit that. And so that's usually the hardest part and the best way to For that person to have the courage to do that is for you to give them courage. Like if if if you demonstrate courage, then others see that and then they also begin to demonstrate courage. It's very ⁓ s sympathetic like that. Like when people see that it's contagious. ⁓ this person really showed a lot of courage and coming and telling me this and that so I now need to reflect that and have my own courage and trying to do something about it. So The more courage you can demonstrate, the more courage you will see in others because now you've given them permission. That is so true. I literally I moved into the I was telling you before we we started this that I moved into the product team. And ⁓ in product there are ⁓ as you can imagine, lots of different ways to do things, lots of different opinions. And I can't I kind of came from ⁓ a team where maybe I would not always voice that opinion, but I moved into a space where I'm working Mostly with people that I trust and respect and ⁓ there are lots of opinions and they're very courageous people and I felt like I started being like kind of the mouse at the side, but I started seeing all this like courage around me and now I feel like I'm in the midst of it. And like you're right, is it's contagious. That's right. And I think a lot of people, you know, around courage and some other things as part of their roles and responsibilities are waiting for permission, I think. Oftentimes and I have to tell my teams, I have to tell my clients and anybody else, you know, somebody in line in the drive-thru in front of me if I had to like, you know, you don't need permission to do your job better. Like, you don't need that. Just do just do it better. If you think it can be done better, start. Start right now. You don't need somebody to come by and wave a magic wand and go, ta-da, you're now empowered to do the job that you think you need to do. Like, just do the job. And the more you do it and the more you demonstrate it, the more you're giving other people the courage to be able to do the same thing. And then that's contagious. And then the next thing you know, the organization's culture is moving and advancing in ways that you never could have done with just a bunch of, you know, comms. Yeah, totally. I think ⁓ also this kind of courage gives more depth and definition and clarity, which is underlying under if you look at like those things or underlying challenges that are d that mean the communication challenges or don't reach the front line or aren't well understood or people make the wrong decisions. It's kind of you you might technically check boxes of communication. But if some of those things aren't solved for, then they don't reach or provide the clarity that they need to. That's right. That's right, you know, and we've all had examples and I I've I've had dozens over the years of you know what I think we could have a whole lot better culture here if we just had like two or three firings. You know? Like everybody knows the leaders that are hard to work with and obstinate and feel like they're just blocking every opportunity and challenging you about the simplest and silliest of things. And so you think, ⁓ gosh, it would be so much easier if these people would just leave. We know it would be also easy. Help them understand why that's not the right behavior and what you can do to help them sort of change those things. ⁓ I it's just so many times we can't get to where we want to get and there's usually, you know, a handful of reasons and maybe a handful of people who are preventing that from happening. It's our jobs to tell people things that the entire organization ⁓ observes. That need to be improved. That's our job to do that. Does that is that risky? Yeah, absolutely it is. ⁓ does it require bravery and courage? Absolutely it does. But if our role is to represent all of the employees who mostly feel like they are voiceless in most organizations, if our job is to represent them, we ha we're duty bound to do that. We have a responsibility to do that. Now there's a way to have those conversations that, you know, aren't quite as sharp and angular, ⁓ as maybe some of the casual conversations are. But you're doing these people a favor. If if if they're leaders, deep down in their hearts, they want to be more effective. They just don't know how. And no one's maybe ever told them. That's our job. It's our job to do that. Our job is to counsel and give advice. And and that includes that. Sometimes whether they want to hear it or not. But that doesn't mean they don't need to hear it. Nice. I I love that. I've ⁓ thanks for that take as well. I feel like it's been ⁓ quite a productive conversation. I feel like I've taken away something from it. Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, it's been fun. I always love talking with you. ⁓ I've got ⁓ just to kind of finish us off, I've ⁓ have some kind of regular questions that I ask my guests. Okay. Always find it interesting to see how people how people take them on. The first one I've got for you, is to do with hidden skills. So like What do you think is maybe a undervalued or underrepresented skill in the profession? Probably courage, actually, given that you we've just spoken about it. What do you think is the second most underrepresented skill? I think the one that ⁓ maybe not underrepresented, but underappreciated ⁓ is patience. ⁓ I think we as as a community of internal comms folks have over the years just developed a ton of patience and we are really good at that. That doesn't mean we like having to be patient. But I think, you know, as I tell my team all the time, it takes a lot of patience while we wait for people to finally come to our conclusion, right? That doesn't mean you should stop. It doesn't mean you should get frustrated. It just means that you just gotta keep, keep on, keeping on. And that takes a lot of patience to be able to do that. ⁓ can you accelerate that? Sure. Courage helps. ROI helps, you know, all kinds of stats and proof and all those other things besides just your learned opinion, which is already valuable, but not as valuable as stats. And so, you know, can those things accelerate? Yes. But I think we are really good at patience and I think that is underappreciated. ⁓ 'cause what that means is we aren't constantly flying off the handle. We're Constantly pressing for things without any justification as to why they would be good. I think we're very patient and measured and I don't I think that's underappreciated. I agree. I think probably one of the if not the most patient roles that you see in organizations ⁓ so yeah, I I agree. ⁓ the ⁓ another question I've got for you is what one thing or concept from the workplace would you like to put in the trash? ⁓ well, I'm on record That's not really being a huge believer in engagement surveys. ⁓ it's just a multi billion dollar scam industry that gets perpetuated over the years. I get it. Listen, I get it. You gotta have something, and that's the thing. So, you know, it's better than nothing, maybe. I could argue the other way, but but I just I don't understand the value in that because the organization is asking their employees what they feel. And half the time people are like, I'm not gonna answer this or if I am, I'm gonna tell ⁓ what I think they they wanna hear. And then when we get that information, we rarely do anything with it. And the other thing is is especially lately, when I say lately, last maybe five, ten years, ⁓ it's just it literally is just a snapshot in time. It is a snapshot of whatever the period is that you took that survey. And five minutes after that survey closes, the organization has moved on and you are now in another trajectory and another kind of orbit. And so looking at the results of that thing three months later, six months later, and then trying to implement something nine or twelve months later, that's too slow. It's not it's not real time. It's not even accurate the second that it's produced, much less later on. So I don't I've never understood the value of them, ⁓ other than a check the box exercise. ⁓ and I wish we could just get away from that and just have things be more real time and that takes human to human conversations and people talking to each other and real time reactions and things, not you know, something that takes weeks and months ⁓ to us to gather and assimilate. Makes no sense. Earlier as well, ⁓ the about the point of like data validity. I was speaking to a friend last weekend, and they were saying that they had their survey to do and I mean, I do talk about non work stuff as well, but I do also I'm interested in this stuff from other people's perspective and other organizations. And they said they kind of answer it to they're trying to basically be more meta on the survey and understand, okay, what actions are gonna be done based on this and how right. If I answer this a certain way, what are they gonna do to me? How how many different training classes I'm gonna have to go to? ⁓ but I was like, Do you know what? I Good on you. But yeah. But what I think is a better solution is just some focus groups. That's real time. You can act on it really quickly. You're getting direct feedback. Are employees gonna tell their own company the truth? Probably not face to face, but they'll tell people like me the truth, even if they know that I'm gonna go and say this is what they said. They want the truth to be told, but there's all kind of political reasons and screens and filters in place between them and their employer. They oftentimes don't feel like they can be a hundred percent truthful. There's so there is a way to get to that truth, but the point is is to get it directly from them in conversations, not some survey instrument. Yeah. And ⁓ the final question I've got from you. So we have a tradition where the last question comes from the last guest. So this question, ⁓ not knowing not knowing ⁓ who that guest is, the last question I had that was set with the last guest was in 10 years from now, where would w ⁓ where would you like to have seen your role progress? Wow. Ten years from now, let me see if I could do the math. I'll be approach I'll be approaching seventy. Ten years from now. So ⁓ I think ⁓ the way that I would like to see my role and our collective roles progress is that ⁓ communications is embraced as a leadership responsibility and not a department down the hall. I think leaders ⁓ and we have trained them in certain cases, feel like I don't have to be good at this. I have a communications team that could do this for me. Nope. You are a leader. Inherent in that job is your both desire and ability to be able to communicate With your employees. You don't have to be perfect at it. I don't care if you can even spell things right. Just do it. Just try. Just demonstrate that you care. ⁓ and that c that comes directly from the leaders. Employees know it when it's it's communications by proxy and we're the ones who are doing it behind the scenes. They know it. We know it. Everybody knows it. Why why do we keep pretending like that's not the case? So what can we do to have leaders more fully embrace that role, formally and informally, digital or printed or in face to face, whatever it might be. But you know, the more leaders are are leading and using communications as part of their role as leaders, the less time we have to spend doing that and the more time we can spend on doing things that matter to the employees and to the business. But having to constantly, you know, communicate on behalf of people who are absolutely able to do that themselves, the less time we are spending building things of value for the organization and our employees. Nice. Jason, I think that's a perfect note to end on. Thank you so much. It's so good seeing you, Kat. Thank you so much for having me. This is fun. And you, Jason. ⁓ also I need some collected question from you for our next guest as well. So I would say ⁓ H how are you going to solve for making sure that the employee experience for people who are not wired is equal to the employee experience for those who are? Amazing. That's good. If you enjoyed the episode, then remember to click subscribe, because there's much more where that came from. And let us know in the comments which bits you've enjoyed and found super insightful. Also, if you would like to be part of the EX conversation and feature on the podcast, then please get in touch.