Welcome to inclusion bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly it takes to create a world where everyone not only belongs, but thrives? You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, change the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show.

So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with inclusion bites. And today is episode 107 with the title Voices Unleashed. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Helen Joy. Helen is a management development specialist and when I asked Helen to describe her superpower, she said it's her ability to build rapport and inspire people to make small changes that create big impacts. Hello, Helen, welcome to the show.

Hello, Joanne, and thank you so much for having me on this beautifully cloudy, Grey Friday. It is great to have some sunshine in my life by spending some time with you.

I know someone put on LinkedIn earlier. What was your ideal theme tune for the weekend? And I put, here comes the sun. And I thought then, Rob, it's a bit early in the year, we're only in February, but I can only dream.

Yes, it's coming. It's coming just a little bit away.

So, Helen, Voices Unleashed. Tell me more.

Well, in most organisations, there is this mid level of managers who so often have the hardest job in the business. They are filtering messages that come down from above. They don't get to make the decisions. The decisions are made up there in those ivory towers of C suites, and they're cascaded down through varying layers of management. And then they come down to those mid managers who then have to transfer that knowledge and that change or whatever's happening in the organisation to the people on the front line doing the role. They then have to absorb back up all of the things that might be wrong with that particular choice of direction, all the issues, all those things. But quite often, those middle managers are never heard, they're never asked, they're never listened to, they're never given the opportunity to actually share their knowledge and experience of what's happening and how things can be changed and adapted and for me, it's about making sure that those middle managers have the skills, the knowledge and the confidence to use those voices, to make sure that what's happening in a business is actually for the benefit of everybody across the business. So that's one side of it.

It's that making sure that they're heard, but it's also about those managers being able to create environments where their teams can genuinely thrive, where everybody in their team has got that sense of psychological safety, so they know that they can be who they are, they can bring their own uniqueness into that team and they are valued exactly for that. And everybody's voice in the organisation then gets heard, because nothing changes without all of those different perspectives. Your intro talks about challenging the status quo and that's what we need in organisations at the moment. And the status quo isn't going to change unless we listen to everybody, unless we get all of those different perspectives, all of those different thoughts and ideas and ways of doing things. So getting to hear those voices is so important. And that begins with building the confidence of those managers to be able to push those messages back up the chain and make sure that they're listened to.

I've been a middle manager at the beginning of my career, probably without experience, without support. I think one of the challenges I find in organisations is we tend to promote people who are good at their jo, not fantastic at leading, inspiring and I'd probably use the term leader rather than manager. I always believe that you manage staff but you lead people. So I prefer that. I think we often promote people into those roles without the support, without developing them and say because they are great at what they do and they're looking for a pay rise or career development without actually putting them on the career development path first, or even surround them in cotton wool in their first year to help them develop, and we see that so often. So that's, for me, where the challenge in organisations lies is investing properly in that lower level, mid manager tier and without just expect them to pick it up and getting it right all the time.

That is the biggest challenge in organisations. There's a statistic around 82% of managers are what we're called accidental managers. There's a Gallup stat. I'm terrible for remembering where these stats come from. I can remember the stats, can never remember exactly who to credit them back to, but I've seen it in lots and lots of places and it's that 82% of accidental managers, so exactly, as you say, they're great at their jobs, but that doesn't make them instantly great at getting the best out of those people. And quite often they're not. At that point, they could be with the right support, with the right development, but businesses just don't invest in that. They seem to expect that people, you instantly give them that job title and suddenly they're bespoked with that job title and all the skills and abilities to do that.

And they invest lots and lots at senior level in the C suite, in executive coaching and things like that. Lots of technical organisations invest huge amounts of money in technical skills and abilities and inductions, but they completely forget that the biggest asset in their business is their people. And if their people aren't being led, managed, supported by people with the right skills to do that, that will always be the blocker from any significant growth, productivity development for that organisation. And you create environments where people are not happy, and when people aren't happy, it impacts on every area of their life. It means that they don't want to be there, they underperform, they eventually leave, and you end up with this constant cycle that just by improving the skills and qualities of your managers, people want to work with you, they want to stay there, they want to be. We've all had those managers and leaders that we would do anything for. And when you question people about that, because I always talk about that when I'm doing a management programme, we always start by talking about leadership and management and that your job title might be manager, but you're there to lead that team. And whenever we talk about the characteristics of the managers that have brought the best out in you, lo and behold, they're all the skills of leaders every time.

The other problem I found when I was in that zone, if you like, was I hadn't let go of my old job. I was still good at what I did. I was a good it technician, a good electronics engineer, I was a fantastic at installing servers and flying around the world and putting this stuff in and making it happen, then suddenly I had to care and motivate and worry about people, whereas my focus was on getting the job done. I didn't realise for many years that actually my job, my role, was actually motivating the people. And then whatever my role was other than that, was second, you come in the morning, your mission is to deploy your team, your troops, make sure they're happy, you do your toolbox talk, do whatever you do, you brief it, you do your agile, whatever scrum. And then, and only then, once you've dealt with everybody and got them motivated, then you can step back into your techie role or your senior accountant role, whatever it is, and do get on the tools again. I think that's the other trouble. We promote people without letting them let go or they don't want to let go.

They didn't realise that. They thought it was just about being in charge, not having to worry about things.

Well, that's it, isn't it? I'll tell you what to do and you'll do it. And that's that kind of shift of people. I think it's because people aren't given the real clarity about what their role involves, rather than it just be they're just told, yes, you're promoted, here's your pay rise, which everyone go, yeah, brilliant. Now I've sourced that, the rest of it will just happen. And it doesn't, because we also motivating, driving, supporting, developing people. It's hard because everybody's different and everybody takes a different tweak and a different motivator and a different conversation and all of those things, and suddenly we've got to think about 15 people's motivators rather than just our own. So it's so easy to drop back into the comfort zone of, as you say, on the tools or whatever that may be. Going back into that is like, well, I feel comfortable here because I know I'm great at this, whereas that bit is hard, so I'm going to avoid that.

And all that happens is the problems get bigger and bigger and our team get more and more disillusioned because they're not getting what they need, whether they've had what they need from your predecessor or not, they have those expectations that you're going to deliver those.

Yeah. Another thing I learned about myself is that I don't enjoy managing people on a day to day basis. I really don't. But I do enjoy being a senior manager, a senior leader, a director, where I have people, managers beneath me. And we can have kind of. You have shortcut conversations, don't you? You don't have to do all of the. Are you okay? Sorry. I'm not saying you don't have to do that, but you have to do it in a different way.

They tend to be self starting achievers, getting on with stuff and then kind of their problem to communicate the plan downwards. And I think I need a level of obfuscation or separation between me and the coal face because I really don't enjoy that. I like to see big pictures and it's often hard to translate a big picture into everyday speak when you've got people who are too worried about where the widget goes. So I've learned that about myself.

I don't think that's uncommon because again, like you say, the bit that's difficult about managing people on a day to day basis is you are, to a degree, you're carrying their problems in your head quite a lot because there are those people who are those ultimate nurturers who are just amazing at doing that one to one piece with the individuals in their team as well as the whole bit. And they love it and they thrive on that. But actually, I think those people are quite unusual because I think most of us, because I'm exactly the same as you, I spent a lot of my time talking to managers about how they do that, get the most out of doing that day to day bit. But I know for a fact I'm much better when I've got that separation. I can just go, okay, right, well, this is where we need to get to your job is to get them there, because that's me being able to go, right. You deal with the really hard bit and I'll do the forward thinking bit and not the tactics bit, but you kind of go off and actually do those dealing with 810 people's issues because, and I know there's getting older as well. The older I get, the less kind of patience of sometimes, but it's hard.

It is. You've got three people want holiday at the same time. You got to have the same old argument at Christmas about who gets the three days off, who has to come in. They're all no win conversations. You got to try and deliver the bad news in the best way possible to people. And it is. It's exhausting managing people. And I don't think anybody does it with ease.

There's always a challenge there. People are different every day, aren't they?

Yeah. And you think the way that workplaces are these days in terms of hybrid working as well, when you could go in and you were physically with your team every day, it was easier to spot instantly if somebody wasn't quite themselves, because within half an hour you could usually tell if someone was in a bad mood, someone was in a bit down or something like that. And I think for managers who had really good, strong relationships with their team, shifting to hybrid has been easier than people that didn't. Because again, with people working at home, it's easy to put a brave face on for 20 minutes while you're on a call with your boss and then turn off and crumble in a way that you couldn't do when you're in the office. You either had to maintain that facade for the whole day, which is really hard, or somebody would spot it. And I think a lot of frustrations and challenges and issues that people are dealing with got spotted a lot quicker than they do now because managers more stressed, they're busier, they're having to take all the skills that maybe they weren't always great at in the office and apply them in a completely different setup in a way that they don't always know how to manage. And some organisations do it really well, most don't. And I think where the ones that do are the ones that support their managers to learn the skills to manage remotely, because obviously, like you say, when you were in your old job, you were flying around all over the place and doing stuff like.

So you got used to being remote and lots of people have got that knowledge and experience, but also a lot of people haven't. And I'd be so interesting, when you were flying around and being remote and doing all that stuff, how were you managed at that point and how did that work for you?

I was kind of empowered with the project, so I would be touching base user management to be touching base. That's a bit you're. If you're in Hong Kong, Singapore, La, San Diego, then you've got eight hour time differences. You can't sit and say, I can't do anything until people come in because your day is gone and their days started sort of thing. So you had a level of empowerment. You get on the plane and all you would do is cheque in on a regular basis. This is back in the pre email, you weren't texting each other. This was a phone call.

It had to be a phone call. And so it was a phone call, just not necessarily every day. Every time there's a situation or a problem, but also we were hooking stuff up between them and the UK and so sometimes there was conversations happening anyway, but very often, and I was going to talk about this, it's about this asynchronous form of management where we look at the evolution of email. We started that, so we ping an email off, can you do this? Someone reads the email, does something and says, that's done. Or can you clarify? That's not an interactive conversation or synchronous asynchronous. And now with teams with Slack WhatsApp, all these sort of messaging tools, we're now far more comfortable having one liner asynchronous conversations to fire people off. And that's, again, a different management style. If you need me, call me.

If you don't get on. I think that's how it was for me. It was empowerment and responsibility, knowing. And I knew myself what I had to achieve by the end of the week because the flight is booked on Friday and I have to be on it sort of thing. Write a very clear project plan, get in, do this, do this, do this, get out. And if it was going badly, then I'd have to report that quickly because I'd need someone to change my flight and push back the next schedule. So, yeah, I think it was empowerment, trust and personal responsibility to communicate back.

And I think know if you think about Daniel Pink's model for motivation, where it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. And so for you there, that autonomy was a great way of making sure, like you say, you've got those boundaries and those parameters that you've got to deliver in and you know that you're trusted and that you're valued and that you can deliver that and that you've got support if you need it. And I think where we are now, I think, like you say, with the advance of technology, there is almost for someone that just feel like they have to be checking in all the time and they feel like that's their job. And actually it's the complete opposite of what we need as humans in terms of being able to have that desire to deliver and to do our very best at something because we're constantly being kind of micromanaged. I did some work with a client earlier this year when we were talking about time management and prioritisation, and we talked about how they communicate and they had 15 different methods of communication and it was chaos because everybody was using something different and getting frustrated that everyone was. So we ended up. They put together a communication charter of how they would communicate, when they would communicate, which method they'd use for whichever purpose, and which ones they were just going to bin. As a business, they're clearly not going to stop people using them from their private lives.

But as a business, this is how we communicate. And it's then down to you to talk to your manager about how often you need that and for your manager to start to and work out how you develop that trust, because it can feel, I don't know if you've ever had it. I've had it sometimes with clients where you're kind of working on something and they're constantly kind of, what about this? What about that. What about the other? And it's like, just absolutely want you to be involved. But let me get to this point first, and then we'll talk about it and then discuss anything. We're too easily accessible now. But also, it's too easy to avoid all of those interactions if you want to, which is the other end of it sometimes for managers, which is that we don't know if there's a problem sometimes until it's too late, because it's easy for people to hide if they want to.

Yeah. And I think sometimes when you talked earlier about the cascading down and what can happen is in that cascade, the critical parts of the information or the plan aren't always passed down as well. You're given this precy where people at the top know exactly what the long term goal is, but by the time it gets down to the person at the bottom, it just says, step forward. It doesn't say why or how or what the purpose of stepping forward is. And I remember doing a leadership development training with Hoskins at the time. This was late 80s, early ninety s. And I remember we were given a task to lead our team to build a bridge between two desks. And so we were given a bit of information.

We said, okay, team, we need you to build a desk with this box of Lego or Meccano over. Across this desk. And some of the people built this really nice rope bridge, this swing thing. And then people did this and they did that. And then we, as sort of like the leaders, got this next bit of information. We need to be able to drive a car over that bridge. So we had to go back to them and say, right, okay, the plans changed, the goalposts changed it. We actually need to.

So you need to take down the rope bridge. Now it is drive a car over it. Anyway, this carried on, carried on, carried on. And the final thing we found out was the bridge is actually over some water and boats go under the bridge and sometimes the bridge needs to lift up in order to get the boat under it. Of course, none of the designs catered for that part of the plan. So it's all about recognising as leaders, we need to communicate the goal and buy people into the shared success of the project and the outcome, not think, oh, I can't trust them with this just yet, because that'll blow their minds. And then we protect people and that ends up with this communication gap.

Absolutely. And I do stuff around change management and using ad car to the ad car model that some people may or may not have heard of, is really simple, it's really easy, and it's just five steps that take you from awareness through to reinforcement. And it's all about communication, it's all about right up at the beginning. The more you communicate with people, the more you tell them and give them and share with them, the more aware they are, the more likely they are to engage with that. But there's this thinking, I don't know what happens as people get further and further up the tree. I'm using my hands. Nobody else can see this, can they? That people kind of lose the ability to see people's capability further down the line. And actually, the more you communicate and share pre change, the more different perspectives you get inside.

And the more people you get talking about what that might look like and what the impact can be, the more chance there is of that being something that actually is going to work. Because when decisions are made completely in a bubble about, based on statistics, spreadsheets, data with no thought or consideration put into the reality behind the figures that are spewed out of whichever software, it's never going to be something that can be delivered, that there will always be better ways to do, better ways to add. But we just don't, as organisations, we so often just don't. Like you say, we're too scared of frightening people, when actually the more people hear rumours about what's going on without any consolidation of those rumours, the worse the fears. And there's a word, but my menopausal brain can't think of it. The conjecture. It's not conjecture, but it's that kind of thing. But the worse it gets.

And I think the day that big organisations recognise that change can be done in a different way, they'll be so much smoother, so much easier. No wonder there's such a massive change or industry in people coming in and consulting on this, because just being honest and open with people, people are far more capable than they're given credit for.

And they want to be trusted, they want to be able to take responsibility, they want to be able to bring some of their own creativity. And I appreciate we've got. There's lots of psychological models about type x and type Y people, or whatever it is, and some people like to be given a task with very tight bounds and said, do this, put screw a into hole b, do it and repeat. Some people are artisans, some people are artists, some people are technicians and creative and they want parameters, not straitjackets. And it's recognising as a leader. The different management styles you have to adopt with different people to get the best out of them. And some people are high maintenance and some people are low maintenance and some people react differently. I know if you don't give someone a tight boundary, they'll break down and go, I don't know what's expected.

I can't handle this. I don't know what's expected of me. Other people over manage, they rebel and go, hang on a minute, I know what I'm doing. And you end up having to diffuse these conflicts. And I think that's the biggest challenge as a leader is recognising that people are different and really are different and surprise you.

Yeah. As a manager or a leader, the time that you invest in getting to know and understanding your people and having the awareness that go into those conversations without an agenda, just go in and sit down and get to know them as people, as individuals and not as their job title, but just sitting down and saying, right, I'm your new manager. Tell me about yourself, tell me about you, tell me about what you enjoy, tell me about what you don't enjoy, tell me about what you want to do more of, tell me what your plans, what do you want? And some people don't want to share that stuff in work. They don't want to share anything beyond, I'm here to do my job and I want to just do my job and go home and that's fine. But you don't just make that assumption about everybody and ask the questions and over time, even those kind of quite tightly bound people will ease off and relax when they appreciate that you're doing it from a point of genuine interest and genuine concern for them as an individual, because you've got to. Yeah. If you can recognise what each of your team want and need to be their very, very best, and if you've got the skills and the ability to have those conversations, then you're making your job so much easier. I think people manage, especially new managers, get really, really caught up on the idea that they've got to be fair.

And what they mean by fair is they've got to treat everybody exactly the same. Because I remember when I got my first management role and that's basically what I was told, you treat everybody exactly the same. And how I treated people got great results from some people, didn't get great results from others because they needed either more nurturing or more freedom, but because I'd been set this blinkered focus, it took me years to recognise that, oh, if I just give them that and give that. And I kind of started doing it under the table. It was a bit kind of like, okay, come here, we'll treat you. But then that creates unfairness in itself because you're doing it secretly, so people perceive it as favourites and things like that. But if you've got a culture where you back to recognising the uniqueness that everyone brings and the strength that that brings, but that needs to be coaxed out of different people in different ways, but you've got to know that, you've got to have that across the board. You can't just.

I don't know about you, I've worked in organisations where there'd be one department or one function where it was amazing and everyone had a wonderful experience of working for that organisation. But different parts of the business, if you spoke to people there, they hated it, they had a terrible experience. And it's all down to the leadership, it's down to the cultures that are created and the way that they treat and value and respect their individuals. And that's the difference between those two. You're in the same organisation, same outputs, but completely different experience of being there.

And the same can happen with customer service. I can make a telephone call and have a wonderful experience dealing with that wonderful human being. I can phone up another time and there's a miscommunication, there's no lack of listening or whatever it may be. And I have a terrible experience with that same organisation. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty confident the organisation I'm dealing with wants me to have a fantastic experience. Just sometimes it goes wrong and it's often down to that human to human interface where it goes wrong, a lack of whatever it may be. You mentioned earlier the phrase psychological safety, which is kind of a buzzy thing where everyone's talking about it's one step forward from bring your whole self to work, isn't it? It's kind of that bring your whole self to work and sub.

What does it mean to you in context, what you're just saying?

Yeah, I can talk about psychological safety for about 18 years. So right back in the early days of Amy Edmondson coming out there and talking about this, because it really resonated with me as a person and how I believe managers and leaders should be in the workplace. And for me it is about creating an environment where everybody in your team is treated equally, is respected, is valued, is able to bring their very, very unique version of themselves and their perspectives into work every single day with no fear or concern around judgement, around fear of failure, around being judged. I was recording a video on this yesterday. She got to rattle this off the top of my head, shouldn't I?

These fundamentals, learner safety, creativity, all those kind of things.

Those things. So, yeah, the learner safety, the inclusion safety, the challenger safety, the contributor safety. So all of those bits where you can come to work and you can be yourself. Absolutely. But that everybody around you is in exactly the same place and there is no judgement, there is no fear of failure. The whole thing, when you do workshops and training, there's no such thing as a stupid question, there really isn't. It's that sense of creating an environment where stuff happens and it's fine because we learn from it and we move on and we keep going forward. But everybody is valued for who they are and what they bring.

And that for me is massive.

One of the challenges I find is that when you are that mid level manager or maybe a supervisor or team lead, you're very focused on these things around your team because you're that human to human contact. I think the higher up the organisation to go in that there is less tolerance of failure, less tolerance. You almost have expect to have this robust adult conversation with someone, say, I'm going to tell you like it is, and I don't care about your feelings, I just want to say, you need to do this, you need to do that. So I think higher up there's less psychological safety. And of course, as you go down, you tend to bring, you repeat what you've been given. So if you've been given fear and bullying or victimisation or blame, all this kind of blame culture stuff, it takes a really strong person in the middle there to be able to put a fire break in and says, okay, I'll take the arrows in the chest, my team, my responsibility, and then I come and have a chat with my team and say, okay, this is how we need to work all this together, this is how we can solve these problems. What are the challenges we're facing? How do I push back? Because the CEO just wants the share price to go up.

And that to me, is kind of what's wrong with capitalism the way it is at the moment. I mean, that's a whole other thing, isn't it? We could go on to that for hours. But it is that you're absolutely right. The humanity seems to be stripped out the further people go, because I think you're right, that it's their experience of, I'm now in this role this is how I'm expected to behave. And I think, for me, one of the biggest examples recently was the ferry company. I can't remember which one it was with the ferry company. They just sacked so many people.

Oh, yeah. Pno. They laid off all of their low paid workers or something, didn't they? Yeah.

And that was a decision. And when you kind of looked into the ownership structure of the business and how it kind of. The people making those decisions were so far removed from the individuals who lost their jobs, it really is just a case of they are numbers on a spreadsheet and they're numbers on a spreadsheet. In a spreadsheet. In a spreadsheet, in a spreadsheet. So they have absolutely no connection on a human level at all. And my view, that can't be right.

No, but isn't that the whole challenge around Edi? Discrimination, bullying, victimisation. It's where people start using dehumanising language. And if I describe you as not in the human way, then I could do what I like to you, because I don't see you as a human. So we invent these dehumanising words and we can do the same with our corporate spreadsheet. We don't see people, we see numbers. The Rwanda policy, for example, we're just seeing a boatload of immigrants, a boatload of people, people who are costing us money. Therefore we see numbers on a spreadsheet. Therefore those numbers need to be sorted with another spreadsheet.

I think that's what happens with genocide and cleansing and all this kind of stuff is where you don't see people as human beings anymore.

No, and I think that the mainstream media. I saw something the other day that was saying that the amount of people reading mainstream media has dropped massively. Although when you see where they're getting the news from, I'm not totally sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

People are making up their own mainstream media now. Viral on wacky theories, isn't it?

The media, over the last 510 years, the whole world seems so polarised and that you're either you're this or you're that. There's no grey anymore. People just kind of. But it's bizarre, isn't it? Because you see this, and this is social media, this is mainstream media, but day to day interactions with the people around you are not like that for most people, that most people interact with most other people in a predominantly positive way. Or maybe I'm still an idealist that likes to believe that humanity is still 95% positive.

I don't know if you've read humankind by Ruka Bregman. He's also the author of Utopia for Realists. I've mentioned several times in this podcast series. But yeah, I'm a great fan of Ruka's outlook on life and how he sees people. But yeah, humankind. He proposes and supposes that humans, by their very nature are good and kind and people generally, most people, don't wake up to be evil or nasty or horrible or discriminatory or anything like this. Some of their behaviour is learnt and they can be perceived as that, but genuinely they believe they're doing right, being kind. There's a difference between intent and impact sometimes.

And it's a very interesting book. And he talks a lot about the psychology of warfare and how they believe they could destroy people by carpet bombing and bombing and bombing and bombing and believing the civilization become demoralised. And actually the opposite occurs, as we've seen in Ukraine. The Russians haven't destroyed the will and the backbone of Ukraine. What they've done is they strengthened it. And that's what happened when in the Second World War, we were bombed, we had the Blitz spirit and then we did the same in Germany and carpet bombed residents in other places. It didn't destroy anybody, it just made them more resolute. So this old mantras of warfare and human psychology, we've got to step back from these.

I think we can take a lot about this in the workplace. Have faith in people, in their humanity, treat people as people, recognise them as human beings and they will behave as human beings. If you treat somebody in a negative way or a disrespectful way, they'll learn that behaviour and they'll respond in that way as well.

For managers, it's just that bit of recognising that when you've got conflict in your team as a manager, the first time that happens, it's terrifying because you don't know how to deal with it. For most people, you kind of sit and look at these two people that are just not getting on and you're just like, oh, my God, I've got to deal with. That's my problem now. I've got to deal with that. But actually, if you go into those conversations and again, back to that, no agenda, but just go in with genuine curiosity to find out, right, what's the problem? You tell me what the problem is right now. You tell me what the problem is now. Let's work out, because actually the problem is often just a misperception, it's a mixed message, it's a lack of understanding of something that's happened at some point in there. And once you can actually sit down and take the emotion out of it and just sit people down and go, right, let's talk about it.

But as a manager, that's one of the most terrifying things to do, because your expectation is you're going to get yourself in the middle of this and everyone's going to start screaming and shouting and it's all going to be your fault all of a sudden. But actually recognising how to deescalate things is such a powerful thing to do. And the more what you're then doing is exactly that is taking them back and going, right, this is just another person who's trying to do their best in this situation, in these circumstances. And that's why sometimes miscommunications in organisations. I say, when that cascading comes down, people hear rumours, they hear sometimes what they want to hear or what they don't want to hear. And that causes fear, which when we're afraid, quite often we push out because we're frightened and it's getting beyond that. But it's, again, the managers having the skill to understand that this behaviour isn't that person's normal default. So if they're acting out of their normal parameters of behaviour, what's going on? What's the problem? And being able to have the confidence to go into that conversation, and that's one thing our managers lack massively.

Yeah, I think I learned a lot about humanity and humans having children. I think anyone who's suddenly found themselves with a two year old laying on the floor in Marks and Spencer's, pummeling the floor with their fists, saying, I don't want to, I'm not going to, or whatever it is, and you end up having to pick them up, stick them over your shoulder and watch everybody around you judge you for a. Your child's behaviour and your reaction to it. You'll go, nothing to see here, just another two year old. So some of the people just go, I feel for you, but sometimes as a manager, you do have to give some parental or pastoral guidance, which may actually be out of your own comfort zone. We're supposing that managers are good at all of this. They're not, are they?

No. Especially in more technical organisations, where people are employed for their technical skills and abilities, and that's the way that their brains work, that's the way that they compute the world around them. Is very logical, strict parameters. And then when you start throwing emotions and things in there, that can be really hard for people in those organisations. And we do, we just make this assumption that they're going to be able to deal with it. And until we provide them with the skills to do that, and not everybody wants to do it. I used to run, it's one of the things I'm still really passionate about is the preskilling. So doing leadership academies, where you're getting those managers before they're promoted and you're saying, these are the skills you're going to need.

And when I first did these 20 years ago, we would take a group every year of 2024 people and by the end of that year, half of them would have been promoted. Probably six of them would have turned around and said, I absolutely never, ever want to go down that route in my life because I have not got the tolerance, the patience, the desire to be in that role. But for us that was a win because we could sit down with them and go, right, that's great, we know that now. So we're not going to put you into that position and watch you fail. We're going to go, this is your career path then, and these are the people that we'll bring in to do that pastoral piece for you. Do you find it in. I mean, I was talking to a solicitor recently about the fact that lawyers make some of the worst managers in the world and it perpetuates, like we said earlier, the behaviours, you continue the behaviours that you've seen and they are just. Because they are just trained from the moment they set foot in an organisation.

It's about billing, it's about revenue, it's about getting the job done for the client and that's it. So then you start to bring people in and start to look at the softer side of things and it is such a struggle for so many of them.

I read an article recently about surgeons in the healthcare sector and they were saying that the best surgeons and consultants are the ones that have the worst bedside manner because they need to stay detached and objective. And as soon as you have a better bedside manner, you become invested in that person and you can't make objective decisions. So they're actually saying you actually want a search or a consultant who has no bedside manner because he's likely, or she's likely to be far more efficient at doing the right thing for you.

I've read something, I don't know if it was the same article, but there was a doctor who said we cut people up? You can't be emotionally attached to someone you're about to slice into. And that was like, I never, ever considered that before. Like, say we complain about doctors and surgeons not having a good bedside manner, but actually, yeah, I'm with that one now.

Yeah. As trouble is, when you have a lot of empathy and compassion yourself and a bit of high EQ, you see people as being grumpy, dismissive, nasty, horrible, when really they're just being clinical and efficient. We want people, everyone, to be kind of touchy, feedy, warm and cuddly, but actually they're not. I think you got to get over that as well. I've learned my own communication style changes when I'm stressed under pressure, busy under things. I know that I could become cold, grumpy, all these kind of things. I'm sure most of us can if we're under pressure. So it's having the EQ or the emotional intelligence to be able to recognise that and be self aware and step back and go, actually, give me 5 minutes, let me focus myself, centre myself and I'll be ready for that conversation.

But just, if you come to me now, I'm prickly. I know it, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm exactly the same, actually, in that my natural default is I'm the person at the front of a training room bouncing around and teasing and energising and getting everybody where they need to be to get in the way. And there's some people in the room that I have to be very conscious, that I've got to rein myself in for you because you're just looking at night, oh, dear God. But then under pressure, I can be very. I just want to get stuff done. And I used to, like you say, I used to say to my team, I know I'm going to get really crossed in a minute, so can you just let me deal with this and then we'll deal with that. Didn't always do that the very first time. I may have shouted and got a bit grumpy for a couple of years, but learned in the end.

But that's the basis of EQ and emotional intelligence and it is that self awareness piece. Unless you actually look in the mirror or if someone has the courage to tell you in those appraisals and 360 feedbacks and those sessions you have, if people keep shying away from the constructive feedback and you're doing all right, you're doing all right. But if someone actually said, did you know, in a constructive way, you go really? I never knew that about myself. I did a very interesting exercise a few years ago when I was just starting out my own. I wrote to everybody I knew and just said, look, I'd just like to know how I come across. Come up with some words that you could use to describe me. And it was really interesting just to get their feedback on how people perceive me, both as a human being and in what I did. So there's a separation between, if you think about disprofiling, it's always your natural self and your business self, if you like.

And it's good to reflect on how people perceive me and how much alignment there was between how I thought I was perceived and I was actually perceived. And I thought that was really positive. There's a few things that people went this out there. I'll go, actually, I know that you're not surprising me there, so there's nothing surprising. But people did notice that I can be a bit grumpy and a bit kind of sometimes. Yeah. But it's a good exercise, I think. I reckon everyone should give it a go if they trust their friends.

Or you soon find out who you can trust.

Yeah. It's like going to toastmasters, having a speech evaluation. You have to trust the people in the room that are going to be objective and not just go, I didn't like it.

I was going to say, but you answered the question. Did you get any feedback that surprised you? What was the most surprising thing that people.

I think people. I was pleasantly surprised that most. Quite a few people described me as very generous with my time and willing to help people that I probably hadn't seen in myself. It was just something I did. And my wife, Marie, she always says that I'm an extremely generous person, not just money, but just in what I will give. And that has a downside, is it end up cutting me into multiple little slices and I end up giving too much of myself away sometimes. But diversity of spirit, I think, was one of the things that I really warmed to. And I thought, I'd never thought of that before.

But no, thank you. I'll put that in my box. I'll keep that. Yeah, it's interesting.

That's interesting. That's one of the first things I noticed about you when I first met you and the generosity of the time that you give to people within the PSA and supporting people there. And just, you're the first person to kind of support and offer suggestions and recommendations. And I come away from most of the meetings with a little note of must go do that. Thank you very much. That's a great idea. I'll go and do that.

I think sometimes when we're given feedback, I always think that the first question or the best question is, how do you think you did? Because I need to know how you think you did, because actually it's not about me. I can give you my perspective, my opinion, my view, but really what I'm looking for is how did you think you did? And then that's the basis of a conversation. Because if you think you did amazing, I can take a different tact to if you thought you did badly, I could tailor the feedback to now, you weren't that bad. No, there's a few things that you could have improved on. There's a few things you did really well and focus on those areas, whereas if you think you did really well, then it's harder to be a little bit negative. So you got to build up the positive stuff and then think, actually would be better. If I think just having that first question, how do you think you did? What do you think you could have done better? I recorded the podcast on the other day, and I talked about rubber ducking, and it's all about this concept where instead of coming to me and asking for my opinion, you talk to a rubber duck that's on a shelf somewhere, and you have the conversation with an inanimate object. And often speaking out loud and hearing yourself, analysing something is enough for your brain to then reinterpret.

It's got to go through that cycle of brain, mouth, ears, and that helps you solve problems. And sometimes asking somebody just to listen and shrug their shoulders occasionally is all you need. So I think getting someone to say how they think they felt and then how do you feel about that? How do you feel about that? Allows them to bring out some of the anxiety or some of the challenges or the bits they're proud of that you can then validate. So, actually, this brings me back to something you said right at the beginning, and as we've woven through this recording is the art of listening, and we often want to fix. Not here. I want to solve your problem. I want to tell you what to do. Actually, sometimes what you just need is space to gather your thoughts.

Absolutely. I'll do exercises with managers around listening because we'll say to them, where's the last time you had a good listening to? Because we don't often we have conversations, but like you said, the other person is always waiting to jump in with their solutions and their ideas and they're trying to be helpful, they're not being difficult or anything, they want to help, but it's getting them. When we talk about coaching and getting managers to ask questions and listen and to not think about generating the next question until that person stopped talking and allowing pauses, because how often do we wait that somebody stops and we're straight in? And actually they're just coming to the really juicy bit because exactly I said that brain process is going blah, blah, blah. That's the first bit. Oh, actually this is the issue. Managers don't because they feel like their job is to go straight into problem solving, into fixing, but recognising that. Using coaching is actually giving people that opportunity to learn and develop and grow. And every time you give them a solution, you're actually preventing them from growing and developing.

But it's hard to just listen. I have to physically do that sometimes I'm sitting there like that because I'm like focus and I know it's not one of my strengths, so I have to work really hard at it.

Yeah, I run some training courses and one thing I have the right at the beginning is a listening exercise and each person's put into a breakout or goes off and finds a space, just two people, and they have to say, tell me how it feels to be, or tell me what it feels like to something like that. And then they have to talk for 5 minutes and the other person, all they're allowed to do is, and if they freeze, you say thank you, please tell me what it's like. And all they have to do is restart the conversation. And I found when I've done that exercise is that you start very superficial, that veneer of feeling, and then every time you go round the cycle, you go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and then you uncover things that you never even thought of. And that's the power of the rubber ducking, if you like, or having no one trying to fix you or solve your problem, allowing you to really get down to what it really means. And I guess in the coaching model that's what you're trying to do as well. You're trying to take people from a five to an eight, from an eight to a ten, and what do they need to do to get there?

Yeah, and managers really struggle with that. They really struggle to let people come up with their own solutions because it's not their solution and it will probably never be their solution because that person's got a different way of doing things and having to let go because they feel that accountability of that it needs to look exactly like that. So they try and steer conversations, whereas actually listening properly and asking the right question. And like you say, going deeper and deeper. And it can take time to build the relationships so people feel confident to let you go deeper. But that's the beauty of having a coaching approach within your team anyway, is that the more they get used to you asking questions, the more they get used to thinking for themselves and the more open, the more honest that they actually become.

It's the old school management style of walking to a meeting saying, this is the problem and this is how I think we should solve it. What do you think? Everyone goes, okay, that's what you want to do. Whereas the enlightened manager will say, we've got this big issue, I'm looking for ideas. Anyone got any thoughts? And then working the room to get those thoughts out and then trying to summarise them at the end going, does that make sense for everybody? They go, yeah, that's what we said.

Because they're all excited, because they're all participated. And we go straight to solutions as well. We don't spend anywhere near enough time actually talking about the problem and finding out the absolute solution to the problem. So quite often we're problem solving something that's just a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself as well.

Yeah, rather than fix the root cause, we're trying to fix the problem, if you like. And we do that a lot in health care and other things. The government's now realising if they can stop people getting to this point, then they'll never have to spend more money later to resolve that. So if we can stop people smoking, stop people getting heart disease, stop people being unhealthy, if people are starting to get. They lose their eyesight, it's better to give them an eye operation immediately, find it, rather than put them on a waiting list for six months. And then they get. Then you end disability benefits that people can't see, they can't work. So, yeah, it's the preemptive strike.

And looking at root cause, I think, is the be there. And it's getting people around the table to start looking at those root causes rather than just the solution, the preventative element.

Yeah, but again, that takes time and that's something that certainly in a lot of organisations at the moment, where there's a lot of pressure to get results immediately, then people aren't given the time to do that, unfortunately, which can, but causes exactly those same problems further down the line.

So I think, just to summarise what we've talked about, being a mid manager is a really tough job, isn't it? You're under supported, undertrained, you're the conduit of the brown stuff that flows from the top and you're expected to hand it out to everybody beneath you. And then you are in equipped when people react in a way that you weren't expecting as well. So, yeah, middle managers, I think we need to give them a gold star for being there, hanging in there.

Absolutely.

Helen, it's been fantastic. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I know I said this right at the belonging in the green room, that I would tell you that I'd enjoy the conversation and I could talk to you all day and I could. And I look forward to meeting up with you again at another professional speaking association event somewhere around the country, somewhere in the near future, because it's been absolutely inspiring and thank you for your time. So, how can people get hold of you if they'd like to chat more?

Oh, lovely. Well, yes. So, thank you, Joe. It's been absolutely fantastic. Again. Yes. We could go on for hours, really could. I could talk about this for bites.

So, best places to find me. So, website is www. Dot. Do you even say that these days, people, LinkedIn is where I can be found most days. Those are the two places that I'm around. I'm not great on other social media, but, yeah, LinkedIn is always a great place.

Fantastic. And I'll make sure we put all of those details in the show notes for people to connect with you. So, Helen, thank you very much.

Thank you.

As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. If today's discussion struck a chord, consider subscribing to inclusion bites and become part of our ever growing community, driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk

And let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world, one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.