Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign to this episode of unlocking your people.
In our first episode in the season, we had Pierre on talking about employee engagement and coaching. And to follow up on that, I wanted to have a bit of a deeper conversation with a leader in an organization to talk about leadership and culture. So from an E3 perspective, leaders really are custodians of your culture. We are the role models to what is okay to do in an organization. And if we do stuff, we're basically saying sending the signal to everybody else that's okay for them to do it too. And the research shows that when you look at culture and engagement leadership, that about 30% of the results of an organization are based on the cultural climate of the organization. But a massive 70% of the cultural climate of an organization is driven by leadership. And those are statistics from the Hay Group. And so when we're thinking about how do we create great workplaces, how do we make work better for everyone? Leadership and culture are such an integral part of that thinking theme. And so today I'm really thrilled to have a good friend of mine and a well seasoned senior leader, Tom Hickey from Wedgwood Insurance here to chat with me about leadership from his perspective about creating culture and the journey that he's been on as an entrepreneur in creating a great workplace and keeping that front and center and building his own leadership as well as the leadership of his team. So in a moment I'll pass over to Tom and we'll see what he has to say. After that we'll get on to our Just ask J segment and we'll have some conversations about the scenarios that have come in. So for now, let's talk to Tom.
So I have introduced you, but I would love you to tell everybody a bit about yourself that's not coming from me. So tell us about Tom.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Tom is born and bred Newfie from the west end of St. John's so yeah, so I went to school here, grew up here. I went through business school at Munn a long time ago and I had a choice to go work in the oil business out in Calgary or stay here and take over a little three person family business.
And so I did that and now it's 40 years later and it grew and we've grown and merged and bought and acquired and all kinds of funny things in the meantime. All the things that make business fun. And here I am today talking to you. Yeah, so it's been a fun journey.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: And lots to share, I think, which is important.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Well, hopefully, if not, I shouldn't be Here.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Well, so you and I have lots of conversations about the people stuff.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: And from my perspective, I see Wedgwood put a significant emphasis on people, culture, leadership, all of those pieces.
Why has that been? I mean, I would like to think in this day and age, we wouldn't have to say this, but I think we do. Why has that been so important to you, and what are some of the things that you try to focus on to make sure that you have that kind of environment you're looking for?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny you asked that question, because I just was on a call just like, half an hour ago, talking to someone about this and talking about culture and people saying, well, we need to improve our culture. We need to have a good culture. And, of course, that means all kinds of different things, different people.
But we were talking about someone, and he said back to me, the guy was talking so. Well, you know. Yeah, I was talking to some about that. So, like, do you really want to, like, be a great place for your people, or do you just want to, like, be good to people so that you can have a more successful business?
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: So, like, the whole thing about it being legitimate or sincere or actually, you know, caring about people versus them being tools used to maximize growth and ebitda.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: And I'm not saying either one. I'm not saying it's necessarily one way or the other is wrong, but I think it's fair enough to say if you. If you have a leadership team or ownership or whatever it is that actually does legitimately feel well. Yeah, no, I can have a business, and I can be profitable and do all the things that you have to do as a business owner. And at the same time, I can be a great place for people to work. And if you get some joy out of people getting better or advancing their careers or doing things they never thought they could do, well, to me, that's a perfect combo. And for us at Wedgwood, I think our leadership team, really, everybody has that. Like, there are, you know, people.
People. People, if you want to call them that. Not only from the point of view of liking people, but legitimately, you know, getting some joy out of seeing other people really grow and do better.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: So I think you have to start with that.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: I think that's a great.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: As to why you would do that. Right?
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The. The Gallup 2025 Engagement Global Report is out, and I just finished writing a blog post on it. And one of the things I put at the top of the blog post is it's not about squeezing people. Right. So engagement's not about great. If I get everybody engaged, they're going to do more for me that yes, they will. But if you approach it with, with the what am I getting from people by making them engaged, you're going to probably miss the boat somewhere. The whole point is the win, win. If people are fully engaged, then they're going to do more for you and give more for you, but they're also going to have better well being and a better time at work, which is kind of the, the point of it all. Right. Trying to find that balance.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And especially, you know, because, you know, talent recruitment and management is challenging and then you've got a lot of inflationary cost pressures in business.
So they're going on at the same time. So it's harder to bring people in or harder to find people at the same time because of cost pressures. Everyone feels they have to be more productive and do more with less. So you get this thing of, you know, you're trying to have your employees engage and you actually are trying to get more out of them, but in a good way.
But there's a fine line between saying, well, I only want to keep people happy so they'll work harder.
No, you might want to keep them happy so they produce better results, which can be totally two different things. Effort and results are not necessarily related. Right.
So it's easy to fall into that trap of, you know, and that, that's where it comes back to what we just said, like whether you actually are legitimately interested in people or they're a tool, like a piece of manufacturing equipment that you're going to use to get the maximum productivity out of.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. You know, how do you, I mean, not everybody falls into the category of intrinsically interested in people. Right. And I would be, I wouldn't be me if I said that I thought that was wrong because I don't necessarily think it is.
But I think then sometimes we can end up in a place where we're very inauthentic about what we do. Right. Then it becomes the kind of checklist approach to things. If you, you know, if you had somebody join the Wedgwood team who was more in the like, get it done camp lesson, their people have value camp. What do you do to try and help them see that side of things? How do you help people understand that it's, it's not just a check the box activity?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: You know, I think in your recruitment, like it's fine to say you're going to try and ask questions don't cover that. But, well, you probably know better than me how, you know, interviewing people is. There's a science, but there's an art too, because people are people and they're complicated. And some people are just the most brilliant interviewers ever. And I guess, interviewee I should say, you know, they can make look great in an interview. And you don't have to be a genius to figure out what kind of an answer someone might be looking for and things like that. Because who's going to say in an interview, well, you know, I really don't care about people, but, you know, I'll be nice to them so I can get what I need out of them. I mean, who's going to say that to you? Right?
So, you know, I think that, that even if you made a hire like that, I mean, if you've got an organization and, you know, I find it's time to talk about culture in an organization. But each, each unit and each department, everybody, the leader always shapes the culture. So you may have this, you know, some key things that are an overarching part, but it's folly to think that a particular unit doesn't take on some of the cultures of a leader. And I don't know if I don't think you'd want it the other way, because that'd be like a bunch of robots working in a business.
So. But I think if, if, if you did do that, and it's all a matter of degree, I don't think it'd take long before that would become obvious, especially within an organization. And so then you're going to be talking to someone about, you know, you probably miss a boat on what their actual values are.
And values are a hard thing to change. Like, your values are your values growing up. I mean, they do evolve. But you can't be.
If people are an important value to you and how they're treated in your life, Friday it can't be. Well, you're not, you know, that's your value now. Monday it is.
So that. That'd take a while. I think that'd be a challenging thing to deal with culturally. Right. If you made a, especially in a leadership role, if you made a hire like that.
Um, because.
Right. You know, so I can't say I'd have a solution for that, short of.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: You know, getting the recruitment. Right. I think that's, I think that's totally fair. I think the values piece is a really important point. And I also think sometimes I see at the front Level, when we move somebody from being an individual contributor to a leadership position, I don't know that we often stop and ask people why they want to lead. Right. So, because a lot of people want to lead because it's the next obvious step up in terms of salary progression or having life. But.
But what type of leader do you want to be? Is a totally different question than why do you want to lead? Right. Or why do you want this job? And so I sometimes wonder if we like. To your point, I don't know that we ask a lot of questions about values or alignment or things like that when we hire people, when organizations go out higher, but. Wrong. You get it. Really wrong.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, look, the reality is, let's face it, if you're like squeezed, you're trying to find people like, okay, you start with a warm body.
And then the other side of the experiment of the continuum is the perfect person, this role.
And of course, the reality is, the truth is somewhere in the middle of what we're going to end up with.
So it's really hard for organizations like to, well, I'm not sure if our values are quite aligned, but everything else is perfect. Like, from a pragmatic point of view, would we all say no? You're probably going to say, well, we'll work with them.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: And I don't think you can. I don't think in this market you necessarily have the look. I think it's a luxury if you.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Get to say, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: But then perhaps it's about being more conscious in calling out those differences and saying, so here's where we see you're a perfect fit and here's where we have some differences and how are we going to manage those? Because you need to do X, Y and Z, Right? Yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: And you know what the reality of that is? Like, if that was one lead, like, I think it'd be different if it was a CEO who felt that way. But if you got like a line leader who maybe isn't quite aligned that way, and there's a few people on the team and say, well, yeah, like, intrinsically, I'm not motivated by that, but I respect it enough that I'm going to get good results, it doesn't. At the end of the day, does it really matter if the staff know?
Probably not, depending on the scale of it. You know, it's another thing, if you got the top leadership will feel that way because, I mean, that's going to permeate the organization. So, you know, I don't think I treat that to be honest, like a fire I'd have to put out like a burning thing. I think. Okay. They're working well with everybody. The results are good, the staff are happy, you know, but maybe they're not quite as sincere. It might show up when you've got a tough staff decision and are you going to cut some, some slack or someone's got a sickness in the family and they need some time. You know, those kinds of things are. When that comes out.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Right. But all things being equal, you know, you might not make a problem out of one that hasn't presented itself. I think that's like, that's the pragmatic way I feel about that on a day to day basis outside of, you know.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, I think that's fair. I mean, I think, I think, you know. Right. So whether you measure engagement or something like that or not, if your lead. So there's a difference for me between being a respected, respectful person who treats people professionally.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: And then being entirely about like intrinsically thinking people are great and I, I want to help them grow and everything else. I think those are two different things. Then there's also, I'm a disrespect, I'm disrespectful, I'm blunt. I don't think about people. I'm not. Don't pay attention to my impact. That's where I think you issues that you have to address. If someone's not necessarily wakes up in the morning thinking about people, I don't know that that's necessarily a problem as long as their behavior doesn't, doesn't cause any issues in the workplace. What would your advice be? I mean you've, you've seen a lot of things, done a lot of things in the leadership world. Acquired, merged, led, stepped back, coached all the rest of it.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: What advice do you have for those frontline folks who are considering moving into leadership or in a for their first time kind of frontline position about how they create some of that culture in their own team. Because I think you're very right that, you know, we talk about leaders of the custodians of culture and certainly we all look up to the CEO and say, what's the CEO doing? But I think we also have the opportunity to create micro cultures in our own teams.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: So what would, what, what are some of the pitfalls that you see new leaders fall into and what's some of your advice to folks in that regard?
[00:13:22] Speaker B: I think the first thing is you mentioned it earlier is like why do you want to do that?
Because my experience is being with so many people, they all want to be leaders until they realize that, yeah, you got yourself around the table and in the room, but boy, now you've got some tough things you're gonna have to own when you make decisions. And you don't get to say, oh, it's all the fault of the people in the room, because now you're one of them. So why are you doing that? And like, it's not all, you know, it's more than the office and the title and all that stuff. If you're doing it for that, you will probably create a very tough situation for yourself.
Because for every great perk that you might perceive you get from that, whether it's your ego or the salary or the recognition, you're going to have nights where you're dreading to go to work the next day because you got to do something you don't want to do. Because that's part of leadership. Right? So that'd be the first thing. The second thing would be, would be, and I think this relates to that, but in a bigger picture of having some self awareness about yourself.
Because once you're in a leadership role, for one thing, everybody is watching you and you know, your behavior and how you treat people. Do you treat everybody the same or are you providing clarity? All those things, things.
And when everything is going well, it's really easy to have a great culture and have engaged employees. That's all simple to do. Every company in the world didn't have problems, would have high engagement and, you know, great results and good lead, strong culture. But when things get tough, that's when all the, all the bad stuff comes out. When I say bad stuff, I mean, you know, I'll give myself an example. I had no idea how I used to react when people would give me bad news or we'd argue something in the meeting.
I thought I was like the most calm person, easy to get along with.
And we did a 360 and people talked about how I would react.
Like push my chair back from the table was like my tell. But more that just get really like, you know, my voice raised.
I had zero idea I was like that.
Now my team worked with me enough so that eventually I asked Tom, like 30 seconds from now that'll be forgotten and he'll move on. But it's still not a good way to be. And especially if it's, if it happened with someone maybe more junior to me who might, you know, I've got a Lot of position power on. And it wasn't until I did some profiles and I was working with a coach and this came out of my profile, I was like, I don't do that. So of course that led to the 360 and all the staff said, oh yeah, he does that.
And I mean there's other things too. But I'm just saying I had zero self awareness of what I was doing and how it impacted other people. So I think when I think back to when I started being a leader, if I'd had that kind of self awareness, like to avoid years of things like that, I would have been way more effective.
So all that kind of stuff I think is really key.
And what goes with that awareness is like, I think coaching for new leadership, people like to put them in that position, which I've done many times in my career when I was younger and for myself for that matter, to put someone in a role like that and have no structure of training or coaching around, like just because they were your best account manager, why would that make them the best? They're two totally different things. So having that, you know, training and support and some kind of mentoring system in place so that you help people be successful and I don't. People put in a, put an island in early days.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: You know, I think starting out, if I was, you know, a young leader, like just starting out again, those are the three things that I think would be so vital, you know, to ensure you're successful as you move along.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. And actually one of the things in the Gallup report is that I think the number was only 44 of managers have had training.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: So you're flying by the seat, your pants, you're hoping to God you're figuring it out in a half sensible way. It's doable, but it's way more stressful. You're not going to show up as the best version of yourself if you're dealing with stuff you've never kind of seen before.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Exactly.
And it's not enough to be just like a good person, you know, like there is like a way to handle things. There's so many. You're dealing with people. If you've got 10 people on your team, there's 10 different personalities, 10 different sets of needs, 10 different opinions, like, you know, to go in there and say, well, this is the way I am. I'll treat everybody the same. Like that's where you start. The awareness and the insight needed to how to deal with people.
Some people might have that more as a factory installed equipment. Some people are fantastic.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Reading that. But I don't think it's a good idea to assume that everybody is.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: No. And we don't teach it. We don't teach it at school. Really. We don't teach any of those girls. And I love what you just said about 10 people and 10 differences because I think sometimes the default is if I treat everybody identically, then I'm being fair and a good leader when actually everybody needs something slightly different from you. And to be a good leader means you are the chameleon who is changing up for everybody that, you know, you're talking to. So I don't always know that everybody recognizes that when they move into that.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because we all have our go to look, we all have our own personality and styles.
Some people might default to being more straight and direct. That's the way they've had success in life. So therefore that's how to get all success in life. Some of us are more, you know, diplomatic and we'll try and get people to come around to think, you know, we all have different styles and you're naturally going to default to that.
So once again it comes back to training and self awareness. If that's. If you got one toolbox and the only thing you got is a hammer, you're going to pull out the hammer every time.
Right.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Everyone's a nail. Yes.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: At the moment that the talent market is tight. Right. Like with finding people.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Is hard. And obviously for smaller organizations and a lot of our clients are smaller organizations, they don't have the big bucks. Right. They're not able to drop big salaries or offer like swanky benefit packages.
So culture and how you do things becomes an important part of keeping people. How do you keep a pulse? Check on that. Like you're the president.
We already know that the higher up you go, the less people want to tell you bad news, the less people say anything to you, the less people want to poke you and give you feedback. So how do you keep a handle on what the actual culture is of the organization and make sure that people aren't telling you porkies?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: So I think we qualify as a smaller business like you just described, you know, 70 employees. So, you know, that's a nice number for a place like St John's in the scheme of things, we're competing against multinational corporations for some talent in some areas.
And so the one nice thing, there's huge advantages to being smaller now, being able to throw big salaries around is not one of them.
Although, depending on how productive you get, you might be able to. But that's another issue. But for most of us, no, we're not going to. If it just came down to that, there's no thing we can put enough zeros after anything we do against a multinational corporation. They'll have more zeros after the sales. They'll have more zeros after the resources they can bring. They can. Right. So what you're left with is the ability to build relationships and be an awesome team to work where your voice can matter as opposed to some large company where you're cogging the wheel. Right?
So for me, at that size, I purposefully, every day walk around that office and I really make an effort to talk to people, you know, and ask them how it's going, what's happening. That was a great. You know, your results last month were awesome. If it's something good I know has happened and, you know, you just get a pulse for it and by being present, you know, within this age of remote work, I really feel like leadership presence matters. So, like, I know in our company, in fact, I just said some. I feel like some of our leaders, sometimes we work outside the office too much. You know, say you're working on something, you want to do some deep thinking, so you work from home or whatever. I get that. But I think leadership presence matters. I think that the ability to be around that office, feel the pulse of what's going on, assuming all your staff aren't remote, which of course it's impossible, but we don't have that. That ability to go around a pulse and be present and be there at moments of failure or success builds.
It builds that feeling of we're in this together.
And I know people like. I mean, people call me Mr. Hickey. I try again to call me Tom. And he won't do that. So I doubt if they're going to come and say that program you just implemented to this would be socks. I know they're not going to tell me that, but I will get the vibe and they will feel that I'm around or Kent's around or whoever on our leadership team is around, and they're there for that kind of stuff.
And, you know, aside from like the regular monthly meeting we have or, you know, the celebrations we have for someone's anniversary, all those other kinds of things which are always there, just that ability to be around and get the pulse, you can. You can't do that in a big Company. No, but in small company you can.
And. And the other thing I've learned about that is, and I'm thinking about this a lot more as a use of power.
Like some people can really power up and some people power down. When I say power down, like that ability to sort of be with your staff and like, okay, I'm here, but I've got the ability not to drop myself down. I don't mean it from a literal level, but you know what I mean, like to relate to them so they feel they can tell you things.
Some of us have that skill naturally. Some of us more naturally will power up and can walk into a room and take command of a situation. There are different skills. And I think the ability to power down with your staff is really effective in being able to have that pulse because then you're more inclined to get the truth. Right.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I love that explanation of it. The language you used around that help.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: It's not mine. I got it from a consultant.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: That's fine.
Repeat, Right?
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
But I think it is a great way to look at power because power tends have negative connotations, especially in the current environment we've been living in lately. But I think it can be really good thing used properly. Right. For good.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Let's change tax slightly because I was thinking about something while you were talking about the. The role you have played as entrepreneur.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: So there's a. There's a. Quite a big. There is, I think, quite a big difference between being the business owner and being a leader in somebody else's organ.
They both have merit, they're both impactful. But when. When it's your organization, I think that the stakes can sometimes feel higher. What are some of the ways that you have found effective in actually getting traction and alignment to your values?
[00:24:53] Speaker B: I'm a big lover of Pat Lencioni's books like the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the Advantage. Yeah, all those ones. Yeah, they're fantastic. And one of the things you talked about was communication and getting people to believe things. And the number he used, and I don't know if this is scientific, was that you had to tell something seven times. You had to tell somebody something seven times before they'll really believe you. So what we do is they're just always talked about.
So, like, for example, at every. What we call our state of the brokerage meeting, we'll point out people who exhibited values in action on the job.
So whether it was leading or being accountable to whatever the value is, is pointing it out to people and Talking about it all the time in communication. So then they realize, okay, this is something that's actually real.
It's not just, you know, they needed that for the new slogan, for the new marketing stuff or whatever it is you're working on.
And I found that really effective. And what happens with these things is after a while they just become part of the culture and no one really talks about it anymore because it just is. Yeah. You know, like so.
And by that time, of course, we'll probably come up with some new ones and we'll start all over again. But anyway.
Yeah, but yeah, that's. I find that works really well.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Just.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: You just got to talk about them. It can't be posters.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: I really. There's two things I really like in that I think sometimes we make. We try and make too much out of things too. Right. Like we have a lot going on in their brains. They don't necessarily.
We don't need to be doing endless values workshops unless perhaps we're doing a cultural shift of some kind.
And that just regular. So you know that I was live by the adage, I never remember who says this, which is terrible, but what gets measured gets managed. What gets rewarded.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Right. So that talking about it, pointing it out, letting everybody like see the real life examples from people who are like them can really bring that stuff to life. That's really cool. Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Cool.
I have a second completely unrelated question which is tangential, which you also didn't flag to you before because it struck me while we were chatting.
So you don't have an HR department.
Right. So you don't have an HR team.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Well, we don't officially have a labeled HR team. Yeah.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: And I, I think actually that's great.
Some people might be surprised by, given what we do is hr. But I think that's great talk. Can you talk to folks a little bit about.
So how do you ensure all the peoplely stuff gets done? Because it's not. There's not an HR team here sitting in the wings.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: So.
So you will probably be able to define this better than me. But like from what I look at hr. Right. So there's the administrative piece, which is, you know, payroll and benefits and all that kind of stuff. So that's just have that, that's accounting. That's handled out of our finance department.
So then you got the other stuff which is like policy and job descriptions and you know, performance management.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but you get my drift. All the really direct people stuff.
So in the past. So we grew that business without any job descriptions, without any formal performance management system.
We didn't have any of that. But somehow we still had a good culture.
And I think it was because we had the leadership team was focused on getting the job done with the people we had and giving them clarity on what they had to do at a high level.
So, like, some of the stuff, like people always say, well, you know, do you have job descriptions? Well, yeah, but you know as well as I do, Jess, the job descriptions probably needs to be updated a week after you wrote it. So just the work of keeping all that stuff up to date is really like, we didn't have any of that. What now we do.
And, you know, we sort of outsource some of our HR to help us with things like that.
And for a company our size, I think it's depending on the nature of your business, that's fine. But you know, if you have, like, if people are always talking to each other and you're not siloed and, you know, you give people clarity on what it is you're trying to do and what their role in it is and how they contribute to it, whether you're answering the phone at the front desk or whether you're a manager, you could be amazed how far that can carry you. You know, like people just feeling like people are really proud.
I think they are. They tell me and I give. They give us a testimonials. They're really proud to work where they work. And, you know, I mean, you get to a point, which we're at now, where you start to have to put more structure in just because it's too hard to keep the clarity when you have that many people. But like, for a small growing business, like, you can easily outsource your HR stuff, you know, to help you with some of that, process things like the employee handbook and some of that stuff.
But you could do all the work.
All that stuff will be for naught if you don't have someone who's like giving people, like the reason of what you're doing, what you do, beyond just making money.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I've often said I think if you have great leadership, you don't need hr. Now, I'm sure my fellow people in HR would tell me off for saying that type of thing, but I think there's definitely a size component to it. And I can see that when you look at how we segment our client base, but also what we mean by HR and the types of People, activities you need. At some points you need expertise that you might not have in a generalist kind of leadership position.
But if you're really building a culture where people matter, if people have clear expectations, if someone's giving them feedback, holding them accountable, helping them grow, you know, HR is a level of expertise that you may not necessarily need in house and you can kind of outsource to other people.
It strikes me too though, when I think about like, kind of where you are at from a Wedgewood perspective, when I look at the growth of our client base is there's almost like a tier where you're thinking about hr. Like the policy side of things, like how do I deal with accommodations and how do I hire people effectively? And I don't have like, you know, proper practices. And then there's a side which is building capacity, capability, talent, succession, planning, that once you get a bit bigger, if we don't have some of those things, we're not building ourselves for the future. And to your point, I think, yeah, you're just surviving. And that's like, where's the next paycheck coming from once you get bigger? It's how do we ensure that this organization is one organization, not fragmented group of groups of different people. So I think they're different things. But I think that it's important because I think a lot of people worry about having like, nobody starts a business and unless they're me and has an hr, like that's not like people start businesses and people stuff, right?
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: But the, the things you're talking about, they're also just tools. Job description is a tool. It's a best practice. But if you don't have a problem, maybe that's not what you need to be worrying about right now. Like, wouldn't say to don't have job descriptions, but of all of the places you need to spend your time, energy and money on people stuff, is that really the one that's going to make most difference to you right now? And to your point, if you have other mechanisms in place, maybe you don't need to worry about some of that stuff. And I think that's helpful for people to hear because I think people do get a bit crispy about.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny about that stuff because you can also, like, just create problems by trying to create structures that you may not need. Like, I know we just did a little leadership reorg and whenever you do that, like, there's a little bit of, you know, my job change, all everybody's job changed and Responsibilities change and all that stuff.
And so at first you're having a little bit of confusion. Okay, who's like leading that? Is this my job and ours or someone else's job? And you have the sense of, okay, I'm going to try and like make a document to define, here's what you do, here's what you do, and here's when you have to collaborate.
And you know what? All that does is create even more problems. So because you always don't think of situations and like now people look that well, where does this fall? Is this like X or Z? You know, like so you know what I really like at the size where it's still like, can we just, like we're team, we're all trying to pull on say more. Everybody's got good intentions. Let's worry about getting the end result and not worry about who like owns this or who owns that. Yes, like you got to have that. But like a lot of times it's like, we own it. Okay, you might be accountable for it, but we all own it in terms of helping get it done.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: If you, if you were talking to a group of entrepreneurs or business owners or leaders in a company, like, what do you want them to know?
If they were going to go out and build a great organization, what would you tell them? Like, what are the things that you're like, people should know this.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: It's just once again, you know, it's just the ability to never have an ego about things and just say, you know, I am totally open to the fact that this could not be right for everybody all the time. Yeah, right.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Because sometimes your best people are also, I hate to use the word highest maintenance, but like they will drive things, right?
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: You know, they're not just going to sit back and just kowtow everything you do. I mean, the reason they're successful is because they're smart, they're ambitious and they want to get things done and they're, you know, so you got to respect that and like to try and slot everybody into your way is probably not going to keep everybody happy. So you're just knowing when, okay, I can give on that. But there's the non optional part, like just bouncing all that off.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: And solutions and principles are two different things. Right. So I try to be hard on principles. This is what whatever solution it is, must do.
But if you don't like the way I do it, I don't care. Like you can change anything. I do. As long as these principles remain consistent.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I read A book on that I think was called Rainmaking, was talking about sales in particular, talked about how everyone thinks, like, salespeople with the most, like, the best relationship building skills are the most effective.
And the study basically came back to say they're actually not. That the best salespeople really challenge their clients and like, will argue with them, but in a good way. So people will see a different idea. Right.
And then there's always the lone wolf.
So he doesn't follow any process, can't be reined in. But you know what, he just delivers results for she. So, you know, the point is, like, if you try and take a lone wolf who's highly talented and say we have a system and that's it, like, forget it, they're going to go, right. So it takes a lot of humility to say, like, I'm just gonna.
All my hours I spent developing this, I'm just gonna let this person do something, operate outside of it. But when you get your sales results or your production results or whatever the job is, the results are great. You're pretty quick to go, well, okay, yeah, I'll go with it. Right.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: I'm gonna ask you to wrap up with.
I'm actually planning to ask all my guests this season to just finish with one tip.
So if you. One takeaway, one tip. Something you want people to go away and think about could be something you've already shared in the conversation today or something else that's popped into your head. But if you could leave everybody with one tip to make better workplaces, what would it be?
[00:36:42] Speaker B: I think I'd come back to self awareness because that was the biggest thing I've learned in the last few years was just, you know, really being aware of what's driving you, whether, you know, why do things bother you. Like, if something really irks you, is it just your ego?
Is it, you know, what is it like? Because soon as you get awareness of that, it avoids reacting to things like, you know, you just sit back and you're feeling like that feeling in a pit of your stomach, say, I know why this is. I'm just resenting the fact that they're just, they don't like my idea. This is my ego speaking here. And I'm afraid they're going to be right. It's okay, right? So I think if everyone has self, you know, if you develop that in leadership, that will just carry you a long way.
That alone. Because you're not going to find yourself in situations where you're exhibiting negative behaviors with people and you don't even know why. You're just reacting.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: All right.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: You really damage things like that.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Love it. Self awareness.
Perfect. Okay, well, thank you very much for joining me today. Always love having conversations with you, and I will no doubt have you back on in the not to too distant future. Maybe we should talk some more about the state of the world today.
But for now, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. I very much appreciate it.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Great to be good talking you, Jess. Talk soon.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Hey, Jess. How's it going? Good. So, question of the day. Oh, right, you have this sack of questions.
I sure do. Fire away.
There was a lot of them this week, so I'm going to have to go through and take a wild pick. Are you ready for this?
Okay. Okay. Get ready. I'm gonna get something. Really?
Give me something. Give me something not too tangly. Okay. Okay. Not too tight. Okay.
All right. This week's question for you is we're a remote first company.
How do you build culture when no one's physically together most of the time? Which is, I think, is something that a lot of companies are going through these days. Okay. Not tangly, but big. That's a big question.
Okay, so I will try and organize my thoughts on this one and some kind of coherent answer for you. First thing I will say, though, is ultimately leading people and creating culture, I don't think is totally different. When you are a remote organization, the biggest fundamental difference is you have to be more intentional about what you do. Right. So if you think about being around each other in an organization, there's a load of things that you pick up because you're in the same space and you bump into people and you have corridor conversations and you create kind of those adjunct relationships because you sit next to someone in the cafeteria. Like all those things happen by happenstance. When we're in the same space, you can still make those things happen, but there's not the trigger of the space anymore. So this is to be something else that is the trigger. Right. And I actually read a really interesting chunk of nugget of research about networking, which was that actually your weakest. I'm terrible at remembering who writes all of these things at some point for all that in the show notes, because I remember stuff and not who wrote it, but one of the things they were talking about was that actually your weaker relationships are better for networking because the networks are usually broader and those people connect with you on different things for different reasons. So they're reaching out for a different purpose.
And so we lose Some of that when we're not just bumping into one another in the same space. Right. But if you think about what culture inherently is, it is a set of train tracks. It is a set of guidelines about what's okay and not okay in an organization. It's just that when we're together, I see it more in action. I see people behave. I see my senior leadership team do things. And so it can be less tangible when we're kind of around each other all the time. So realistically, when you're thinking about remote, you're doing the same things, but you've lost the trigger. So we need to create the triggers. We need to be more intentional about it, and we need to be kind of clear about what it is we want from people. And I think in one of the earlier episodes, Tom talked about the importance of leadership presence.
Right. He was talking about how to engage the team at Wedgwood around.
Oh, this is the episode. So I'm gonna have to say, oh, yeah, it is the episode. Yeah, you're right. Good catch.
So Tom has just talked about the fact that he thinks leadership presence is important, and it certainly is. The thing about that whole conversation was about leaders are role models. We kind of set the tone on what good looks like for a lot of people. You can encode oh so much. And I'll talk about that in a second. But then the rest of the time, I'm watching. I'm watching to see what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. And so if you are in an office, that leadership presence piece is easy. You show up. If you're not in an office, you need to create the mechanisms for people to see you, because otherwise there's no role modeling that takes place. Which is why it takes longer for culture to form. Same with relationships. Right. So where brain is wired to mirror people, there's such thing as mirror neurons in the brain. We. We see what other people are doing, we copy what other people are doing. Right. So if we're not consciously creating the space for that, it takes longer to form. So when you're thinking about culture, slightly separate to engagement. When you're thinking about culture, the values that you espouse need to be clear, and you need to find more ways to make them consciously talked about in an organization. So you can't put a poster on the wall because you don't have walls. Right. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because I'm not sure posters on the wall are necessarily what I'd espouse anyway. But when do you talk about your values? How do you onboard people to your values? How do you describe what the behaviors of your organization are like? Recognition is a great one. What gets rewarded gets repeated, right? So when we reward people, they get a dopamine hit in the brain. Dopamine says, yes, I feel good, but it also signals that that thing was important and I should do it again. So if you're trying to encourage corporate content, culture, behavior, actions, etc, recognition becomes a big part of that. So how and when are you recognizing people and making that recognition visible, comfortably visible, so that other people can say, oh, if I do that, that's what good looks like here. That's, that's what I need to be at. Right? So those sorts of things can make a difference. And then how do you create virtual town halls, virtual group meetings, you know, the kind of combined Slack channels, team channels, where there's more conversation and chatter as well people, because that's also part of culture. How are you creating and fostering relationships between people that otherwise wouldn't necessarily have them? So in my organization, we are fully remote.
On Fridays we have coffee happy hour. So at 3 o' clock in Newfoundland time, which is a bit earlier for everybody else across the country, if you are free that hour and you've got nothing in your calendar, we all just hop on with a cup of tea, cup of coffee, no alcohol. Because we are in HR and just chat. And it's not like nothing. There's no task required, there's no agenda. It's not a meeting. It is just a reason to get together and have a conversation. Now what's interesting is if I don't go, people don't go, right? Because it's like, you're not in front of me, I'm not seeing you. If you start having a coffee chat in front of someone in the office, people will join in because they're right in front of you. If you make it a meeting in the talk in the toolbox, unless someone starts the meeting, I'm busy, I'm at home, I'm doing whatever, I'm not likely to go. So you lose those communication touch points. So we have to make a point of having the meeting, encouraging people to go to meet, like, and even calling a meeting. I shouldn't call it a meeting, but like go to coffee hour. It's fine to go to coffee hour. Take the time to go to coffee hour. Other companies we work with do this really well too and have like, I've got one client who does random chats. So every they have a much bigger team than we do, but they randomly set people up with people across some other part of the organization and they have an hour random chat month with somebody that they wouldn't normally work with. And there's no purpose to it, it's just, just chat. Now I'll say to all of that. There's some introverts somewhere listening to this.
For those of us who are more social, more chatty, that's all great for the introverts in the world, they probably like working from home. Those kind of socially things are going to require more either parameters to make them comfortable or more explanation as to why they're important to encourage people to do or make them shorter. Like 20 minutes, right? Like that's perfectly fine. But those sorts of things can help kind of fill in the gap. But there's no trigger when you take the space away, right. So we have to create the mechanism for it. Most people's uncomfort level with doing this remotely is it just feels more awkward. Right? But awkwardness for me is often just a lack of practice. Like if I don't know why I'm doing something, then I'm like, why am I doing this? And then if I'm not having to do it often, then it feels weird when I'm doing it and there's no real purpose to it. Right. So you know, setting some of that. There's another client that we know who does to give it purpose. They do show and tell.
Oh, so it's a great idea, whatever you want to talk about.
And if you don't want to present, you don't have to. But everyone shows up to show and tell. So you're still getting some of the interaction. You can ask questions, but it's on anything. So you can talk about anything that's relevant to you. So you think about all those conversations that happen in the five minutes before a meeting starts or the five minutes after in the corridor that we don't have anymore. How do you replace that? These are some of the sorts of things you could be thinking about in terms of how you replace it.
So those things are more culturally specific. For me, a lot of culture is about defining good behavior, but the, the relationships part thing is part of that that is slightly separate to engagement. Right. So how do I ensure my remote workers are engaged is a slightly different question. And engagement is really about the same kind of behaviors, but just be more intentional about it. So does that person know why they're here? Do they understand their contribution? Are you making time for them to talk about what's important to them? Are they getting feedback and recognition on how they're doing? Tie it back to your values for cultural reinforcement.
Are you giving them the tools and equipment to do their job? Nothing will annoy a remote worker more than technical issues. Right. It's the second most annoying thing for people in an office, but it's the almost the number one annoying thing for someone who works remotely because that's their link to everybody else. Right. So the things that apply for engagement still apply for people working remotely, but you'll need to be more intentional about all of it because it won't just naturally happen in the same ways that people create relationships when they're left to their own devices.
Right. So we do have a short course on understanding the pillars of engagement that applies.
We are currently in the process of revamping our leading virtual teams course because there's so much more you can put into it now. But if you've got any questions on any of that, just email us and we can have a chat about your particular situation, see what we can suggest.
Amazing. That is a very robust. And.
And it's a perfect answer, I think, and it might be worth. Just make a note for me.
Well, let's see if one of our clients who's fully remote can come and talk about how they do some of this. So we have a client that's fully remote and has been since they started working. Well, to be fair to them, they were partly in office. They had a team of people in an office in Newfoundland and then had a load of people working remotely, which I think is the hardest way to do it because then you've got kind of mixed bag.
But they've been really good since day one about setting everything up to work for a remote audience, how they do engagement in meetings for a remote group and now they're all fully remote. They got rid of the office in Newfoundland and they do like twice a year, they do like an in real life meetup and that kind of stuff. So they have some great nuggets to share on this topic. Wow, that's great. And I love what you said too, about how it feels awkward at first because, I mean, remember like during the pandemic when we were all forced to get on our zoom calls for the, you know, the first time and how much it felt strange and you didn't want to talk over somebody and it was really tricky. But now I feel like it's all kind of second. Second nature. Right. It's way better and it's practice wiring. Right. But yeah, that's the one thing I gotta say. Cameras on.
But, like, when you communicate, more than half of what you communicate to somebody is your body language. If I cannot see you, I do not fully understand you. So I understand that whoever designed these tools so that you see yourself, I mean, I get it. Like, I want to make sure I got no spinach in my teeth.
I didn't used to walk into meetings with a mirror and sit there in the meeting with a mirror, looking at myself and look at everybody else. Right. That's not how human beings work. So that's the awkward bit. Seeing yourself is the awkward bit. If we could find a way to take ourselves out of the equation, we'd forget about that and we would have the same interactions that we would normally have. But if we don't see faces, we're losing a load of information when we communicate. So if you want to sustain teams, relationships, culture, particularly if you're having difficult conversations, please put your cameras on, because otherwise, I'm not really getting you. Controversial. Controversial. I know you don't understand.
If you're eating, put your camera off. I don't. That's fine. I don't need to see you. I don't watch you eat. That's perfectly fine.
But otherwise, I'm missing you.
Yeah.
Love that. Love that. Thanks, Jess. You're welcome.
So that's it for today's show. Hopefully you got some great nuggets out of my conversation with Tom and our Just Jess conversation today.
Don't forget you can follow us on Spotify and itunes and you can find the episodes on our website at E3CA. And of course, if you have suggestions, guests you'd like us to talk to, topics you want us to cover or scenarios you'd like me to talk about with. Just asked. Yes, you can send all of that through to contact 3ca next episode. I'm joined by Jeff Magellan, who is a entrepreneur who runs his organization with his brother. So we're going to be having a conversation about leadership and entrepreneurship to build on today, but also to talk about what it's like being in business with your family. So that's next time, hopefully. See you then.
