Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:02.914)
Welcome everyone to this new season of Unlocking Your People. For those of you who listened to season one, you might remember that that was quite a while ago now, that was pre-COVID. And we had every intention of doing more of the show and then COVID happened and it kind of put on ice. But people have been poking me on and off over the last number of years to say, you gonna do some more? When is the podcast coming? So I finally got ahead and said, yeah, we're gonna do it. And so this is episode one of season two.
And so we will be doing a couple of seasons a year, that's the intent, with about 10 to 12 episodes a season, still sticking with the same topics of all those weird and wonderful things to do with people in the workplace. Now we're gonna stray away from the HR side of things sometimes and talk about other stuff like sales and legal and marketing, because they're all still from my perspective to do with people, but the knob of the program still remains all things to do with people and people at work. So that's the plan.
You'll also notice that we changed the format slightly. So if you listen to the first season, which you can still access on Spotify, iTunes and on our website, you'll remember that we did shorter episodes and some of them are just me and they're all audio only. So by now you might've noticed that there's a bit of a change. You can see my face. So we are doing video and audio options this year and we're gonna be doing longer segments that have a guest. So we'll have a guest speaker on every episode.
And at the end of every episode, we're gonna do a piece called Just Ask Jess, where I am responding to questions and scenarios that have come in from you, the listener. So if you have anything that you would like to ask about, if you have questions you'd like us to cover on the show, suggestions, guests, comments of any kind, you can send all of those into contact at E3.ca. And if we don't weave them into this season, we'll just look at weaving them into the next. So that is kind of an overview of what's happening in the season as a whole.
this episode being the first episode, we are starting with a conversation around principally engagement. And what we mean by engagement is the level of passion and investment that an employee has for their work. And the reason that that's important, and I want to start with that in the season, is because highly engaged teams, highly engaged organizations are 21 % more profitable than those with lower levels of engagement.
Speaker 1 (02:17.614)
So when you think about that for a second, like we're talking about people who are really love what they do. And at the same time, we're creating amazing results financially for the organization. So for me, it's a kind of win-win situation for us as business owners, business leaders to think about how do we drive engagement in an organization and how do we get people to have that level of connection? Now, historically, we used to talk about employee satisfaction. Some of you might be like, I did employee satisfaction surveys back in the day.
But the difference is that you can be highly satisfied with your job and not necessarily highly engaged. So a highly satisfied person is usually quite comfortable with what they get, right? So my salary is good, my work-life balance is good, I'm really happy working here. But it doesn't mean that they are emotionally invested in the organization to the same extent, which means they don't always give the same level of discretionary effort back to the organization. And it's that level of effort that triggers the results and the impact for the organization.
So being able to understand how do we as business owners, business leaders, people and organizations create an environment and act in a way that fosters and encourages engagement is good for people and it's good for business. So for me, it's a kind of win-win. And so that's really for me, the first topic that I wanted to start with, get you thinking about engagement as we go through the rest of the season. And so I'm really thrilled to be able to have a conversation today with Pierre Bada. So Pierre is...
a well-recognized, well-known leadership coach, facilitator and trainer who has worked for a large portion of his career in leadership development, in building humane workplaces. He's got a great book on the subject and I can't think of anything better to have a on, have a conversation with me and get us all thinking about what engagement is and how we do it.
And I'm also going to poke him a little bit on coaching because for me it's a really underutilized skill in the workplace and it's something that he does brilliantly. So I'm looking forward to having that conversation with him and then afterwards we'll get on to the Just As Jess. So with that in mind, it's going to be over to Pierre. Let's see what he has to say. We had the pleasure, I had the pleasure of meeting you through the Wallace McCain Institute and you coming in to talk to my cohort group. Talk to me, talk to us, I guess about why is this your chosen path?
Speaker 1 (04:27.886)
So if you're a fellow of HR, you could have gone all kinds of ways and then you could have done anything before you did HR. Why this? Why is this so important?
I fell into it like so many of us do early. I was fortunate coming out of university to find myself in personnel. You know, I, right? Yeah. So, you know, the fellow also means I've been around long enough to remember when it wasn't called HR, right? It was, we were explaining HR. So fell into that piece of it. My dear mom would have told you from the jump that I was.
management.
Speaker 2 (05:04.506)
meant to be a teacher. So as I gravitated towards the human side of enterprise and business, I found myself to be a university instructor as well as I'd done some schoolwork and so on. And then inevitably the training part and the speaking part spoke to me, if I can put it that way. And I believe and still do that it's that human puzzle, the human dynamic.
My gifts are as an educator. So marrying those two things together, know, kind of back to where we started, which is helping people be better leaders, helping people be better at work. I spend most of my time hanging out with leaders, although I would suggest that I'm as interested in everyone having a positive experience through their work. recently worked with someone whose framing was...
And with some research to back it, interestingly enough, that work ideally should be a positive experience that lifts you so that the end of your day is you feel better than you might otherwise. And I think you and I might agree that that's not always the experience of people. So if I can play a small part in helping people to craft that type of experience with people, that speaks to me a lot.
That's awesome. Yeah, no, would totally... Sadly, I think that is the holy grail for most people to have a mindset, one that speaks to them and allows them to leverage their strengths and do things that they're passionate about. But I think a lot of people end up in jobs that are economically viable or the position that they can get and so on. But I do think I agree. I think there's ways we could tweak what we do to get people a little bit closer to that, even if we couldn't get them feeling uplifted at the end of the day.
So let's start with it not being awful.
Speaker 1 (07:02.688)
Yes. Yeah. Just like keep the bar somewhere reasonable, you know?
think about modest objectives for the work, right? If you can create workplaces that are not awful and that people ultimately can end up making a contribution.
Yes, and better choices too. Well, I was looking at the Gallup Engagement Report that just came out in 2025, and it still says that 17 % of the workforce in North America is disengaged. So that's not necessarily to suggest that the workplace is awful, but somehow we're not making the connections for those people that we could be making. And then of course, 52 % are on the fence. So we've still got some opportunity, I think, in that regard.
In the work that you do, what are some of the misconceptions that you see about creating great workplaces or engagement that you think we could be tackling?
Yeah, I...
Speaker 2 (07:59.296)
I worked for a wonderful man who was an engineer and in the day we called them chartered accountants, now CPAs. And we were, it was starting and there was a few hundred folks, but we didn't have anything of note in terms of policies and what we would call the kind of the requisite things to have in order to attract and retain people. We weren't thinking of that yet. And I remember walking in to his office on many an occasion and saying, we need to do
this, fill in the blank, right? didn't matter. was policy, was practice, it was development, it was all kinds of things. And of course, his training led him to the first question, which was, how much will that cost? And I wasn't just I wasn't off to a glorious start in those years. And I would say I'm not sure. So I that's strike one. And then then the second thing is, why would we do this? And I would literally stand there and say, because employees will be happy.
And then he proceeded to throw me out of his office. And we didn't have the data. I mean, we didn't, you know, and we equated. So I think the misconception is that some sense of engagement means happy. I think people sometimes are happy because they get to spend a lot of time on social media while they're at work. That's not what we want, right? So as we started to gather the evidence and we're able to kind of translate that into notions of engagement, I think people...
I would hope with the work that people like you and I and others do that we're able to clarify that this isn't about happy. This is about having some kind of intellectual or emotional connection to the work and to the people that I do this for to have some kind of shared.
concern for success of the organization I work with and are meeting our objectives and that we are healthy individually, collectively as a team and that the outfit, the enterprise meets its objectives which make it healthy. I think so that's the first thing around misconception. The other thing is, know, there are still shops and I'm sure you see them too where this is an HR thing and you and I...
Speaker 2 (10:15.052)
Yeah, it's an HR thing because HR should be some kind of a resource center. And this is primarily the responsibility of.
frontline leaders, middle managers, team leaders and otherwise. And you've seen as I have the places where they get that and the difference it makes, right? So that I think are the two misconceptions is that this engagement piece is just about people, you know, it's a country club, know, woohoo, we're having a great time. Not really. And that secondly, that HR will fix this, right? And data, tools.
Organizational development and training, sure, but otherwise owned elsewhere and when that shared ownership is there, boy, that's sweet.
Yeah, for me it was always the distinction between people, organisations that treated engagement as an initiative.
But this is a project that HR was going to drive versus understanding this is about culture and leadership and behavior and how we show up and everything you do kind of day to day. And I remember being in a town hall meeting where a senior leader stood up on the stage and said, like, we're aiming for upper quartile engagement. And I was like, okay. And then he said, so you all need to go out and get engaged. And I was like, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:32.408)
think we've missed the boat here a little bit on what we're aiming for. I have a bit of work here to do in explaining how that works. So yes, a little bit challenging. And then of course you have all the challenges around like, okay, we're gonna run a survey, we're gonna run a survey and the server is gonna tell us everything we need to know miraculously and often for my case.
leaders expecting the survey to come out with spectacularly good results, right, because they love where they work, and then being surprised when perhaps their staff don't necessarily give them all fives out of five or tens out of 10 or whatever it is that they're measuring it. So what are your thoughts on the whole survey process? Like what are your thoughts on the measurement of, and we do an annual survey and that'll help.
this is just about us understanding where our people are at and what they think and feel about the work experience. And what is their experience like on a day-to-day basis? And which is a bit of my challenge around the survey piece, because the annual, how am I feeling today thing is always a challenge. So thankfully, we now, as this industry has grown up.
We now have the mechanisms and the tools and the fact that we have supercomputers in our pockets. We're able to tap into those things and get the data that we need, especially with organizations that are larger, that really gives us a better picture than the snapshot of climate or culture on that given day once a year.
So I'm an absolute fan of measuring and checking in and doing that stuff. But I think there's a myriad of ways that we can do that. I think if only, I say this to leaders and managers all the time, if only that it signals to the world that it matters, then you should do this work.
Speaker 1 (13:29.196)
Yeah, well, it's best it gets managed. Yes.
And to your point a while ago, that you then make some comment on what you heard and saw, and ideally that you make some commitment around how things can be different or better. And whether you use an abacus to do that or a very sophisticated, I don't think it much matters, but I think it's that commitment and that engagement that really makes a difference.
So obviously you're in the coaching space, one the things you do is coach people. And for me, that's very much that commitment piece can be the challenge. So organizations can have the best of intentions in terms of some mechanism for measuring engagement, some plan to go drive change and then get caught back in the running day to day, head down. I've got to get this out the door, that out the door.
What are some of the ways that you think organizations can drive substantive change? So rather than just, yes, we did the survey and here's the playback, which I think is a good start, but actually embed change in the organization.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:40.366)
at a bunch of levels, right? Or organizationally, there's some outfits that are really good at projects. And so if you need to think of this as an annual project with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that works for you because you're doing 178 other projects and that's the world you're in, then call it a project, an annual project. And if that works and that drives you, then do it, right? If you're more defined at the team level, for example,
by the kind of practices and habits, which I think are where oftentimes things really happen. Then equip those leaders with what they need and then bring leaders and managers to understand that things as simple as a weekly check-in with people, where you're actively creating a container.
as part of the artifacts of culture in your organization that says, I need to have this one-to-one with this individual every five to 10 days. And we are going to sort through the important things that we need to do that will ultimately drive that their experience is going to be better. So if that's a better play, then do that. And at the individual level, I think there are some...
Leaders and managers aspiring emerging and very experienced leaders and managers for whom this is a very personal kind of a thing, right? It's they take they take a personal pride in their group and my my team, know my team my group and and if if that's the button that needs to be pushed And creating some kind of accountability for what my
collective group delivers in terms of results, what it's like to work here, then do that. I don't think there's a single path to drive change, but I think it needs to happen probably at those three levels, organizationally at the very team level and then at the individual level. I think go with what works where you work.
Speaker 1 (16:52.982)
Yeah, a of and the culture that you have. I did have some, I had a group session a couple of weeks back with a relatively senior leadership group in a relatively well-known organization. And they were doing the, yeah, I totally get it Jess, but like it's so much time. And I said, well, then that's because you're doing this as more.
This is not about doing more. This is about changing how you do what you do. Do all the same things you're doing. Just think about how you're doing them. like if you're thinking, I've got to now have a meeting about engagement. No, you don't. Right. But how do we do these things? How are you actually listening when you have conversations with people? How much space are you creating for the team to talk to you? Like when you have meetings, who's running the meeting? Like just think about the smaller tweaks. And I think sometimes folks think about this as like,
It's because it's an initiative, right? It's come top down. Someone said we've got to do engagement. Now there's more, but it doesn't necessarily have to be more.
You've worked with people for whom the people thing is a side of the desk experience. As a leader and a manager, right? I mean, let's start there. No, no, this is what you do. That's right. The other stuff is kind of, not that it's side of desk, right. And we've both had the pleasure of working with people who get that, right? They just, they get that.
This is supposed to be the job. This is supposed to be the job.
Speaker 1 (18:17.494)
It's a of the doing leader though too, right? It's a challenge of how much people have to do today and there are no leadership jobs that are not doing leaders anymore, right? So.
I had this lovely conversation I work with in a number of settings with cohorts. So I drop into these people's lives once a month for a year, for a variety of hours or days. And we were talking about change, just talking about leading change versus managing change and the role of leaders and managers in that regard. And one of the managers, thought this is so cool. said, you know, we're talking about resistance to change, what makes it difficult and so on and so forth. And he said,
It's more work. And you know, in some ways it hadn't occurred to us that one of the major points of resistance around leading and managing change was just people saying, it's just more work. So when we show up with our engagement project, we're excited about all this work. Yeah, I think let's begin by understanding this. No, this is integral to your role. And I think if there's an organizational value around the importance of this sphere,
then all of sudden my role as a leader manager is completely different, right? And I think of it differently and I think of engagement in relation to it being one of the most powerful tools that I have and one of the most important focal points that I have in the work that I do.
was having a conversation with one of our other guests and we were talking about the reasons you get into leadership in the first place and that that shapes how you might see some of these things and do you see engagement as...
Speaker 1 (19:54.593)
I have to go and talk to people. I just want to sit in my office and do spreadsheets and get my stuff done. did you take on a leadership role because you have an intrinsic interest in the growth and development of people and therefore how do you use engagement? it like intrinsically you were just a tool? And I think we don't necessarily do enough to explore with people what their motivations are around the people part of the leadership job. And it is still supposed to be the biggest chunk of the role.
I play in an orchestra, classical orchestra, and I have two teachers who sit behind me, French horn, trombone. And they come each week, there's some version of one telling the other, little Jess did so well today. She has now gone from the third step to the fourth, okay? It's always about regaling the other.
with the progress of one of the students. And I think we got to test for that in leadership, right? Because those who are genuinely excited by people's growth and development and ultimately achieving their objectives, which enables me to meet mine and everybody else's, boy, wouldn't that be a cool way to assess who gets to lead and manage.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:13.454)
Yeah, too challenging perhaps to figure out how we do some of that. that human side of leadership is one of the things I want to talk to you about. So obviously you have the word written out behind you in capital letters and you have written books on the subject of humanity at work. How do we encourage, so the world appears to me anyway, to be moving to a world where strong arming and
more coercive techniques for leading, how becoming more prevalent in what we do. And since we generally don't teach people a lot around leadership now, I mean, the stats say only less than half of people get leadership training before they take on a role. Part of my concern is like the role models that we might be giving, the very visible role models that we might be giving people, maybe teaching them the opposite to creating human workplaces. So what's your take on all of that? Am I worrying about nothing? What do you think?
So the humanity framing was my publisher. I did the work and we being the entourage around my writing my book argued for, didn't argue, we just couldn't find a title. And the publisher read it over a week and says, oh, it's easy, it's about humanity. Right? Because it was just imbued in the work.
And the notion was one of, know, the people are lovely and HR and the softness and the fuzziness. And I've worked with so many young HR people, emerging young HR people and say, you who was your client? And they say, it's the employees. They're just so and no, no, no, no, it's not right. So
So I came from that world too. mean, misguided though I was in thinking that we needed to create these very, these lovely spaces for people, which is true. However, the way of getting there is not by simply making everything about puppy dogs and ice cream.
Speaker 1 (23:34.476)
Yeah, I call it the tea and sympathy, HR.
Well, you know, I and look, I have I have used the model from Blake and Muton that we all learned in university a million years ago around, you know, that that that our concern for people and our concern for results needs to coexist in a meaningful way. And that's the only way that we can be successful in the long term. Right. So the might the mighty, the strong, the coercive in the short term, we can all point to the examples where that's been
successful for people, clearly it's about balancing these two pieces up. I'm a fan of Dan Goldman's work around the six styles of leadership. And yes, coercive is one of them.
used in isolation in very short bursts in specific places.
Here you are, right? However, if we remove the, the coercion implies that kind of threat piece, the URLs piece. I'm a big fan of highly directive approaches. In their, yeah, absolutely. I am a big fan of, from time to time being the absolute, I'm at the front of the parade. You are going to follow, you're going to walk in my pace, right? And Goldman calls it pace setting. So,
Speaker 1 (24:35.137)
clear.
Speaker 2 (24:51.178)
Let's get away from this notion. I'm a recovering headhunter, right? I used to be a search consultant, executive search consultant, national firm years ago. And I loved it. He was saying, what's your leadership style? And they extol the virtues of it. know, a very modern, participative, involved style. It's lovely, but what else you got? Right? And of course, we were looking for, always we were looking for somebody to say, it depends.
You know, there's time where I need to be, let's go just shy of coercive as a part of the highly directive. Let's recognize that those things have their place. So I think my favorite piece around this is just when that awful period in 2020-21 starts with a P and we don't talk about it anymore. Nursing home, around about March 2020.
authoritative.
Speaker 2 (25:50.158)
And she brings in as a CEO, she brings in 20 people who run this huge nursing home environment. And you would describe that person as just a dream of a senior leader who absolutely was very participative and just empowered people. Wonderful delegator, just really, really evolved senior leader. And brought everybody in.
pointed to 20 binders for the 20 of them at the room and said, go get your binder, don't talk to me, don't ask me any questions, don't talk to each other. Go back to your office, read the binder and do exactly what it says. I'm not interested in what you think about it, get it done. And when I tell that story a lot in groups, and Jess, you won't be surprised, I asked the group, what do you think the reaction was? And people are appalled, my goodness, this is an awful, what does she think? there must have been missed.
And you and I, you can guess what the reaction in the room was because this person had built up this phenomenal and from time to time had resorted to approaches that were somewhat draconian and one way and very highly directive and authoritative. They all got up, they went to get their binders and they went to work. And people are surprised and say, no, I mean, we need to have this collection of approaches. And yes, I'm going to advocate.
for the fact that some of that needs to be quite human and it needs to be very human-centred. But the framework around this is that we have to be as concerned about strategy. We need to be as concerned about our leadership and management chops as we do about the wellness and the well-being of our people. Are they thriving? Are they well? Are they growing? all those other kind of, are we using their strengths? All of those good things, but it needs to coexist.
Yeah, and for me, think that I would say that the use of those times when you need to go highly directive is dependent on the relationship you've built with the people in the trust that you have, right? If you started from a place of human leadership and you demonstrate genuine care, then when you turn around and say, no arguments, no conversation, I just want you to go do X, they go, OK, versus...
Speaker 1 (28:08.16)
Lord, what's Jess getting us into now and what ridiculousness is she coming up with this time and where is she going with that? yeah, it's just, the style of the piece is interesting because asking people to kind of self diagnose is often not necessarily realistic in where they choose themselves to be. Yeah. So I do think the tools around getting people to provide you actual feedback on your style and how you think you've come across is super helpful. Yeah.
And of course, in that model, one of the styles is the coaching style. Yeah. And links with authoritative, right? The idea that you paint the vision of where you're going and then you coach people to unlock their potential and you are, of course, coach. I often say that I feel like coaching is one of the most underutilized skills in a leaders toolkit. We just we don't get people to do enough coaching. So do you?
How do you foster, like you are a coach, obviously going in and coaching people is one thing, but how do you encourage people to kind of put their coaching hat on when you're thinking about leadership style?
I'm so glad you want to talk about this. I do this lovely work with some of these cohorts with a colleague, Dr. Tammy Carroll. She is an organizational psychologist by training. And she believes that the ultimate way to bring about change is through coaching with leaders and managers. She has a coaching practice. She's certified and all those good things. And so we work with cohorts together and we've brought
to these good folks, this notion of coaching. And I'm talking pure coaching, right? Not mentoring, not advisory, not anything like that. And the managers inevitably, they look at it say, why are we doing this? You know? When people come to my office, they want an answer. And of course we say, well, of course, but not always. And doesn't mean you should give it to them, right?
Speaker 1 (29:57.55)
think you're the answer. It's faster.
Speaker 2 (30:09.952)
I love is it Bungay Stainter, right? Who says coaching as a manager simply means just delay. Just just hold on.
Ask a few questions before you give them the answer.
Right. Maybe just fight the urge, right? To provide an answer. So I'm interested in, I'm very interested in the, so we, when we work with these good folks, we absolutely get them down the path. They're doing some peer coaching work and the peer coaching work, we, you know, like we are the solutions police. We just, if there's any hint of advice or an answer, we're sweeping down, we're, you know, we're just.
not on. And from our perspective is just about building the muscle. you know where this is going. Inevitably, if you ask them what was hard about the coaches, wanted to tell them what to do. I wanted to give them an answer. I wanted to give them the support. I wanted, and this was really cool. A group recently said, I wanted to ease their pain.
So it's coming from, it's not this, I don't want to grow you and develop you and have you, not at all. You're struggling and I have the answer that will lessen your struggle. And I thought that was so, isn't that an amazing way?
Speaker 1 (31:28.428)
and noise by putting it.
I'm not sure it's always that though, just to be clear.
Oh, let's be very clear. We said for what, 16 % of the time, good for you, the rest of it, that's a cop-out. So for me, and I've done, I've been very curious and interested in about, you know, manager as coach, right? And how that differs from the pure coach where, you you have the answer, I'm just going to ask you the good questions, so you will self-discover and all that kind of stuff. So this kind of hybrid, this practical hybrid.
of mentor coach as a manager, right? Of mentor coach problem solver, because that's where think most people struggle. It's like the person runs in the office, go, yay, I can help you solve a problem. And I know a shortcut. I know how to get us there. I have a vested interest as manager, as us getting there probably in the most cost effective, more timely fashion. And I think our work is really about saying, yes, sometimes that should be the motivation.
However, inevitably, we want these folks growing and developing and being able to make the call on their own. So how do we get there? So I think for me, for us in doing the work, it's been we force them, you we tie their hands, do not provide anything that feels like an answer. And then when they're released from these shackles. Yeah, yeah. We had, in fact, we did one.
Speaker 1 (32:59.298)
to go straight.
Speaker 2 (33:03.234)
We did one session recently where we, called it a festival of solutions where, where, where you as the manager, don't ask any questions. Just, just, so as far the other way, right from coaching, just give them the answer. Don't even, you could be giving them the answer to the wrong problem. Just go with it. Cause that's the other piece, right? The coaching approach would suggest that you're probably going to help them.
the other person diagnosed what the real problem is and maybe not the problem they thought it was, right? that's a long, very long-winded answer to say, I think if you can just delay, just hold off and recognize there are some situations where quite frankly, I need to put my teacher hat on, my grower and developer of these people hat on. And I think the coaching approach probably serves that.
Yeah, I sometimes come across so I actually had a conversation this morning with somebody who was in the but I want to take away their pain end of things and it was quite interesting because what we ended up talking about was the fact that at the moment finding people is hard and I was like, right, so if you just wind that forwards a little bit, if you're not giving people
this space to come up with their ideas themselves, use their own judgment, and you can't keep hiring, then when Bob, who's your middle manager, gets promoted, you've got nowhere to go. And that sort of resonated to her. But then she said, but it takes a really long time to coach. And I was like, do you mean it takes a long time to do the coaching or it takes a long time for coaching to have an effect on somebody's behavior? And she said, well, I meant the first one. I said, I think you can coach somebody in four minutes or less.
I think if you're asking good questions, you can, but she had this picture of the sit down executive coach. I've got to coach somebody for an hour and ask them questions and everything else. said, I don't think that's actually accurate, but I don't know that we necessarily, think a lot of people are familiar with the idea of the executive coach model where I'm going to have that set aside hour, hour and a half, not the manager coach that you're talking about where I'm flipping in and out of the skill sets involved.
Speaker 2 (35:12.014)
Yeah, and I think there's the sports model of the sheer leading here. I believe in you. And all of that piece has a place as well. We've done much more work, much more evidence-based work when I say the greater we, around
coaching in the executive coaching, coaching to make a difference. Then we have as the manager as coach, right? And I'm fascinated where some of that work is going and how you can literally, you know, back to Goldman Six Styles or recognizing that I, you know, it's the employee runs into your space and you say, and they present you with the thing and I have visions of managers going, wait a minute, and they open a drawer.
Which one of my tools will I use? But that's kind of what we want. Is this an appropriate setting for me to be directive? Should I be playing coach? Should I be, right? Should I absolutely not be making this decision?
This is the beginning. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:27.19)
What hat do I put on for this conversation? I had a similar conversation because I would used to when I had the team kind of right in front of me and they were coming to my office. I would sometimes say, what hat do you want me to wear for this conversation? Is this so you want me to make the decision? Is this a, you want me to coach you? Is this a, you'd like to hear my past experiences or my insights? What do you want from me? Do you want to just rant about something and leave? What is it you are looking for from this particular conversation? But I think.
with the manager coach piece, because we feel like we are paid to solve the problem, that becomes the primary hat we wear all the time, right? And if you can just get people to have that moment of, on, do I need to wear that hat or should I a different hat on? What does that look like?
I love the idea, this is just as you're sharing this with me, I love the idea of making, you know, my, open the drawer, check my toolbox, right? But that's a very, I think of that as something that happens in, you know, a matter of seconds in between your ears. I love the idea of speaking as you did, right? And absolutely involving the individual in what do you need from me at this stage?
Yeah. What do you want from me now? I used to also wear things around my neck. So like I'd have all the frameworks around my neck on my lanyard with my pasque on it. So if I needed to have a feedback conversation when I was in my twenties, I'd like take my lanyards off and put the card on the table and had the framework in front of me. And people used to ask, what have you got? And I'm like, well, this is my, you want me to practice a muscle? This is the, this is the weight I'm lifting to practice using the muscle. And now I don't need the card anymore or hope I don't need the card.
Yeah, I did some work in the resource sector and mining and in small community and it was incredible to me how everybody was related in the workforce and as a purest HR person, right? How could you, you your brother-in-law and people managing relations, it was awful. And I met this young supervisor and she was phenomenal and she had hats.
Speaker 2 (38:28.864)
She had neon, right? And one said supervisor on it. And when her brother-in-law would come into the office, she would reach for the hat. She'd put her supervisor hat on and she'd say.
I think there's a lot of family business owners that need a set of hats.
man, was so hard. Right. And she'd frame it, right? We are not, you know, we're not going to talk about the family reunion and I'm going to be doing my job now in having this exchange with you. So I just love that idea of signal, signaling clarity, right? Yes. Yeah.
We had a similar conversation. So I work with my husband, my husband is part of my company and very occasionally one of us goes, so is this a Mike to Jess conversation or is this like employee to boss conversation? Like what is the framing of this conversation? Cause I will respond differently if you're talking to me over a beer than if you're talking to me as the person that owns the company, right? And it's not always clear cut. It's not always a clear cut thing. So I think there is, from my perspective,
fairly significant investment in leadership development and coaching at senior levels. Like once you are sitting at an executive level table, there's a recognition that the role is hard, that we need often outside input, a place for self-awareness conversations, someone to hold a mirror up, all of those things. But we don't seem to necessarily extend it as far down the organization. And I think that sometimes the transition from individual contributor to frontline leader, mean, that is supposed to be the second most hardest transition after CEO.
Speaker 1 (39:55.97)
but we don't seem to employ the same approaches at that level. What's your thoughts on how do we foster more thinking of that there?
Yeah, I do this quick survey with folks. So on Tuesday of next week, I'll have 16 middle and frontline managers in a room. And the slide says something like, you know.
what has prepared me the most for being, for leading and managing in my current role is, and one was doing a good job at my last thing, right? Two is the coaching and mentoring I received. Three is the formal training. Four is self study. And you know, as you would know, when I ask them, what's the answer to what you need? And it's a trick question because it's the all of the above, which isn't on the slide.
So I've struggled with how do we make this meaningful? The experience I've had with senior leaders is I've played the, you remember when you made the move? Now, sadly, you and I cannot always be in the room, right? But do you remember? And you'll often hear the old macho.
you
Speaker 2 (41:20.45)
BS. Well, I got thrown into the deep end and I just figured it out. For you. Nowadays, what people do when you do that is they leave. Right? Or they or they there is there is such and I use this word. There is
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:40.696)
trauma around it and I don't mean that in the clinical sense of course, but I mean it's just it becomes this, you know, let's agree that the evidence around learning is, you know, five to fifteen percent out of my comfort zone. I'm good. I'm uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable. I'm learning. Good. But beyond that, that's a panic. I throw them in. I don't hear I throw them in the deep end from senior leaders a lot.
I still hear it from middle people though who said,
I
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I've, I don't know what the answer is here. I really, still struggle with it. But I think one of the pieces for me has always been
what happened when you had to figure it out? And the response I often get is, it took me longer to be effective. And I was battered and bruised, you know? So got there, so what would it take so that people would not be as battered and bruised, would be effective quicker, the learning curve is better? And quite frankly, they do less damage, right? To themselves, to others, to the environment.
Speaker 2 (42:57.742)
and you're performing at a higher level sooner. So that argument seems to have played with some senior leaders, right? The notion that, right, if we invest in this, we'll get them there sooner and with less damage and baggage and so on.
Well, and in today's world, mean, that's not to say the challenges weren't always there, but all the statistics tell us that people are struggling with look, life balance challenges and more complex issues today, mental health challenges. So, you it's not as simple as I got to figure out how to tell.
someone that the clothes that they're wearing aren't appropriate. I mean, that's an unpleasant conversation, but it's nowhere near as challenging as someone has a medical issue or a mental health issue. How do I have that conversation with somebody? And that's becoming more prevalent. So for me, if we don't equip our frontline leaders with those skills, they are going to do damage, right? And then they're going to be traumatized themselves and never want to take on those roles again. yeah.
I think at the end of the day, and I believe there's a part of this too, I think individual contributors moving into the roles need to be to some extent demanding of the type of support that, because you know out of sheer benevolence, don't know that the, mean thoughtful senior leaders will absolutely will twig to the fact that they need to be making this type of investment and will support them in all the ways they
to support them. But I can remember in my days as a recovery from being a search consultant, urging people to just aggressively negotiate what support they would receive in the first 12 to 18 months in terms of turning them into a solid
Speaker 2 (44:47.692)
people leader or a manager, right? So I think there's some shared responsibility there too, think. Individual consumers can recognize, that they necessarily would, right? I mean, it's new to them, they can go into it and follow the best of intentions.
Yeah. Awesome. So more conversations to have, think on that one more chipping away to do to get us where we want to go. I was asking our guests to wrap up our sessions with one tip. So if they could give one tip or one suggestion for how you make a better workplace, what would it be?
Well, I mentioned it already and I tease it in all of my presentations. We don't have many magic wands that we can wave as managers and leaders, but the best thing we've found so far is a commitment to one-to-one conversations with our people.
come hell or high water, you're gonna get 30 to 45 minutes of my time. It's about, it's not about what the manager wants to talk about, although that's part of the agenda, but it's really what the individual needs and how they can help and what are the blockages and all that kind of thing. And I don't, Jess, I don't know that I've seen anything else. There's all kinds of good habits and good practices that you and I would espouse.
But if you want just a, can start this tomorrow, you need no training, know, no ability, right? You can, you can't mess it up too, too badly. As long as you spend more time listening than talking and that you, and you just stick to it doggedly. I think that's the one piece that I think can make a difference.
Speaker 1 (46:34.04)
Love it. Super simple, super easy. No excuses. That's the challenge. That's the gauntlet throw down for our listeners today. If you're not having your one-to-ones, according to Pierre, you've got to be having them. That's the tip. Love it. Awesome. Listen, thank you so much for making time to talk to me in your very busy schedule. I really appreciate it and for sharing your wisdom about all things coaching, people, humanity, and more. Tell us where we can get the book and what it's called.
Yes, humanity at humanity at work leading for better relationships and results. There was a day when all of your local bookstores would have carried it, but that day is sadly gone. So Amazon is the is the place to find.
Thank you very much for joining us and hope to a chance to chat to you again soon.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (47:26.958)
So we're at the portion of the show where Roz asks me tricky questions for me to answer the Just Ask Jess portion of the show. So say hello to Roz. Roz is going to go into our question bag of tricks and select something for me to give a response on. So Roz, over to you. Amazing. I feel like I should have an actual mailbag for these things I could pull in and like read like old school-y, you know? But no, lot. It's all digital. It's from Susan, age five. That's right. That's right. That's right. All right. So this week's...
question is a really good one and something that I can relate to being in agency land. And here we go. The question is, we're struggling with setting clear expectations across teams. Everyone's busy, but there's a lot of crossed wires and dropped balls. How do you create better accountability without it turning into a blame game? awesome. So I have a guide in the real world, I'd want to ask questions, but I can't because the person has to be anonymous for this.
So there's a couple of things immediately I'd say. One is how are you actually putting expectations down on, I'm going say paper for now, and I'll come back to that for a second. Too much gets lost in translation. So whether you write goals, you have KPIs or like key performance indicators, which are metrics or OKRs, which are also metrics, all the world of acronyms in business. How are you defining good and where is it documented?
So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is if you're working cross teams and that's causing the hiccups, so don't know if the hiccup is we don't understand the objective or the objective is different by different teams, then the method has to be visible across teams. So whether it's documented in something like Slack or Teams, if you use that kind of software or you just stick it on a whiteboard on the wall in the office, if you're all in the same place, everybody needs to see the same thing to understand the same kind of perspective. And that's true for
I'm assuming based on what I heard in the example that this is about delivery of projects or work or tasks. those things will be clearer and then make sure you're really clear on defining ownership. So whenever you've documented who is doing that piece and if you need to break it down because more than one person's doing it, break it down because more than one person's doing it. That can feel like really we've got to do a lot of work to do that. You do, but it'll save you time on the back end because you're dealing with messes now that you've got to fix.
Speaker 1 (49:51.106)
So there's software for things like that, like forecasting software if you need to do that, even creating channels in Slack, whatever software you use, just an Excel spreadsheet, anything that will allow you to visibly document what the goal is, who is responsible for it, the deadline that needs to be done and sharing it across multiple teams will help create some of that transparency. That however, only builds kind of knowledge and awareness. So my second...
point is what are your mechanisms for discussing progress across those teams? So if we're relying on a tool you have to pull from, right, you're relying to people going to that tool to pull the information, they're probably, somebody's gonna miss it. So do you have a cross team project meeting? Do you have some kind of huddle every day or every week, whatever cadence makes sense, just to clarify those things. Also really important, because we're much nicer to each other when we have to look at each other, so.
If you've got teams who are working separately and they don't have to talk to each other, then they'll start complaining about the other team. If they have to just have to spend time together, there's much less of that that goes on and I will be nicer to you when I have to look at you and talk to you about an issue than I would be if I get on social media or my Slack channel, which we will see. So those two things would be my initial kind of comments. That is slightly different to behavior. So if your expectation setting is around people showing up differently,
that is different to task delivery. I'm guessing from this scenario, this was around task delivery or kind of project work. But behaviors can also be an area you need to set clear expectations because if you don't, people will assume that their definition of good is the organization's definition of good, which is not always the case. That's where things like values come in. So people do create values for organizations and tend to kind of stick them on the wall and ignore them.
but a good set of values should show up in your hiring process, right? Does someone fit with your values as an organization? That is not the same as not hiring for diversity, but we want people who have the same intrinsic view of what we're trying to do with the same attachment to purpose. So it should show up there. It should show up in how you do performance management. Like if you're not adhering to the values, then that should be feedback that you're getting. It should show up in exit interviews. Like was there an issue with the values that you were seeing people spouse in the organization? And we should be giving people regular feedback on how they're showing up against those things.
Speaker 1 (52:04.844)
That won't solve every behavioral hiccup you'll get in an organization, but it does make a big difference to people having train tracks about what's important in an organization. So that would be my top line kind of two comments. And is there anywhere people can go to find out more information about accountability across teams, drop balls, that kind of thing? So we have a self-serve program called Excel, which is an online program where you do a module that is essentially me.
presenting and you do interactive activities and there's like case study all the way through it. That's all about the different aspects of managing performance. So there's a bit on handling different types of team members. There's setting goals and expectations. There's giving feedback and having an accountability conversations. There's what you do if you have a performance review. All that's in the one course and you can buy that online and start it anytime you like. You have access for a whole year. So you can go back and redo the modules anytime you want. Amazing. And I'll put the link to that in the show notes. Awesome. Thanks Jess.
So that's it for today's show. hope you enjoyed our conversation with Pierre and maybe the scenarios that we talked about under Just Ask Jess were relevant for you. Don't forget to follow us on Spotify and YouTube. You can also find episodes on our website and you can go back and check out the previous season if you haven't had a look at those episodes. And of course, send in your scenarios, comments and suggestions to contact at a3.ci. I'll see you next time.
