Full Transcript for Designing Systems For Every Employee

which has ultimately led to 64 00:04:17.894 --> 00:04:21.853 how my career has gone ever since. But yeah, for me, I suppose it's interesting. 65 00:04:21.917 --> 00:04:25.909 I can't see faces, so every man is Brad Pitt, including my 66 00:04:25.909 --> 00:04:29.804 darling husband. You know, it's putting voices to names 67 00:04:29.852 --> 00:04:33.780 as opposed to faces to names. And I navigate very independently. I 68 00:04:33.780 --> 00:04:37.627 do use a long cane, but I suppose the way that I navigate spaces might 69 00:04:37.627 --> 00:04:41.218 be slightly different to other people in terms of reacting to light to 70 00:04:41.298 --> 00:04:45.257 understand where doorways and that kind of orientation work. 71 00:04:45.642 --> 00:04:49.553 But I think what it's really shown me early in life, it was so 72 00:04:49.553 --> 00:04:53.417 much about difference. So what made me different or what made disabled 73 00:04:53.417 --> 00:04:57.280 people different? And that has changed because it's not really 74 00:04:57.280 --> 00:05:01.111 about difference. It's actually about finding universal ways of people 75 00:05:01.111 --> 00:05:04.333 being able to do the same thing, which is probably why I've become obsessed with 76 00:05:04.333 --> 00:05:08.212 systems and frameworks. So once you have a goal in mind, 77 00:05:08.565 --> 00:05:12.284 you know, it's up to individuals how they get there. And rather than 78 00:05:12.412 --> 00:05:16.147 thinking we have to do something different or difficult because this person is 79 00:05:16.324 --> 00:05:19.837 disabled, what you really should be looking at is, well, is there a way that 80 00:05:19.869 --> 00:05:23.656 we can create something that gives everyone their best 81 00:05:23.720 --> 00:05:27.555 opportunity to succeed in these particular circumstances? And that's 82 00:05:27.555 --> 00:05:31.021 informed everything that I've done since I had that realisation. I'm going to say about 83 00:05:31.021 --> 00:05:34.214 a million years ago, but my early 20s. But it was a hard one to 84 00:05:34.214 --> 00:05:37.632 figure out because you have to figure out how you feel about something and then 85 00:05:37.664 --> 00:05:41.355 challenge your own initial perceptions. Great believer in it's the 86 00:05:41.355 --> 00:05:45.350 environment that creates the disability or the environment that creates the barrier, whether has 87 00:05:45.382 --> 00:05:49.374 a disability, gender, whatever it may be, it's 88 00:05:49.374 --> 00:05:53.012 the environment. So yeah, you're quite right. Creating systems, creating 89 00:05:53.734 --> 00:05:56.924 spaces, accessibility, whatever that may be, 90 00:05:58.046 --> 00:06:01.621 that works for everybody. It works for everybody. And that's the key thing, 91 00:06:01.669 --> 00:06:05.516 isn't it? 100%. And we've so many examples down through life. I 92 00:06:05.580 --> 00:06:09.379 think it's called the kerb cut effect, right? So that's talking around the built environmental 93 00:06:09.411 --> 00:06:13.210 accessibility. Kerb cut is that indentation in the footpath or 94 00:06:13.210 --> 00:06:16.945 sidewalk that allows a wheelchair user to navigate up into the footpath. 95 00:06:18.005 --> 00:06:21.636 It also allows for mums with buggies to get up and down off a 96 00:06:21.700 --> 00:06:25.555 footpath easily. It also allows for bins to be taken in and 97 00:06:25.555 --> 00:06:29.555 out easily. You have the same in buildings, making sure that 98 00:06:29.555 --> 00:06:32.848 there's ramps going up to them help the same, that same community as well, or 99 00:06:32.848 --> 00:06:36.719 older people with Zimmer frames. The BT large button phone, I think it was in 100 00:06:36.719 --> 00:06:40.687 the '90s or early noughties, that was for people with vision impairments or 101 00:06:40.880 --> 00:06:44.703 low vision, massively helpful for older people who didn't have their glasses on. 102 00:06:45.473 --> 00:06:49.208 We look at alt text or SEO now. Alt text was to help visually 103 00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:52.959 impaired people to understand what images were on screens. It's now 104 00:06:53.151 --> 00:06:56.790 how we all get ranked on Google or even in different AI models. 105 00:06:57.191 --> 00:07:01.166 If we take that learning and apply it, it's more about giving people great 106 00:07:01.166 --> 00:07:03.971 opportunities in spaces and environments. 107 00:07:05.318 --> 00:07:09.133 Yeah, definitely. And whilst we may, many of 108 00:07:09.133 --> 00:07:12.948 us would never class ourselves as having a disability. My wife had a 109 00:07:13.061 --> 00:07:16.459 total knee replacement last year, and because it's not a 110 00:07:16.956 --> 00:07:20.551 long-term condition, it's a short-term condition. She didn't class as 111 00:07:20.647 --> 00:07:24.563 disabled, therefore she couldn't get a badge, she couldn't get any accessibility needs. 112 00:07:25.093 --> 00:07:28.768 So she then had to pick up on, or piggyback if you like, on the 113 00:07:28.768 --> 00:07:32.716 existing accessibility areas. And just having a chair 114 00:07:32.781 --> 00:07:36.424 in a shop where you can sit down enabled her to be able to enjoy 115 00:07:36.552 --> 00:07:40.548 that. So I completely agree. And it's 116 00:07:40.629 --> 00:07:44.448 not about providing just for the person with a disability, it's creating better systems for 117 00:07:44.448 --> 00:07:48.202 the entire population. And Yeah, 100%. And I suppose what 118 00:07:48.426 --> 00:07:52.418 we're kind of touching on there probably is the regulatory or the legislative 119 00:07:52.418 --> 00:07:56.169 route. And we do need a baseline, and I 100% agree, but the stick approach 120 00:07:56.201 --> 00:07:59.632 to litigation is probably one of the reasons that it's held back 121 00:07:59.808 --> 00:08:03.752 inclusion and maybe perceptions around inclusion. And I'm going to use broad stroke 122 00:08:03.800 --> 00:08:07.648 terms like inclusive

business and stuff like that, because it's not 123 00:08:07.648 --> 00:08:11.191 just about one cohort. The disability community is interesting. We're the largest 124 00:08:11.191 --> 00:08:14.637 marginalised community in the world because you can have a 125 00:08:14.637 --> 00:08:18.538 disability and be any one of the genders, you can belong 126 00:08:18.570 --> 00:08:22.089 to any one of the religions and have a disability. It's, it is a 127 00:08:22.089 --> 00:08:25.850 universal thing. About 85% of people who 128 00:08:25.850 --> 00:08:29.826 have disabilities acquire them throughout their lives. So only about 15% of 129 00:08:29.826 --> 00:08:32.853 us are born with them. And some of those are like what you were talking 130 00:08:32.885 --> 00:08:36.512 about with your wife, they're temporary, and others are congenital so that you're born with 131 00:08:36.512 --> 00:08:40.425 them. Or that they're long-term, apologies, that you will 132 00:08:40.457 --> 00:08:44.256 have them on an ongoing basis once you acquire the disability. And 133 00:08:44.273 --> 00:08:47.957 it just makes sense that we are creating environments where 134 00:08:47.957 --> 00:08:51.644 people can participate actively, and it 135 00:08:51.644 --> 00:08:55.539 allows for innovation like the large button phones that people bought in their 136 00:08:55.571 --> 00:08:59.498 masses because they didn't have to wear their glasses, or that were able 137 00:08:59.498 --> 00:09:03.121 to get things ranked better on Google, or that— I suppose 138 00:09:03.121 --> 00:09:06.743 McDonald's is a really good example of them. When they were updating their restaurants in 139 00:09:06.743 --> 00:09:10.462 the '90s, or sorry, in the noughties in Ireland, they went fully 140 00:09:10.494 --> 00:09:14.165 inclusive. They had Braille menus, they had large font menus, they had automatic 141 00:09:14.165 --> 00:09:17.888 doors. And they didn't just do that for the one person with a 142 00:09:17.936 --> 00:09:21.854 disability. They did that so they could get the whole family 143 00:09:22.287 --> 00:09:25.690 into the business. So rather than just getting your €2 for the one, 144 00:09:26.284 --> 00:09:29.961 well, I know they're not €2 anymore, but your double cheeseburger used to be €2. 145 00:09:30.635 --> 00:09:33.637 Rather than just getting that once, you could have gotten it 5 times because you 146 00:09:33.750 --> 00:09:37.747 had the individual and their entire family actively participating in 147 00:09:37.779 --> 00:09:41.359 one location. You can see that in mainstream businesses as well. 148 00:09:42.017 --> 00:09:45.932 When you're looking at things like inclusion or looking at finding the best 149 00:09:46.045 --> 00:09:49.494 people for a role, it's not just about trying to make 150 00:09:49.510 --> 00:09:53.313 accommodations so that we appear inclusive. Your goal should always 151 00:09:53.345 --> 00:09:56.892 be to get the best person for the role with the right skills and experience, 152 00:09:57.277 --> 00:10:01.079 regardless of their circumstances, whether that is disability or not. 153 00:10:01.368 --> 00:10:05.364 And it should be that the system is designed so the person can transition throughout 154 00:10:05.444 --> 00:10:09.359 every stage of, in this example, recruitment, and get that job so they can 155 00:10:09.632 --> 00:10:13.487 participate fully in that process and then become a valued member of 156 00:10:13.487 --> 00:10:17.342 your organisation. And again, that's not just about disability, it's about finding the 157 00:10:17.342 --> 00:10:21.181 right person for the job, if that makes sense. Hmm. You mentioned 158 00:10:21.181 --> 00:10:24.715 recruitment there. I understand that, I'm not sure of the exact statistic, but what I 159 00:10:24.715 --> 00:10:28.682 understand, many people who have a disability underdeclare 160 00:10:29.229 --> 00:10:32.811 in the recruitment process for fear of it biassing 161 00:10:32.923 --> 00:10:36.907 their opportunity. If someone sees you're a wheelchair user, you have 162 00:10:36.923 --> 00:10:40.646 this, you have that. That's going to be expensive to onboard you. We'd have to 163 00:10:40.646 --> 00:10:44.401 make these adjustments to our workplace. We can't afford that. So most, many 164 00:10:44.401 --> 00:10:48.235 disabled people actually underreport at that stage for 165 00:10:48.252 --> 00:10:51.236 fear of it being a negative influence. 166 00:10:52.327 --> 00:10:55.761 Yeah. And it's a funny one. In some regions you don't have to disclose. So 167 00:10:55.953 --> 00:10:59.483 the baseline is that you don't have to disclose unless it's going to hinder your 168 00:10:59.483 --> 00:11:03.398 ability to fulfil the tasks aligned with the role, right? That 169 00:11:03.479 --> 00:11:07.315 as specified in the job spec, right? So. Being a wheelchair user, 170 00:11:08.005 --> 00:11:11.812 if you're sitting at a desk all day or you're out in the field and 171 00:11:11.989 --> 00:11:15.523 you're able to drive around in your accessible car, it's not going to affect your 172 00:11:15.523 --> 00:11:18.976 ability to do the role. So you don't technically have to disclose. And I think 173 00:11:18.976 --> 00:11:22.172 that's there, personally, I think it's there to, I suppose, 174 00:11:22.606 --> 00:11:25.658 avoid some of the biases that we do see. But I want to touch on 175 00:11:25.658 --> 00:11:29.657 the point where you might have employers thinking about, it's going to cost 176 00:11:29.657 --> 00:11:33.382 us an awful lot of money to have this person. So there are 177 00:11:33.382 --> 00:11:37.201 grants in every single region to offset them. In the US, I was looking at 178 00:11:37.201 --> 00:11:40.780 research only a couple of weeks ago with a client. There, not only are there 179 00:11:41.213 --> 00:11:44.808 local funds available by state to offset those 180 00:11:44.904 --> 00:11:48.579 costs, but the average cost that an employer will incur in the

States to 181 00:11:49.157 --> 00:11:53.072 hire someone with a disability is only about $500. It's $500, right? 182 00:11:53.682 --> 00:11:57.421 So the accommodations, because of innovation in technology, changes in 183 00:11:57.421 --> 00:12:01.256 regulation to building accessibility, and that's not just for disabled 184 00:12:01.288 --> 00:12:04.978 people, that's for everyone. The cost is so 185 00:12:05.042 --> 00:12:08.859 reduced now, even funding available as well for things 186 00:12:08.859 --> 00:12:12.644 like software for computers. So, I would use a magnification 187 00:12:12.740 --> 00:12:16.253 software on my computer. Other people might have text 188 00:12:16.429 --> 00:12:20.294 input, and that's a preference for a lot of people. It's not down to 189 00:12:20.294 --> 00:12:23.614 disability. Some people like to listen to even audiobooks now. 190 00:12:24.545 --> 00:12:28.153 I think, you know, myself and all my friends, we listen to audiobooks and podcasts 191 00:12:28.153 --> 00:12:30.864 when we're running. That's nothing to do with whether or not someone can see or 192 00:12:30.864 --> 00:12:34.537 can't see. But I think for people who are 193 00:12:34.810 --> 00:12:38.741 employers who are concerned about the cost, we have gotten to a stage now 194 00:12:38.965 --> 00:12:42.687 where the cost really is negligible because of the supports and grants that are 195 00:12:42.831 --> 00:12:46.088 available. So I think it's time to start looking a little bit deeper for people, 196 00:12:46.120 --> 00:12:49.618 employers in particular, around what is causing 197 00:12:49.794 --> 00:12:53.323 that initial thought that you're looking at it from a point of we just can't 198 00:12:53.323 --> 00:12:56.917 do it and trying to move past it to see the opportunity with it, because 199 00:12:56.933 --> 00:13:00.840 the reality is Regardless of who you're hiring, if you keep hiring 200 00:13:00.936 --> 00:13:04.455 the same person with the same experience that feels comfortable, 201 00:13:04.971 --> 00:13:08.536 you're not really going to have much innovation or continued high 202 00:13:08.536 --> 00:13:12.140 performance in your organisation because same, same, but different 203 00:13:12.221 --> 00:13:16.067 actually isn't diversity. It's just comfort in a boardroom. That's all it 204 00:13:16.099 --> 00:13:19.990 is. I did some work with a university who 205 00:13:19.990 --> 00:13:23.968 trained National Health Service nurses and they 206 00:13:24.346 --> 00:13:27.985 did a study on how many limbs a 207 00:13:27.985 --> 00:13:31.848 nurse needed in order to have a successful career. Because what they 208 00:13:31.896 --> 00:13:35.327 found was they were denying people opportunities because they were 209 00:13:35.824 --> 00:13:38.308 maybe lost a leg or had lost 2 legs or whatever it was. And they, 210 00:13:39.046 --> 00:13:42.604 I think they worked out that you needed at least 2 limbs 211 00:13:43.198 --> 00:13:47.029 in order to be an effective nurse in some, even if it wasn't clinical, it 212 00:13:47.029 --> 00:13:50.187 could have been in a research setting or whatever it may have been. So you 213 00:13:50.235 --> 00:13:52.719 could lose 2 legs, you could lose 2 arms, or you could lose 1 leg, 214 00:13:52.736 --> 00:13:55.974 1 arm. And that was, as long as you had 2 limbs, 2 usable 215 00:13:56.400 --> 00:13:59.969 limbs, you were able to be a nurse. And they were really trying to see 216 00:13:59.969 --> 00:14:02.810 past the disability and say, well, okay, you may not be able to stand at 217 00:14:02.810 --> 00:14:06.790 someone's bedside and do this, but you could still be a nurse in this field 218 00:14:06.790 --> 00:14:10.750 or a nurse in this field. So, it creates that accessibility rather than just 219 00:14:10.750 --> 00:14:14.210 saying, oh, this is too difficult. It's actually working out what you could do rather 220 00:14:14.210 --> 00:14:17.990 than what you can't do. And isn't that so powerful? 221 00:14:17.990 --> 00:14:21.650 Because I'm a bit of a devil for always saying, you know, you're saving PDFs, 222 00:14:21.650 --> 00:14:24.710 not lives. I know I'm a big TikToker, so I hear that a lot. But 223 00:14:24.710 --> 00:14:28.595 in that case, a nurse has a really important job, whether you're doing research or 224 00:14:28.643 --> 00:14:32.378 bedside, right? And even that setting, and look, the 225 00:14:32.394 --> 00:14:36.305 NHS and a lot of other organisations who are similar are really 226 00:14:36.338 --> 00:14:39.287 putting in an awful lot of effort. But if 227 00:14:39.447 --> 00:14:43.359 organisations like traditional institutions are thinking 228 00:14:43.391 --> 00:14:46.645 that progressively, you know, private practise has huge 229 00:14:46.757 --> 00:14:50.572 opportunity, not just to look good or to feel good about 230 00:14:50.588 --> 00:14:54.339 hiring the disabled person, but to actually have something, someone 231 00:14:54.532 --> 00:14:58.187 different with a different perspective in the organisation that could possibly 232 00:14:58.603 --> 00:15:01.955 help you to see a blind spot that you haven't seen before. And even when 233 00:15:01.987 --> 00:15:05.805 it comes to like what I focus on in my business, which is helping 234 00:15:05.837 --> 00:15:09.815 founders and managing directors to put the systems in place, it's not just 235 00:15:10.168 --> 00:15:13.713 around disability inclusion systems, it's around people 236 00:15:13.713 --> 00:15:16.649 management overall across the employee lifecycle. 237 00:15:17.691 --> 00:15:21.589 You know, what, what we'd often see, and I think we've all experienced this at 238 00:15:21.701 --> 00:15:25.455 one point in time or another, is decisions will be 239 00:15:25.455 --> 00:15:28.823 made in a room based on an assumption. Because 240 00:15:29.336 --> 00:15:33.087 we're not thinking fully. We're thinking more around kind of comfort and what we 241 00:15:33.087 --> 00:15:36.598 think

should be happening. And it often leads to people leaving 242 00:15:36.710 --> 00:15:40.654 organisations, not giving their full selves to the work. 243 00:15:40.718 --> 00:15:43.428 We hear an awful lot about quiet quitting in the last couple of years with 244 00:15:43.428 --> 00:15:47.131 the Great Resignation. It's harder than ever to find and keep 245 00:15:47.211 --> 00:15:50.722 great people. And I think if we stopped making snap 246 00:15:50.738 --> 00:15:54.538 decisions, whether it's about disabled people or not, or just 247 00:15:54.586 --> 00:15:58.209 about Sheila who's sitting in the canteen and we assume because maybe 248 00:15:58.674 --> 00:16:02.249 they are a mother and they have a very busy personal life. Maybe they don't 249 00:16:02.265 --> 00:16:05.872 want to take on additional work or additional responsibility in the workplace. 250 00:16:06.208 --> 00:16:10.120 That's an assumption based on what someone is thinking as opposed to asking the 251 00:16:10.120 --> 00:16:13.983 question. So I think what disability has shown me is that 252 00:16:14.704 --> 00:16:18.600 if we can ask the uncomfortable question when it comes to 253 00:16:18.712 --> 00:16:22.671 everyone in our organisation, rather than making assumptions, it 254 00:16:22.703 --> 00:16:25.493 means that we can not only attract, but we can keep the best people in 255 00:16:25.589 --> 00:16:29.147 the business and leverage innovation and creativity as opposed to 256 00:16:31.160 --> 00:16:34.900 Do you think there's a challenge around 257 00:16:34.900 --> 00:16:38.560 people not having the confidence and competence effectively to interact 258 00:16:38.560 --> 00:16:42.040 with people who are different than themselves? And it's not just about disability, it's people 259 00:16:42.040 --> 00:16:45.450 who are different, you know, different age, sex, race, whatever it may be. 260 00:16:46.060 --> 00:16:49.660 And someone who has a visible disability or an 261 00:16:49.660 --> 00:16:53.020 impairment, do people get nervous about having conversations? 262 00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:56.860 I think so. I'll give you a personal example. It's nothing to do with the 263 00:16:56.860 --> 00:17:00.330 fact that I can't see. I don't like football. I really, I just, I like, 264 00:17:00.410 --> 00:17:04.017 I have zero interest. I don't care. I think rugby players are 265 00:17:04.017 --> 00:17:07.896 beautiful. That's about as interested as I am in it. It used to 266 00:17:07.896 --> 00:17:11.423 make some of my colleagues in 2 different organisations, 267 00:17:12.465 --> 00:17:16.361 it was typically working with groups of men just at the levels that I was 268 00:17:16.361 --> 00:17:19.679 at. And they'd all be talking about the match and all this, and then it 269 00:17:19.679 --> 00:17:23.574 would kind of go silent when you walk into the room because, oh, she doesn't 270 00:17:23.574 --> 00:17:27.568 like it, so Should we ignore her? Should we just continue talking 271 00:17:27.616

--> 00:17:30.792 about it and exclude her? And I remember saying at one stage, I was like, 272 00:17:30.808 --> 00:17:34.417 it's fine to continue your conversation. I said, but maybe we could have a slightly 273 00:17:34.417 --> 00:17:38.282 different conversation. So every Tuesday morning isn't about the same football 274 00:17:38.282 --> 00:17:42.036 match with just different people's names in it. And the reason that I share that 275 00:17:42.036 --> 00:17:45.917 is I think we are so afraid of causing offence 276 00:17:46.751 --> 00:17:50.633 regardless of the subject matter, right? So whether it's gender or 277 00:17:50.761 --> 00:17:54.612 disability or it's religion, We've gotten to the point where we are so afraid of 278 00:17:54.612 --> 00:17:58.045 asking the question that we've just stopped asking questions. 279 00:17:58.719 --> 00:18:00.789 I'd have an awful lot of people who would come to me and say, oh, 280 00:18:01.319 --> 00:18:04.720 do you know, I've noticed that someone is doing X or Y, but I don't 281 00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:06.646 know what to do about it. I'm like, well, have you asked them why they're 282 00:18:06.662 --> 00:18:10.513 doing it? That literally, that's it. And you can see a light bulb 283 00:18:10.513 --> 00:18:14.444 going off every single time. And sometimes it's about having a constructive 284 00:18:14.444 --> 00:18:18.134 feedback conversation. Sometimes it's about coaching people. Sometimes 285 00:18:18.214 --> 00:18:22.112 it's literally the way that you have said something to someone. They didn't 286 00:18:22.144 --> 00:18:26.071 understand the importance of it, but you never double-checked. You never went back to 287 00:18:26.071 --> 00:18:29.917 say, right, are we all confirmed? Do we, are we all on the same page 288 00:18:29.917 --> 00:18:33.732 with this? And that's what inspired my book, Mind the Blind Spot, 289 00:18:33.764 --> 00:18:37.706 because you can, I firmly believe that you 290 00:18:37.771 --> 00:18:41.761 can hear hesitation in a room. You can hear when people aren't bought 291 00:18:41.761 --> 00:18:45.191 into something because that pause to me sounds 292 00:18:45.287 --> 00:18:49.182 different. Now, maybe that is the woo-woos around the visually impaired that's coming in 293 00:18:49.230 --> 00:18:53.224 there. I don't know. But I think anyone recognises, or the majority 294 00:18:53.224 --> 00:18:57.107 of people recognise, when a room isn't bought into something. But 295 00:18:57.107 --> 00:19:01.037 it's just so much easier to keep going. It's so much easier just to keep 296 00:19:01.085 --> 00:19:04.567 going. I'm like, okay, we'll set a deadline for that. And sure, we may or 297 00:19:04.567 --> 00:19:07.021 may not revisit it and we'll see how we get on then. That's going to 298 00:19:07.021 --> 00:19:10.294 be a future Amie and a future Jo problem, as opposed to being in the 299 00:19:10.310 --> 00:19:14.241 moment and saying, right, does everyone understand? Are we agreed? Do

300 00:19:14.241 --> 00:19:17.546 we want to challenge this a little bit more? Are we confident to move forward 301 00:19:17.546 --> 00:19:21.476 with this? I think it's To come back to your 302 00:19:21.541 --> 00:19:25.108 question after running down the road a little bit, I think we are too 303 00:19:25.108 --> 00:19:29.028 afraid to ask questions now because of fear of causing offence 304 00:19:29.028 --> 00:19:32.741 to people. And I think something as simple as, I'm not quite sure what to 305 00:19:32.741 --> 00:19:36.605 do here, so I'm going to ask you a question. Just tee it up for 306 00:19:36.622 --> 00:19:40.443 people. People like to know what's expected, and then it will 307 00:19:40.492 --> 00:19:44.398 allow you to have a more meaningful conversation. So 308 00:19:44.398 --> 00:19:48.060 where does this fear come from? Is it just Is it human nature or is 309 00:19:48.060 --> 00:19:51.717 it a learned behaviour, do you think? I think 310 00:19:51.717 --> 00:19:55.614 it's a bit of both. And to add another one into it, 311 00:19:55.809 --> 00:19:59.563 I think sometimes we just don't want to, do you know? And we have to 312 00:19:59.563 --> 00:20:03.032 be honest, we're all human. We all only have a certain amount of bandwidth. I 313 00:20:03.065 --> 00:20:05.687 know when my energy gets a bit low, it's hard to be 314 00:20:07.355 --> 00:20:11.354 consistently conscious around what's going on. The important thing to 315 00:20:11.354 --> 00:20:14.915 remember is we're not going for perfection. The goal is progress, not 316 00:20:14.915 --> 00:20:18.793 perfection. But I think the reason we're not asking questions is, yes, 317 00:20:18.906 --> 00:20:22.287 part of it is a learned behaviour where, hush-hush, we don't ask those questions. A 318 00:20:22.287 --> 00:20:25.717 bit like my perception of disability when I was younger and first diagnosed. 319 00:20:26.454 --> 00:20:29.996 There wasn't much of a conversation about it. It wasn't really explored because it was, 320 00:20:30.061 --> 00:20:32.561 it was a topic that no one really talked about. And that comes back to 321 00:20:32.561 --> 00:20:36.167 the history of disability where, you know, it was a medical model and it focused 322 00:20:36.215 --> 00:20:39.421 on what was wrong with the individual as opposed to what you were speaking about 323 00:20:39.421 --> 00:20:43.348 earlier, Joe, which is that society hasn't been created To allow people to 324 00:20:43.348 --> 00:20:46.379 succeed or navigate it independently. 325 00:20:47.678 --> 00:20:51.527 But it's, that's the learned thing where we are, we're 326 00:20:51.527 --> 00:20:55.375 encouraged not to be curious about something. And then, as I said, sometimes it 327 00:20:55.375 --> 00:20:59.048 just, sometimes we're just tired and we don't want to. And you don't have to 328 00:20:59.064 --> 00:21:02.223 be Inspector Gadget all the time. That's not what I'm encouraging people to do. I 329 00:21:02.223 --> 00:21:06.168 know I

ask a lot of questions because I am a massive fan 330 00:21:06.216 --> 00:21:09.760 of clarity and making sure that I understand what's expected. 331 00:21:10.370 --> 00:21:13.817 That's just a personal way that I like to work, but you know, you have 332 00:21:13.833 --> 00:21:17.039 to give yourself a little bit of grace, but more often than not, you know, 333 00:21:17.103 --> 00:21:21.046 we should be aware of who's around us and aware of interactions and aware that 334 00:21:21.046 --> 00:21:24.765 we have a responsibility if we're working with people. It's like you and I taking 335 00:21:24.813 --> 00:21:28.195 on clients. I'm pretty sure we would ask them a lot of the same questions 336 00:21:28.244 --> 00:21:31.626 to make sure that the engagement is going to be really meaningful and successful for 337 00:21:31.626 --> 00:21:35.248 both parties. You know, we have to put the effort in. I 338 00:21:35.248 --> 00:21:39.063 mean, I grew up in the— so I'm a child of the '60s 339 00:21:39.240 --> 00:21:43.152 and I grew up sort of I became sort of a young 340 00:21:43.249 --> 00:21:46.668 person who understood the world maybe in the very early '70s. 341 00:21:47.539 --> 00:21:51.344 And I remember in that time, images in my head 342 00:21:51.892 --> 00:21:55.596 of mothers giving their child a clip around the ear saying, don't 343 00:21:55.676 --> 00:21:58.511 stare, don't look at this person, or grabbing them by the ear and pulling them 344 00:21:58.511 --> 00:22:02.434 off if a person with a disability, or because I suppose in that time that 345 00:22:02.434 --> 00:22:05.568 lots of people had thalidomide conditions and 346 00:22:06.864 --> 00:22:10.844 We had the Spastic Society, so a lot of children wearing callipers still. People still 347 00:22:10.860 --> 00:22:14.824 probably had the aftermath of polio and that sort of era I grew up 348 00:22:14.824 --> 00:22:18.548 in. And so there was very much a don't stare, don't ask, don't talk to 349 00:22:18.564 --> 00:22:22.319 that person, keep away from them, almost like ingrained 350 00:22:22.768 --> 00:22:26.491 in the upbringing. And I think some of that has progressed into 351 00:22:26.588 --> 00:22:30.503 adulthood, maybe around my generation or slightly younger, where people have 352 00:22:30.536 --> 00:22:34.080 been taught not to ask. Or not to, not 353 00:22:34.305 --> 00:22:38.119 to, not to pry. Yeah. And I think some of that is 354 00:22:38.376 --> 00:22:42.142 historical and related to institutions, right? And we have to 355 00:22:42.142 --> 00:22:45.925 acknowledge that. And some of it does genuinely come from a good place, 356 00:22:46.486 --> 00:22:49.692 but the best place to come from is curiosity. Obviously with a lot of 357 00:22:49.692 --> 00:22:52.993 organisations, and I've been a part of it as well, where, 358 00:22:53.618 --> 00:22:56.536 you know, we decide we're going to bring out the DE&I flag. It's going to 359 00:22:56.584 --> 00:22:59.357 be great. It's going to be

great. We're going to have a committee. We're all 360 00:22:59.389 --> 00:23:02.340 going to talk about how much we want to learn. We're all going to talk 361 00:23:02.340 --> 00:23:06.274 that we're going to be inclusive. And then we're going to focus on really specific 362 00:23:06.274 --> 00:23:10.047 things like Pride or International Day of Persons with 363 00:23:10.063 --> 00:23:13.435 Disabilities. Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for an awareness day and anyone 364 00:23:13.435 --> 00:23:16.485 that I'm connected with on LinkedIn, you'll see there's not an awareness day I don't 365 00:23:16.485 --> 00:23:20.419 celebrate over there. But for me, I think 366 00:23:21.302 --> 00:23:25.236 if you think a little bit more like how children behave, right? So 367 00:23:25.236 --> 00:23:28.607 when we were small in school, We just played with each other. 368 00:23:29.233 --> 00:23:33.022 Everyone was pretty much the same. It didn't matter what colour your skin was, if 369 00:23:33.022 --> 00:23:36.682 you had a disability, it was kind of an even playing field, right? 370 00:23:37.179 --> 00:23:40.518 And if you take that openness and try and bring it to your life today, 371 00:23:40.887 --> 00:23:44.820 that openness and freedom and curiosity, I think it would serve 372 00:23:44.820 --> 00:23:48.737 us an awful lot more. But in the workplace, obviously we, look, we 373 00:23:48.737 --> 00:23:52.718 have to have ways of working and be respectful to each other. And I'm 374 00:23:52.750 --> 00:23:56.282 not saying to people, go in there and ask really personal inappropriate questions. You know, 375 00:23:56.298 --> 00:24:00.193 we're all adults here. But I think if we can think in 376 00:24:00.290 --> 00:24:04.039 broader strokes around how are we communicating 377 00:24:04.151 --> 00:24:07.612 with our people, that's not just disability specific. Do people 378 00:24:07.612 --> 00:24:11.169 understand what they need to know, feel, and do after the town 379 00:24:11.265 --> 00:24:14.967 hall? Are we being really clear about that so that everyone can 380 00:24:15.031 --> 00:24:18.684 understand? Are we creating opportunities for 381 00:24:18.972 --> 00:24:22.465 development and performance reviews so people can actively 382 00:24:22.497 --> 00:24:26.441 participate where they feel psychologically safe? to 383 00:24:27.131 --> 00:24:31.000 disclose, whether that is a disability or a difficult situation 384 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:34.884 that they're having, or that a manager can give feedback to someone without it 385 00:24:34.932 --> 00:24:38.785 feeling like an assassination. We need to think in broader terms 386 00:24:38.801 --> 00:24:42.669 across organisations so that we are creating a system or an ecosystem 387 00:24:43.199 --> 00:24:46.891 where people can actively participate. And for me, that starts with 388 00:24:46.891 --> 00:24:50.069 that childlike curiosity and that openness to 389 00:24:50.727 --> 00:24:54.628 everyone having a seat at the table. I'm often asked by people that I 390 00:24:54.676 --> 00:24:58.670 coach directly, you know, I really want to be able to build respect 391 00:24:58.670 --> 00:25:01.636 with my team. And the first thing I say is, well, let's be clear. If 392 00:25:01.636 --> 00:25:04.585 you're looking for trust, yes, you have to build trust with people and work has 393 00:25:04.618 --> 00:25:08.385 to go into it. Respect is a baseline. Everyone should be coming to the table 394 00:25:08.385 --> 00:25:12.216 respecting everyone around that table. And that should be a non-negotiable. We're 395 00:25:12.216 --> 00:25:15.454 all adults. You'd like to think so, wouldn't you? You'd like to think so. 396 00:25:16.144 --> 00:25:20.103 In an ideal world, in Amie land. Yeah, I 397 00:25:20.103 --> 00:25:24.002 mean, I think I look at it, what's terminology that's used 398 00:25:24.082 --> 00:25:28.064 often in the UK is we should treat everybody with dignity and respect. 399 00:25:28.417 --> 00:25:31.661 And I say, okay, cool then. So what does that mean then? 400 00:25:32.512 --> 00:25:36.173 Well, we've just treated people with dignity and respect. Well, cool then. Define or explain 401 00:25:36.221 --> 00:25:39.641 to me how that manifests itself by treating people with dignity and respect. 402 00:25:40.316 --> 00:25:43.976 And most people don't really understand some of those 403 00:25:44.089 --> 00:25:48.087 terms or what that means because fundamentally treating me with dignity and 404 00:25:48.087 --> 00:25:51.781 respect is understanding what matters to me. not what matters 405 00:25:52.343 --> 00:25:55.749 to general people. So the dignity and respect thing is this very specific 406 00:25:56.841 --> 00:26:00.793 individual person-centered thing. So I need to ask you about you, 407 00:26:01.339 --> 00:26:04.938 what matters to you. And if I don't engage with you 408 00:26:04.954 --> 00:26:08.681 personally, how can I possibly treat you with dignity and respect? Because I don't 409 00:26:08.745 --> 00:26:12.167 understand what that means to you. And I think you've just hit the nail on 410 00:26:12.199 --> 00:26:15.139 the head there. We have, you know, you should treat everyone with dignity and respect. 411 00:26:15.251 --> 00:26:18.863 And that is true, you know, on the face of it, that's true, right? But 412 00:26:18.863 --> 00:26:22.566 rather than just saying, you should be doing this, you need to encourage people 413 00:26:22.871 --> 00:26:26.862 to reflect on that and interpret what that means for themselves. So it's as 414 00:26:26.862 --> 00:26:30.549 important for me to be curious about you and what dignity and respect looks for 415 00:26:30.565 --> 00:26:34.060 you, but how do I define that as an individual? You know, we're kind of 416 00:26:34.092 --> 00:26:37.683 just going through life with these slogans in the background around dignity and 417 00:26:37.683 --> 00:26:41.097 respect and the future is for everyone, and they're all 418

00:26:41.225 --> 00:26:45.217 fundamentally true. But as individuals, regardless of your circumstance, you need to figure 419 00:26:45.217 --> 00:26:48.439 out what does that actually mean for you before you can go out then and 420 00:26:48.439 --> 00:26:52.065 be curious about other people. Rather than blindly going through life, just 421 00:26:52.129 --> 00:26:55.259 assuming that these things are going to happen without any intention going behind them. 422 00:26:56.046 --> 00:26:59.546 Fundamentally, people are always worried about what about me? You know, it's what's in it 423 00:26:59.578 --> 00:27:03.446 for me? It's the WIFM, isn't it? It's the— I look at it as, 424 00:27:03.767 --> 00:27:07.524 I think of it as the wedding photo. You've got the— you've got at the 425 00:27:07.524 --> 00:27:11.232 end of the wedding, everybody gets in a lineup, you know, all mother of the 426 00:27:11.232 --> 00:27:15.149 bride on one side, father on the— so you've got 50 people in this 427 00:27:15.149 --> 00:27:19.010 wedding photograph and the photographs get published. Everybody grabs that big 428 00:27:19.010 --> 00:27:22.729 wedding photograph and who do they look at? They look at themselves. They don't care 429 00:27:22.729 --> 00:27:25.574 about anybody else in that photograph. They're going, what do I look like? Are my 430 00:27:25.574 --> 00:27:28.982 eyes open? How was I standing? What are my hands doing? Or was my dress 431 00:27:29.111 --> 00:27:32.676 okay? People care about themselves. They're not looking at the bride, 432 00:27:33.402 --> 00:27:37.178 maybe not first anyway. So I think we've got to think about how we 433 00:27:37.195 --> 00:27:40.915 resonate with individuals and almost 434 00:27:40.915 --> 00:27:44.498 feed people's need to be the centre of the conversation 435 00:27:44.530 --> 00:27:48.396 sometimes and help them relearn 436 00:27:48.396 --> 00:27:52.150 and learn about how they can talk about other people. And sometimes you have to 437 00:27:52.150 --> 00:27:55.149 show an interest in that person to get them to show an interest in you. 438 00:27:55.406 --> 00:27:59.352 So it's about feeding their, well, ego is probably a bit strong, 439 00:27:59.384 --> 00:28:02.240 but feeding their need, their human need, if you like. 440 00:28:03.539 --> 00:28:07.148 Yeah. And it's kind of a fundamental, especially in the 441 00:28:07.148 --> 00:28:10.855 workplace. You know, you have a group of people, right, who might not 442 00:28:10.855 --> 00:28:14.806 necessarily have chosen to work with each other, right? Because when you take 443 00:28:14.806 --> 00:28:18.019 a job, yeah, it is, it goes both ways. It's a contract of employment. You're, 444 00:28:18.244 --> 00:28:21.039 you're in it for your own reason. The employer's in it for their reason, but 445 00:28:21.039 --> 00:28:25.006 you might not necessarily have chosen your team, but you're getting paid to 446 00:28:25.006 --> 00:28:28.347 be there. You're getting paid to do a job. So you have to invest the 447 00:28:28.347 --> 00:28:32.266 time actively around figuring out how to work with other people, what their style is. 448 00:28:32.684 --> 00:28:36.441 I know every manager that comes onto my training courses. We do an 449 00:28:36.473 --> 00:28:40.079 onboarding session and one of the questions I always ask is, do you have a 450 00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:43.991 particular learning style? And 9 times out of 10, well, firstly, most 451 00:28:43.991 --> 00:28:47.325 people have never been asked that question and they seem stunned. 9 times out of 452 00:28:47.325 --> 00:28:51.187 10, everyone will say, no, sure, look, whatever, whatever way you're going to do it, 453 00:28:51.203 --> 00:28:54.986 it's going to be fine. But you'll always get one person who will disclose, well, 454 00:28:55.307 --> 00:28:58.897 I'm a little bit shy, so I'm not great at speaking up in groups. Even 455 00:28:58.897 --> 00:29:02.263 when it's their own team or managers in the middle management there that they've been 456 00:29:02.263 --> 00:29:06.239 working with for years. But they haven't had the opportunity to disclose that. They've just 457 00:29:06.271 --> 00:29:10.118 been seen as the person who doesn't want to participate in activities. Well, 458 00:29:10.134 --> 00:29:13.837 we have to, you know, you don't just become great 459 00:29:13.901 --> 00:29:17.636 pals or people or have great working relationships by accident. Work goes 460 00:29:17.732 --> 00:29:21.003 into it. That person you might be admiring in the workplace who 461 00:29:21.740 --> 00:29:24.866 gets along with everyone and has something to say to everyone when they come into 462 00:29:24.866 --> 00:29:27.799 the office, even if you have a lot of field-based staff, that person has put 463 00:29:27.847 --> 00:29:31.743 work into it. Yes, some people are naturally charismatic, but most of us are actually 464 00:29:32.176 --> 00:29:35.815 thinking about other people in the organisation and how can we work best with them 465 00:29:35.943 --> 00:29:39.872 to reach our goals. That's so true. I'm very conscious of that when I 466 00:29:39.872 --> 00:29:43.721 run workshops and training, that the first thing I like to do is get 467 00:29:43.721 --> 00:29:47.698 everyone to introduce themselves. But I also recognise not everybody wants to 468 00:29:47.730 --> 00:29:51.708 say a word. But what I also think is once you've said one thing, 469 00:29:52.221 --> 00:29:55.813 once you've spoken out once, you're more willing to speak out again. So 470 00:29:56.391 --> 00:30:00.079 I try and give everyone an easy icebreaker. So what's your name? What do you 471 00:30:00.079 --> 00:30:03.590 do? And why are you here? And that's normally a very easy thing for people 472 00:30:03.590 --> 00:30:07.590 to answer. Then later on, people have now had that interaction. They've 473 00:30:07.590 --> 00:30:11.590 spoken that out loud to the group and they're able to interact. But I'm always 474

00:30:11.590 --> 00:30:14.910 very nervous about assuming that anybody wants to speak 475 00:30:14.910 --> 00:30:18.530 up. But it's like people must be sitting around the table with anxiety 476 00:30:18.530 --> 00:30:21.080 going, oh, don't ask me, don't ask me a question, don't ask me a question, 477 00:30:21.290 --> 00:30:25.270 avoid eye contact. And it's human nature, isn't it? And it's even 478 00:30:25.270 --> 00:30:28.970 the most extrovert people can sometimes avoid those sort of interactions. 479 00:30:30.190 --> 00:30:34.010 100%. And I think, look, a very great friend of mine, Caroline 480 00:30:34.010 --> 00:30:37.870 Casey, always says labels are for jam jars, right? I think we're really quick 481 00:30:37.870 --> 00:30:41.530 to label people with extrovert and introvert. And I, so they remind me of 2 482 00:30:41.530 --> 00:30:44.470 things that a couple of years ago I was leaving a role and I'd been 483 00:30:44.470 --> 00:30:47.450 there for a few years and I'd really enjoyed being there. And I'd been hired 484 00:30:47.450 --> 00:30:50.870 directly by the CEO and it was a great opportunity and we'd achieved some really 485 00:30:50.870 --> 00:30:54.730 great things. And we were all out for farewell drinks because 486 00:30:54.730 --> 00:30:57.030 we're Irish. So you have to go to the pub when you're leaving your company 487 00:30:57.030 --> 00:31:00.976 and We were just having a conversation about what was next for me. And 488 00:31:00.976 --> 00:31:04.090 this was before I set up my business. And they had said to me, you're 489 00:31:04.090 --> 00:31:07.540 such an extrovert, you know, you could, you could go speaking full-time, like you'd be 490 00:31:07.540 --> 00:31:11.439 great. And people love working with you and you're the centre of every, um, every 491 00:31:11.471 --> 00:31:15.258 gathering. And I was so taken aback because we'd worked with each other, 492 00:31:15.338 --> 00:31:18.291 not only for that period of time I was in-house in that organisation, but had 493 00:31:18.291 --> 00:31:21.821 been working with each other for the few years before that on various different 494 00:31:21.821 --> 00:31:25.351 projects. And they'd never realised that I'm not an extrovert. 495 00:31:26.619 --> 00:31:29.862 I am someone who will dial up the energy based on the people in the 496 00:31:29.911 --> 00:31:33.860 room, because sometimes people don't want a clown jumping all over them, 497 00:31:33.924 --> 00:31:37.392 right? Or someone trying to be a comedian. Sometimes you just need to be 498 00:31:37.392 --> 00:31:40.940 thoughtful and considerate around other people in the room and give them space to talk. 499 00:31:41.647 --> 00:31:45.628 But I'm absolutely not an extrovert, but I will, I will adjust how I behave 500 00:31:46.062 --> 00:31:49.851 to try and make sure not necessarily that I'm fitting in, but that, 501 00:31:50.060 --> 00:31:53.672 you know, that we're, we're able to work together because you don't need high energy 502 00:31:53.752 --> 00:31:57.519 all the time. And I was, I was so taken aback by that. And maybe 503 00:31:57.519 --> 00:32:00.083 it was a lack of awareness on my part. Maybe I, that's the way that 504 00:32:00.083 --> 00:32:03.655 he had seen me all the time because that's how I read a room. But 505 00:32:05.129 --> 00:32:07.741 to go back to another point that person said was, oh, you could go speaking 506 00:32:07.789 --> 00:32:11.762 full-time. When I first started doing public speaking, I genuinely thought I was 507 00:32:11.794 --> 00:32:15.126 gonna faint every time. My mouth would go dry and then it would go wet. 508 00:32:15.543 --> 00:32:17.786 And then, you know, that feeling when you're about to faint where like you get 509 00:32:17.786 --> 00:32:20.766 a rush of blood or heat up the back of your neck. And I had 510 00:32:20.766 --> 00:32:24.707 that for years. I even remember in university, I was so afraid. 511 00:32:24.755 --> 00:32:28.672 Yeah. to even do a presentation that I nearly failed one of my modules in 512 00:32:28.769 --> 00:32:32.590 first year. I was that afraid. I was willing to just flunk out because I 513 00:32:32.622 --> 00:32:36.508 was afraid to do presentations. But I knew that it was going to 514 00:32:36.556 --> 00:32:40.555 have to be a part of my career moving forward, especially if I wanted to 515 00:32:41.454 --> 00:32:44.954 continue with journalism or do communications or do the training that I'm doing today. 516 00:32:45.500 --> 00:32:48.679 So I had to put an awful lot of work into it, which just speaks 517 00:32:48.679 --> 00:32:52.678 to that, you know, you have to put work into what you're doing. We also 518 00:32:52.678 --> 00:32:55.231 have to try and be mindful of the people around you and how that's going 519 00:32:55.231 --> 00:32:59.186 to impact them as well. I'm relating to exactly what you just said there. 520 00:32:59.315 --> 00:33:03.042 I'm a fairly seasoned public speaker, professional speaker, 521 00:33:03.107 --> 00:33:06.160 and even now I get stage anxiety. 522 00:33:07.758 --> 00:33:10.352 If I'm staying in a hotel, I can't ever sleep in the hotel the night 523 00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:14.314 before. I'm up until 2 o'clock. I wake at 4. I have very 524 00:33:14.330 --> 00:33:18.114 little sleep. I turn up, I'm pacing, and then if I'm on 525 00:33:18.114 --> 00:33:21.911 next, I'm sort of hanging around. People are trying to talk to me. 526 00:33:22.217 --> 00:33:26.056 I go, I'm trying to get in the zone. And I said to one 527 00:33:26.056 --> 00:33:29.663 person, I said, look, if you told me that my slot was cancelled and I 528 00:33:29.663 --> 00:33:33.638 could go right now, I'd be gone. And literally 529 00:33:33.975 --> 00:33:37.406 as I'm walking up the stage, I go, but I think what I've learned is 530 00:33:37.518 --> 00:33:41.333 that once I've got, once I'm on the stage and I'm grounded and 531 00:33:41.349 --> 00:33:45.277 I've got that sweep of the audience, I've

looked around, taken my 532 00:33:45.277 --> 00:33:48.836 deep breath, I know that whatever comes outta my mouth is gonna be 533 00:33:48.836 --> 00:33:52.735 sensible. Although I, to be honest, I very rarely 534 00:33:52.783 --> 00:33:55.399 know what I'm going to say until it comes out of my mouth the first 535 00:33:55.495 --> 00:33:58.224 time, because I've got about 5 or 6 different openings and I'm not sure which 536 00:33:58.256 --> 00:34:01.271 one I'm going to use until it happens. And 537 00:34:02.174 --> 00:34:05.511 I'm just completely on a roll then. I get into flow and I'm good. But 538 00:34:05.560 --> 00:34:08.961 yeah, it's, I think quite a lot of professional speakers I know 539 00:34:09.542 --> 00:34:13.385 are very similar. We're not extroverts. We are performant. 540 00:34:13.772 --> 00:34:17.549 We're performers. And I know many stage actors who are not extroverts. 541 00:34:18.388 --> 00:34:22.145 But when you're delivering, you're able to step into that, into that zone, 542 00:34:22.401 --> 00:34:26.078 as you were saying. And I'm so glad that you shared that, especially 543 00:34:26.254 --> 00:34:30.187 as the great speaker that you are, because these things don't 544 00:34:30.203 --> 00:34:34.040 happen by accident. You know, no one lands on a stage and pulls a keynote 545 00:34:34.120 --> 00:34:37.813 out of their back pocket that they haven't practised. Like, you have 6 openers you've 546 00:34:37.813 --> 00:34:41.634 mentioned there. It's because you put the time in. And I'm pretty sure I'll 547 00:34:41.666 --> 00:34:44.475 make an assumption here, which I know I've been telling people not to do, 548 00:34:44.491 --> 00:34:47.907 but A lot of this comes down to, and I'll come back to that in 549 00:34:47.939 --> 00:34:51.531 terms of contradictions and situational leadership, but a lot of what comes down to 550 00:34:51.707 --> 00:34:55.652 landing a great speech is knowing your audience and thinking about who's going to 551 00:34:55.652 --> 00:34:59.629 be in the room. So it's not about what Joe wants to get across and 552 00:34:59.629 --> 00:35:02.772 what Amie wants to get across. It's what does, what does this group of people 553 00:35:02.772 --> 00:35:06.637 need to get across? I'm a firm believer that anyone who is 554 00:35:06.685 --> 00:35:10.598 managing people or setting up businesses should absolutely 555 00:35:10.614 --> 00:35:13.789 get communication support, not because we have to be 556 00:35:14.061 --> 00:35:17.896 extroverts or amazing inspiring keynote speakers, 557 00:35:18.555 --> 00:35:22.376 but that you need to have dedicated time to figure out 558 00:35:22.826 --> 00:35:26.165 or to set time aside to understand who your audience is and to be really 559 00:35:26.198 --> 00:35:29.875 clear around what they need, not just what you need to get across from them. 560 00:35:30.051 --> 00:35:33.664 But yeah, I think that part can sometimes be lost on people that the 561 00:35:33.664 --> 00:35:37.100 extrovert is the extrovert because that's just their personality. Well, no, maybe they're dialling it 562 00:35:37.100 --> 00:35:40.327 up because they feel like something is so important that you might remember it if 563 00:35:40.327 --> 00:35:44.289 it's more of a performance. Yeah, I definitely see myself 564 00:35:44.561 --> 00:35:48.169 as a performer rather than as an 565 00:35:48.249 --> 00:35:52.224 educator as such. You know, when I'm on stage, okay, if I'm doing a workshop, 566 00:35:52.353 --> 00:35:56.168 10, 20 people on the same level, it's different to 567 00:35:56.200 --> 00:35:59.695 being 6 foot in the air looking out over a group of people. So when 568 00:35:59.711 --> 00:36:03.559 you're up on stage, I think of it as a performance, you know, 569 00:36:03.639 --> 00:36:06.220 a rock star or whatever you're, what you're trying to do is you're trying to 570 00:36:06.220 --> 00:36:10.163 get the audience to beat with you, to get 571 00:36:10.163 --> 00:36:13.754 your rhythm, to show interest, to lean in, to show 572 00:36:13.770 --> 00:36:17.280 engagement. Whereas obviously when you've got 20 people or 10 people around the 573 00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:21.192 table, you can be one-to-one, you can lean into and talk to each individual 574 00:36:21.192 --> 00:36:24.975 person. But it's a different skill. But fundamentally, I 575 00:36:25.055 --> 00:36:27.940 just, I see it as a performance. And I look back at 576 00:36:27.940 --> 00:36:31.387 my early— I look back at my life and think, 577 00:36:31.868 --> 00:36:34.320 if I had my life again, I'd love to have been a rock star. You 578 00:36:34.336 --> 00:36:38.010 know, Suzi Quatro or some of those real old 579 00:36:38.042 --> 00:36:41.667 sort of Pat Benatar, sort of real leather rock 580 00:36:41.876 --> 00:36:45.597 type female sort of divas, if you like, of the '70s and '80s. 581 00:36:45.886 --> 00:36:49.720 And I thought, well, I can't sing, I can't play any instruments, but speaking is 582 00:36:49.736 --> 00:36:53.458 my performance. So I speak without music, I speak without 583 00:36:53.458 --> 00:36:57.195 singing it. So I have my stage, I have my microphone, and I have an 584 00:36:57.195 --> 00:37:01.077 audience. So it's, I think back and I think, well, I've 585 00:37:01.077 --> 00:37:04.109 actually achieved a goal. I didn't realise it was a goal, but now I look 586 00:37:04.109 --> 00:37:07.956 back, it was. Isn't that funny how you can have an 587 00:37:07.956 --> 00:37:11.065 idea or vision in your head and you can achieve it without even realising it? 588 00:37:11.129 --> 00:37:15.071 Because it just looked a little bit different. Yeah. So yeah, it is different. It's 589 00:37:15.071 --> 00:37:18.932 just different. I entertain people differently. And maybe that's the relationship I have with 590 00:37:18.932 --> 00:37:22.858 speaking is I'm entertaining because if I'm entertaining, people are 591 00:37:22.858 --> 00:37:26.592 engaging. If people are engaging,

they're listening. Hopefully they'll take, they'll then take some 592 00:37:26.624 --> 00:37:30.534 actions and do something with it rather than just 593 00:37:30.534 --> 00:37:33.852 laugh and, or or cry or whatever they're doing in my audience. Yeah, 594 00:37:33.900 --> 00:37:37.845 because you've got to leave people with impact and confidence to 595 00:37:37.845 --> 00:37:41.661 do something with it. Otherwise, we spend a lot of time with awareness. Awareness is 596 00:37:41.757 --> 00:37:45.670 good. I'm aware. Great. Well, fantastic. Now what? That is so, 597 00:37:45.878 --> 00:37:49.470 so powerful. And it's so nice to see that the 598 00:37:49.470 --> 00:37:53.382 inspiring talks have now moved to kind of action-oriented outside the 599 00:37:53.382 --> 00:37:56.766 room. Because it was, it was something that I struggled with very early in my, 600 00:37:57.247 --> 00:38:01.158 the speaking side of my work was So what next? And 601 00:38:01.158 --> 00:38:03.914 there was for a long time an appetite that you'd be hired in as a 602 00:38:03.914 --> 00:38:07.647 speaker to just do the inspiring part because that's, that was, that was the 603 00:38:07.647 --> 00:38:11.509 specification. That's all you needed. But things have moved beyond that now because I think 604 00:38:11.669 --> 00:38:14.634 part of it comes down to people wanting bang for their buck. But part of 605 00:38:14.634 --> 00:38:18.479 it is as well that people have moved 606 00:38:18.479 --> 00:38:21.844 beyond, like you were saying, just that awareness piece. I understand now the importance of 607 00:38:21.844 --> 00:38:25.369 X or Y or Z. What do I actually do now? And I think that 608 00:38:25.369 --> 00:38:29.328 comes down to the overall I suppose, shift that we're seeing that 609 00:38:29.841 --> 00:38:33.303 integrity is so much more important now than it's ever been. And how you do 610 00:38:33.303 --> 00:38:37.279 that is you actually, you do what you say you're going 611 00:38:37.311 --> 00:38:41.078 to do. So if you're going to invest in bringing in a speaker to help 612 00:38:41.078 --> 00:38:44.540 awareness around people development or 613 00:38:45.646 --> 00:38:49.590 serving customers from a particular dynamic, everyone in that room is going to have 614 00:38:49.590 --> 00:38:53.084 to leave with something to do moving forward so that they understand that it's not 615 00:38:53.084 --> 00:38:56.867 just enough to engage and have the nodding Churchill dogs in the background 616 00:38:56.867 --> 00:39:00.057 anymore. It's about bringing it outside of the room. room to actually have an impact, 617 00:39:00.090 --> 00:39:03.648 not just for the bottom line of a business, but also in terms of creating 618 00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:07.255 more integrity and authenticity in the business. For me, that's been 619 00:39:07.447 --> 00:39:11.086 really important. And it's something that I would always bring into my training 620 00:39:11.134 --> 00:39:15.046 sessions as well for people. Like, I can present you with all of the information, 621 00:39:15.062 --> 00:39:18.652 like you're saying, like a workshop and a keynote is fundamentally different. So in workshops, 622 00:39:19.069 --> 00:39:22.820 we are working together to learn something and I can present you that information and 623 00:39:22.820 --> 00:39:26.652 you can practise it here. But you have to decide what you're going to bring 624 00:39:26.764 --> 00:39:30.691 forward. I can only give you the information to a certain extent unless 625 00:39:30.691 --> 00:39:32.630 you're going hire me to sit beside you and tell you how to do it 626 00:39:32.630 --> 00:39:36.203 every day. You need to be intentional about what you're going to do 627 00:39:36.203 --> 00:39:40.129 next in terms of being a better coach or hiring different 628 00:39:40.129 --> 00:39:43.751 people or having a better onboarding process for people. It's not just enough to be 629 00:39:43.751 --> 00:39:47.356 aware. No, no. And what frustrates me 630 00:39:47.356 --> 00:39:51.218 often is in the line of work you do, I do, is how 631 00:39:51.266 --> 00:39:54.455 many callbacks you don't get. You know, there's a lot of intention, you know, oh 632 00:39:54.471 --> 00:39:57.339 yeah, we'll get you in. We'll start doing this. You run a couple of sessions. 633 00:39:58.334 --> 00:40:01.446 And then I say, oh yeah, we'll pick this up later in the year. And 634 00:40:01.446 --> 00:40:04.526 they never do. They've moved on, doing something else. You think, well, all of that 635 00:40:04.526 --> 00:40:08.247 investment you gave in your people's time, not just my cost, but the people 636 00:40:08.520 --> 00:40:12.402 gave up time for that. And what's the follow-up? I 637 00:40:12.466 --> 00:40:16.380 always send people a delegate pack afterwards. I give it a week. Then 638 00:40:16.380 --> 00:40:19.155 I say, these are the actions we agreed on. So they've had a chance to 639 00:40:19.171 --> 00:40:21.610 have a weekend and all the other stuff. And I want to drop back in 640 00:40:21.610 --> 00:40:25.509 your head a week later. And I very rarely get anybody Clicking on the 641 00:40:25.509 --> 00:40:28.496 links, I track the links and they, I very rarely get people clicking on it 642 00:40:28.496 --> 00:40:32.142 or downloading it or that you think, why did you come then? Did you, 643 00:40:32.737 --> 00:40:36.045 was I so good? You learned everything while I was in the room and you 644 00:40:36.045 --> 00:40:39.242 don't need to talk to me again. Or was I that bad that you didn't 645 00:40:39.258 --> 00:40:42.647 learn anything anyway, but the feedback form says I was good, but you didn't want 646 00:40:42.647 --> 00:40:45.763 to do anything with it. It's like, I think that's where we want to do 647 00:40:45.763 --> 00:40:49.586 is the measurements, is the measuring the impact a week later, a month 648 00:40:49.618 --> 00:40:53.355 later, and a year later. What's changed? It 649 00:40:53.355 -->

00:40:57.106 comes back, does not come back down to, so what's the motivation in the first 650 00:40:57.154 --> 00:41:00.809 place? Do you know? If we're talking about 651 00:41:00.985 --> 00:41:04.913 inclusion, right? So you could, you can use inclusion and you 652 00:41:04.913 --> 00:41:08.616 could call it people management, or you could call it customer acquisition. Whoever's listening to 653 00:41:08.616 --> 00:41:12.512 this episode, decide which phrase you want, right? But the principle is the same. What's 654 00:41:12.544 --> 00:41:16.327 the motivation for doing something? In a lot of cases, it might 655 00:41:16.391 --> 00:41:20.381 be Right, we're having a bit of an issue around engagement with people at 656 00:41:20.381 --> 00:41:24.210 the moment, or maybe there's something around our employer branding that we need to change, 657 00:41:24.787 --> 00:41:28.728 or maybe there's an issue around engagement, right? So let's 658 00:41:28.728 --> 00:41:32.093 bring in the shiny, the shiny thing that people are telling us they want us 659 00:41:32.093 --> 00:41:35.617 to do, and we'll motivate them for a while, and then we will 660 00:41:35.617 --> 00:41:39.591 fully intend on bringing this forward. And 661 00:41:39.623 --> 00:41:43.436 then what happens is day-to-day business gets in the way 662 00:41:43.709 --> 00:41:47.701 because it wasn't fully thought through. Now, I never sit here 663 00:41:47.701 --> 00:41:51.118 and I say to people, you have to have, you know, the perfect project plan 664 00:41:51.326 --> 00:41:55.033 with RACIs coming out your eyeballs, but you do need to think 665 00:41:55.033 --> 00:41:58.963 strategically. So if you're bringing someone in for the purposes of 666 00:41:58.963 --> 00:42:02.958 engaging or retaining or recruiting the best people in your organisation, and you're 667 00:42:02.958 --> 00:42:05.670 only going to do a one and done, you might as well not bother. And 668 00:42:05.686 --> 00:42:08.750 I'm not trying to shoot you in the foot, Jo, in terms of getting more 669 00:42:08.750 --> 00:42:12.713 speaking gigs, but the reality is you're going to lose 670 00:42:12.841 --> 00:42:16.834 more engagement and respect from your team If you're going to have the 671 00:42:16.834 --> 00:42:20.825 fun D&I committee, that's kind of just a lip service group that don't actually get 672 00:42:20.825 --> 00:42:24.735 to do the doing. It's so important that you're not just saying 673 00:42:24.767 --> 00:42:28.181 that you're going to do something, you actually go and do it moving forward because 674 00:42:28.213 --> 00:42:31.979 people can see through it. They can see through it and people want— so it's 675 00:42:32.043 --> 00:42:35.874 where we are today in the world is people want to be doing 676 00:42:35.970 --> 00:42:39.880 just more than the mundane tasks that they might find themselves 677 00:42:39.912 --> 00:42:43.566 doing. They want to be part of something bigger. And for mission-driven organisations, 678

00:42:43.678 --> 00:42:47.382 that's brilliant because you can connect. to a wider mission. 679 00:42:47.847 --> 00:42:51.744 But if you're in a standard corporate who is embarking on their 680 00:42:51.841 --> 00:42:55.722 D&I journey and it appears bitty and it's not 681 00:42:55.866 --> 00:42:59.603 linked back to the company strategy, not only are you going to lose engagement from 682 00:42:59.699 --> 00:43:03.212 your team, but you're also going to, I suppose, reduce any 683 00:43:03.244 --> 00:43:07.141 financial or profitability that you could have leveraged from that, be it 684 00:43:07.157 --> 00:43:11.151 by reducing hiring costs or being able to attract better customers. 685 00:43:11.327 --> 00:43:14.551 You're going to lose so much more than you even realise because you didn't simply 686 00:43:14.551 --> 00:43:18.480 think Is there something more to this than the very inspiring 30 minutes 687 00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:22.040 we're going to have when someone comes in to talk to us? You've 688 00:43:22.569 --> 00:43:26.161 mentioned a couple of words there and I'll pick up on them because one of 689 00:43:26.161 --> 00:43:29.834 them is, you know, you say one and done and yeah, that is the enemy 690 00:43:30.106 --> 00:43:32.592 of all of it, the one and done. We think we can solve the world 691 00:43:32.592 --> 00:43:36.569 with one initiative, but you use the word retention or retain. And whenever 692 00:43:36.585 --> 00:43:40.386 I do inclusive recruitment training or, I hate the term 693 00:43:40.386 --> 00:43:44.237 inclusive recruitment, But my first definition is, what is inclusive recruitment? 694 00:43:44.687 --> 00:43:48.218 Inclusive recruitment is just inclusion done well, or done right. 695 00:43:48.379 --> 00:43:52.376 It should be nothing special about inclusive recruitment. It's just good 696 00:43:52.408 --> 00:43:55.940 recruitment. 100%. But the objective should be 697 00:43:55.940 --> 00:43:59.439 retention. If you're not recruiting to retain, 698 00:44:00.435 --> 00:44:03.565 why are you recruiting? If you're not, so 699 00:44:04.432 --> 00:44:08.381 I would say most EDR, D&I, have whatever buzzword you want to 700 00:44:08.381 --> 00:44:11.217 use. if you're not thinking about retention 701 00:44:12.627 --> 00:44:16.072 as being an objective or an ROI, if you like, 702 00:44:16.633 --> 00:44:20.415 then you're missing a trick. Because if you don't treat someone fairly, you don't treat 703 00:44:20.415 --> 00:44:24.293 someone with dignity and respect, you don't give someone the needs, then are they going 704 00:44:24.293 --> 00:44:28.138 to come back as an employee, as a customer, as 705 00:44:28.186 --> 00:44:30.894 a whatever it may be? So DEI, 706 00:44:31.856 --> 00:44:35.702 going back to Maslow, the hygiene versus the 707 00:44:35.702 --> 00:44:39.379 And the motivation, if we're not giving people the hygiene, the 708 00:44:39.379 --> 00:44:42.654 dignity and respect is hygiene as far as I'm concerned. If you get that wrong, 709 00:44:43.329 --> 00:44:46.411 they're going to walk, they're going to quiet quit, they're going to do whatever. So 710 00:44:46.604 --> 00:44:50.538 every initiative you can fund is paid for by 711 00:44:50.634 --> 00:44:54.343 better engagement and retention of a customer or an employee 712 00:44:54.713 --> 00:44:58.341 and their productivity when they're with you. And I think people miss those tricks. 713 00:44:58.727 --> 00:45:00.718 They look at trying to justify it the other way around. 714 00:45:01.536 --> 00:45:05.356 100%. And it's, again, it's about systems thinking, right? So how 715 00:45:05.468 --> 00:45:09.207 does everything interact with each other? And this is, this was where my 716 00:45:09.416 --> 00:45:13.251 business came from with my little systems orientated head. 717 00:45:13.347 --> 00:45:17.022 So when I was sitting down to figure out, right, how can we help 718 00:45:17.038 --> 00:45:20.857 growing businesses to scale faster? For me, it's all down to 719 00:45:20.873 --> 00:45:24.628 people. So the easiest way for me to look at it and to 720 00:45:24.661 --> 00:45:28.207 systemize and productize what I'm offering was to look at the whole 721 00:45:28.255 --> 00:45:31.705 employee lifecycle across the 8 segments. And when I say 8, I kind 722 00:45:31.705 --> 00:45:35.169 of I get taken aback by some people that I'm initially talking to 723 00:45:35.169 --> 00:45:38.953 because there's 8 stages across the employee lifecycle. And that is from 724 00:45:39.643 --> 00:45:43.075 the attraction phase where someone first touches, hears, smells, 725 00:45:43.572 --> 00:45:47.533 thinks about your brand. And when it comes to retention, you should 726 00:45:47.597 --> 00:45:50.964 really be looking to maximise all of them. Now you don't, look, I never go 727 00:45:50.964 --> 00:45:53.514 into a project with a new client and I say, right, we're going to tackle 728 00:45:53.594 --> 00:45:57.443 every, every one of the 8 stages. It's not possible. We find the biggest pain 729 00:45:57.619 --> 00:46:01.531 point in terms of retention. Sometimes that is the recruitment side of 730 00:46:01.531 --> 00:46:05.346 it, and I wholeheartedly agree with your definition. Sometimes it's onboarding. I have 731 00:46:05.379 --> 00:46:09.050 started in so many organisations throughout my career where I 732 00:46:09.082 --> 00:46:12.336 walked in the door, I was given a laptop, a couple of pamphlets, and that 733 00:46:12.352 --> 00:46:15.542 was it. Didn't even know where the bathroom was. If you think about how much 734 00:46:15.639 --> 00:46:19.550 money we spend on hiring people, and then we just let them 735 00:46:19.582 --> 00:46:23.494 sit at a desk getting paid, not really contributing for 736 00:46:23.494 --> 00:46:27.357 how long, and that That takes away from feeling of belonging and 737 00:46:27.357 --> 00:46:31.349 confidence and ability to contribute. We should be looking at how can we reduce 738 00:46:31.349 -->

00:46:35.212 the time from when someone starts to when they can contribute, and taking 739 00:46:35.212 --> 00:46:38.979 that intentional, I suppose, support that we give to people across the 740 00:46:38.979 --> 00:46:42.458 employee lifecycle, whether it is development or 741 00:46:42.650 --> 00:46:46.321 engagement. And even, this is the one that makes people feel uncomfortable, 742 00:46:46.738 --> 00:46:50.617 when people are exiting your business. You know, that's really important because 743 00:46:50.617 --> 00:46:54.512 that's not just 2 parts of the employee or one part of the employee lifecycle. 744 00:46:54.833 --> 00:46:58.747 The exiting process is 2 parts. One is offboarding someone successfully 745 00:46:59.020 --> 00:47:02.727 with dignity and respect, because that sends a bigger message to your, 746 00:47:03.273 --> 00:47:07.269 to the staff that are staying in your organisation than you ever realise. And 747 00:47:07.269 --> 00:47:10.976 the second one then is the alumni side of that. So, are they going to 748 00:47:10.976 --> 00:47:14.843 become an advocate for your business? Are they going to stay as a 749 00:47:14.891 --> 00:47:18.470 customer? Years ago, I was leaving 750 00:47:18.534 --> 00:47:22.514 somewhere and the CEO came into the canteen and jokingly, and it did come from 751 00:47:22.530 --> 00:47:26.445 a good place, Well, I'm going to choose to believe that they 752 00:47:26.445 --> 00:47:28.691 didn't mean it to come across the way it did. And he called me a 753 00:47:28.691 --> 00:47:32.637 traitor in front of everyone for choosing to leave. And he was 754 00:47:32.637 --> 00:47:36.536 a goofball, right? This person is a particular goofball and didn't mean it to 755 00:47:36.552 --> 00:47:38.974 come across the way that it did. Now, it had no impact on me. I 756 00:47:38.974 --> 00:47:41.156 had handed in my notice and I think it was like my second or third 757 00:47:41.204 --> 00:47:44.990 last day. It just didn't land very well with everyone else in that 758 00:47:44.990 --> 00:47:48.760 canteen. And people remember that. They remember how their colleagues were 759 00:47:48.760 --> 00:47:52.656 treated. Yeah. Throughout their, their time in the business, but also when they 760 00:47:52.752 --> 00:47:56.680 were leaving. So, you know, retention isn't just when the bonuses are 761 00:47:56.696 --> 00:48:00.639 coming around or when the performance review happens or when you're having 762 00:48:00.639 --> 00:48:04.470 the annual awards and you're going to give someone an award because they worked 763 00:48:04.470 --> 00:48:08.205 hard and this might keep them another little bit longer. It is 764 00:48:08.301 --> 00:48:12.181 looking at all of the touchpoints that you have with your employees. And a 765 00:48:12.245 --> 00:48:15.547 lot of that comes down to making sure that they are managed well, that there's 766 00:48:15.611 --> 00:48:19.298 good communications in the organisation, and that you have a 2-way 767 00:48:19.539 --> 00:48:23.070 system for people to interact with the each other. It's not just top-down, it's also 768 00:48:23.070 --> 00:48:27.010 bottom-up. Yeah. And I think fundamentally, if someone leaves, okay, there 769 00:48:27.010 --> 00:48:30.750 are lots of reasons why people move on, but fundamentally it's because you couldn't 770 00:48:30.750 --> 00:48:34.530 offer them something that they wanted or needed, whether it's 771 00:48:34.530 --> 00:48:37.750 employment at a location because they want to transfer and move somewhere else in the 772 00:48:37.750 --> 00:48:41.010 country or move to a different country. You couldn't offer them a desk in that 773 00:48:41.010 --> 00:48:44.430 place, or you couldn't offer them remote work or whatever it may be, or you 774 00:48:44.430 --> 00:48:48.170 didn't offer them growth. You didn't offer them psychological safety. You didn't offer them money. 775 00:48:48.610 --> 00:48:52.120 People leave because you are not offering them something they need. need, and they can 776 00:48:52.120 --> 00:48:55.460 find it elsewhere. And that's all it is. It says half of it 777 00:48:55.460 --> 00:48:58.920 is, what have I done wrong? What could I do better next time as an 778 00:48:58.920 --> 00:49:02.880 employer to meet those needs? And I think if you focus on 779 00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:06.480 that as part of the offboarding, to learn those lessons rather than just going, what 780 00:49:06.480 --> 00:49:09.860 was wrong? Oh yeah, your manager unhappy, take 781 00:49:09.860 --> 00:49:13.780 another. And you don't learn any lessons from it. And it has 782 00:49:13.780 --> 00:49:17.360 to be a very useful— Also, you want 783 00:49:17.360 --> 00:49:20.880 to leave this person. I think you're completely correct there with the alumni. 784 00:49:21.477 --> 00:49:24.509 You want to send advocates out into the world 785 00:49:25.343 --> 00:49:29.289 about your brand as an employer and also your brand 786 00:49:29.433 --> 00:49:33.363 as a consumer. Because I think Virgin Media had a 787 00:49:33.363 --> 00:49:37.229 problem in the UK where they recognised that they had a churn 788 00:49:37.358 --> 00:49:41.304 problem on their cable TV system and they traced 789 00:49:41.304 --> 00:49:44.705 it back down to poor interview experience. So they were interviewing all these people 790 00:49:45.314 --> 00:49:48.780 and the word got out that they were a bad company to work for. or 791 00:49:48.908 --> 00:49:52.217 to be hired from, and it led to churn on their, on their, on their 792 00:49:52.217 --> 00:49:55.879 platform. So you just don't know who's listening sometimes. 793 00:49:56.056 --> 00:49:59.814 100%. And the other side, it is a huge learning 794 00:49:59.846 --> 00:50:03.749 opportunity, the exiting process, which is why I think businesses really 795 00:50:03.781 --> 00:50:07.620 have a great opportunity, right, to be able to do it well. Sometimes 796 00:50:07.620 --> 00:50:11.571 people just leave a business,

right? And leaving is not a bad thing. It 797 00:50:11.571 --> 00:50:15.474 leaves room for different people to come in, different thoughts, different approaches to things, 798 00:50:15.666 --> 00:50:19.198 and can lead to innovation. But if you think about that, that storey I've shared 799 00:50:19.198 --> 00:50:22.857 about that process, that leaving experience I had where I was 800 00:50:23.130 --> 00:50:27.062 called a traitor compared to earlier in my career, I was 801 00:50:27.062 --> 00:50:31.059 working in not-for-profit, great relationship with the CEO. I've been 802 00:50:31.059 --> 00:50:34.718 very lucky. I've always been able to work directly with senior leaders throughout my career. 803 00:50:35.488 --> 00:50:38.554 It's probably why it's informed what I do in Afox Consulting. But 804 00:50:39.404 --> 00:50:43.240 this CEO knew that I wanted to grow and develop in my career and 805 00:50:43.272 --> 00:50:46.289 that there probably wasn't very many opportunities in that organisation. 806 00:50:47.525 --> 00:50:50.589 And they sat down with me and they said, there's probably not very many opportunities, 807 00:50:51.134 --> 00:50:54.872 but actually here's one that I found in a somewhat similar organisation. 808 00:50:55.001 --> 00:50:58.354 And I think you should go for it. And I'll really help you in your 809 00:50:58.354 --> 00:51:02.300 process. Now, once I got over the initial shock and thinking, you know, you have 810 00:51:02.348 --> 00:51:04.290 that panic moment where you're like, oh my God, they hate me. They want me 811 00:51:04.290 --> 00:51:07.899 to leave. And I came back down to ground and I realised, oh my God, 812 00:51:07.964 --> 00:51:11.750 what an incredible way to leave an organisation. Now, I actually, 813 00:51:11.846 --> 00:51:15.536 I ended up going somewhere else, not where that person had 814 00:51:15.584 --> 00:51:19.416 recommended. But still to this day, I have an 815 00:51:19.465 --> 00:51:23.040 amazing relationship with that CEO. We still continue to work together, 816 00:51:23.457 --> 00:51:27.433 and he's one of the most inspiring leaders I've ever come across because of that 817 00:51:27.610 --> 00:51:31.458 openness and, I suppose, positive view that they had 818 00:51:31.458 --> 00:51:34.937 around the exiting process. And he actively said to me at the time, he said, 819 00:51:35.066 --> 00:51:38.497 anyone that leaves this organisation, I want them to be an ambassador. I want them 820 00:51:38.593 --> 00:51:42.072 to leave and do great things and to come back and to donate, 821 00:51:42.136 --> 00:51:46.033 donate their money to the organisation. And just that openness 822 00:51:46.145 --> 00:51:49.769 and an awareness that people can't stay somewhere 823 00:51:49.769 --> 00:51:53.682 forever, but you can keep a great relationship with them, has never left me. 824 00:51:54.548 --> 00:51:57.980 Yeah. And we also know that someone may leave 825 00:51:58.798 --> 00:52:01.973 and then realise they've made a decision that wasn't right. And they might want to 826 00:52:01.973 --> 00:52:04.458 say, you want to leave that door open. You don't want to slam that door 827 00:52:04.506 --> 00:52:08.275 shut. If they were a great employee, why wouldn't you want to welcome them back 828 00:52:08.596 --> 00:52:12.221 a year later or a month later, whatever it may be? And I think You 829 00:52:12.221 --> 00:52:15.559 don't want to leave that bad taste in anyone's mouth. Next time you see the 830 00:52:15.559 --> 00:52:18.592 person, you want to give them a hug and show interest because 831 00:52:20.069 --> 00:52:24.049 most people work with people they like and they keep in touch. 832 00:52:24.161 --> 00:52:28.013 They're on each other's Facebooks. So you don't want to create this bad 833 00:52:28.013 --> 00:52:32.009 feeling and send somebody off with it because they're still friends 834 00:52:32.009 --> 00:52:35.155 with people. The first thing they're going to say, oh yeah, that last week was 835 00:52:35.155 --> 00:52:39.071 a nightmare and I never— good luck. If you ever want to come with 836 00:52:39.087 --> 00:52:42.824 me, let me know. And Yeah, it sets that rot in if you're not 837 00:52:42.856 --> 00:52:46.799 careful as well, doesn't it? Yeah, because no matter how special your organisation 838 00:52:46.847 --> 00:52:50.486 is, you are not just the organisation. You are part of a 839 00:52:50.695 --> 00:52:54.462 wider ego or eco. So, it's, it's not you against the world. 840 00:52:54.638 --> 00:52:58.629 So, if all you're ever doing is looking internally, as opposed to looking externally, 841 00:52:58.790 --> 00:53:02.220 you're going to miss out on so much more. And sometimes that external is because 842 00:53:02.236 --> 00:53:05.603 people have left. And other times it's to actually see not only what your 843 00:53:05.603 --> 00:53:08.680 competitors are doing, but what your allies are actually doing as well. You need to 844 00:53:08.680 --> 00:53:12.127 have a broader level of awareness than just us and how I feel and what 845 00:53:12.127 --> 00:53:15.316 I think what we should be doing. You need to think a little bit bigger 846 00:53:15.510 --> 00:53:17.066 because you're going to miss out on so much more. 847 00:53:19.957 --> 00:53:23.532 Hmm. Amie, it's been fascinating having a chat. We've been rabbiting on now for the 848 00:53:23.532 --> 00:53:25.487 best part of an hour and a bit. So we had a good chat in 849 00:53:25.487 --> 00:53:28.924 the green room first. How can people get ahold of you? The best way to 850 00:53:29.101 --> 00:53:32.592 get in touch is to connect with me on LinkedIn. So it's A-M-I-E, 851 00:53:32.962 --> 00:53:36.702 Amie Fox. And you can find me on my website, afox.ie, 852 00:53:37.091 --> 00:53:39.524 and you can get my book on Amazon or you can find it on the 853 00:53:39.524 --> 00:53:43.401 website as well. And what's the book called? The book is called 854 00:53:43.401 --> 00:53:47.285 Mind the Blind Spot: Decision to Done. Mind the Blind Spot. 855 00:53:47.333 --> 00:53:50.205 Wow. That's a real play on the words though, isn't it? Yeah. I know I 856 00:53:50.205 --> 00:53:53.045 can't help myself. And every other book is going to have somewhat of a similar 857 00:53:53.045 --> 00:53:56.800 title. I just can't help myself. No, but it's 858 00:53:56.800 --> 00:54:00.539 also being, well, owning who you are, isn't it? As well, not being 859 00:54:00.571 --> 00:54:04.246 ashamed. It's part of your superpower, isn't it? It is. And 860 00:54:04.519 --> 00:54:07.953 it's part of my superpower, but it also just highlights the fact that there are 861 00:54:07.953 --> 00:54:11.628 so many blind spots that we have in our organisations. that if we 862 00:54:11.628 --> 00:54:15.581 just pause, reflect, and actually acknowledge what's going on, you'll be able to mitigate 863 00:54:15.581 --> 00:54:18.858 against them moving forward. Yeah. So, 864 00:54:19.661 --> 00:54:22.746 what would you like to leave our listeners with? What's your 865 00:54:23.613 --> 00:54:27.228 mic drop nugget you want to leave people with? I'm going to 866 00:54:27.228 --> 00:54:31.132 steal it from a bit of feedback I got before, after doing 867 00:54:31.324 --> 00:54:35.308 a keynote, which was also stolen from Maya Angelou, 868 00:54:35.501 --> 00:54:39.463 which is people will forget what you did. And they'll forget what you 869 00:54:39.463 --> 00:54:43.425 said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Exactly. 870 00:54:43.797 --> 00:54:46.206 Thank you. Thank you so much. 871 00:54:50.261 --> 00:54:54.242 As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my 872 00:54:54.242 --> 00:54:58.223 deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your 873 00:54:58.271 --> 00:55:01.327 ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. 874 00:55:02.450 --> 00:55:05.922 Today's discussion struck a Consider subscribing to 875 00:55:05.922 --> 00:55:09.448 Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever-growing 876 00:55:09.562 --> 00:55:13.250 community driving real change. Share this journey with 877 00:55:13.250 --> 00:55:16.553 friends, family, and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices 878 00:55:17.069 --> 00:55:20.969 that matter. Got thoughts, storeys, or a vision 879 00:55:21.001 --> 00:55:24.723 to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk 880 00:55:28.008 --> 00:55:31.827 and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is 881 00:55:31.923 --> 00:55:35.597 Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with 882 00:55:35.709 --> 00:55:39.624 more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire, and 883 00:55:39.704 --> 00:55:43.474 unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world, one 884 00:55:43.474 --> 00:55:46.121 episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.