Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to inclusion bites, your sanctuary
Joanne Lockwood: for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood,
Joanne Lockwood: your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and societal
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Joanne Lockwood: a world where everyone not only belongs, but
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Joanne Lockwood: show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in.
Joanne Lockwood: It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 107 with the
Joanne Lockwood: title Voices Unleashed. And I have the
Joanne Lockwood: absolute honour and privilege to welcome Helen Joy.
Joanne Lockwood: Helen is a management development specialist and when I asked Helen
Joanne Lockwood: to describe her superpower, she said it's her ability to
Joanne Lockwood: build rapport and inspire people to make small changes
Joanne Lockwood: that create big impacts. Hello, Helen, welcome to
Joanne Lockwood: the show. Hello, Joanne, and thank you so much for having me
Helen Joy: on this beautifully cloudy, Grey Friday. It is great
Helen Joy: to have some sunshine in my life by spending some time with you.
Joanne Lockwood: I know someone put on LinkedIn earlier. What was your ideal
Joanne Lockwood: theme tune for the weekend? And I put, here comes the
Joanne Lockwood: sun. And I thought then, Rob, it's a bit early in the year, we're only
Joanne Lockwood: in February, but I can only
Joanne Lockwood: dream. Yes, it's coming. It's coming just a little bit away.
Joanne Lockwood: So, Helen, Voices Unleashed. Tell me
Joanne Lockwood: more. Well, in most
Helen Joy: organisations, there is this mid
Helen Joy: level of managers who so often
Helen Joy: have the hardest job in the business. They are
Helen Joy: filtering messages that come down from above. They don't get to make the
Helen Joy: decisions. The decisions are made up there in those ivory towers of C
Helen Joy: suites, and they're cascaded down through varying layers of
Helen Joy: management. And then they come down to those mid managers who then
Helen Joy: have to transfer that knowledge and that change
Helen Joy: or whatever's happening in the organisation to the people on the front
Helen Joy: line doing the role. They then have to absorb back
Helen Joy: up all of the things that might be wrong with that
Helen Joy: particular choice of direction, all the issues, all those
Helen Joy: things. But quite often, those middle managers
Helen Joy: are never heard, they're never asked, they're never listened
Helen Joy: to, they're never given the opportunity to
Helen Joy: actually share their knowledge and experience of what's happening
Helen Joy: and how things can be changed and adapted
Helen Joy: and for me, it's about making sure that those middle
Helen Joy: managers have the skills, the knowledge and the
Helen Joy: confidence to use those voices, to make sure
Helen Joy: that what's happening in a business is actually for
Helen Joy: the benefit of everybody across the business. So
Helen Joy: that's one side of it. It's that making sure that they're heard, but it's
Helen Joy: also about those managers being able to create environments
Helen Joy: where their teams can genuinely thrive, where
Helen Joy: everybody in their team has got that sense of
Helen Joy: psychological safety, so they know that
Helen Joy: they can be who they are, they can bring their
Helen Joy: own uniqueness into that team and they
Helen Joy: are valued exactly for that. And everybody's voice in the
Helen Joy: organisation then gets heard, because nothing changes without all
Helen Joy: of those different perspectives. Your intro
Helen Joy: talks about challenging the status quo and that's what we
Helen Joy: need in organisations at the moment. And the status quo isn't going to
Helen Joy: change unless we listen to everybody, unless we get all of those
Helen Joy: different perspectives, all of those different thoughts and ideas and ways of
Helen Joy: doing things. So getting to hear those voices is
Helen Joy: so important. And that begins with building the confidence of those managers to be able
Helen Joy: to push those messages back up the chain and make sure that they're listened
Helen Joy: to. I've been a middle manager at the beginning of my career,
Joanne Lockwood: probably without experience, without
Joanne Lockwood: support. I think one of the challenges I find in organisations
Joanne Lockwood: is we tend to promote people who are good at their
Joanne Lockwood: jo, not fantastic at leading, inspiring
Joanne Lockwood: and I'd probably use the term leader rather than manager. I always
Joanne Lockwood: believe that you manage staff but you lead people. So I
Joanne Lockwood: prefer that. I think we often promote people into those
Joanne Lockwood: roles without the support, without developing them and
Joanne Lockwood: say because they are great at what they do and they're looking for a
Joanne Lockwood: pay rise or career development without actually putting them on the career development
Joanne Lockwood: path first, or even surround them in cotton
Joanne Lockwood: wool in their first year to help them develop, and we see
Joanne Lockwood: that so often. So that's, for me, where the challenge in organisations lies is
Joanne Lockwood: investing properly in that lower level, mid manager tier
Joanne Lockwood: and without just expect them to pick it up and getting it right all the
Joanne Lockwood: time. That is the biggest challenge
Helen Joy: in organisations. There's a statistic around
Helen Joy: 82% of managers are what we're
Helen Joy: called accidental managers. There's a Gallup stat.
Helen Joy: I'm terrible for remembering where these stats come from. I can remember the stats, can
Helen Joy: never remember exactly who to credit them back to, but I've seen it in lots
Helen Joy: and lots of places and it's that 82% of accidental managers, so
Helen Joy: exactly, as you say, they're great at their jobs, but that doesn't
Helen Joy: make them instantly great at getting the best out of
Helen Joy: those people. And quite often they're not. At that
Helen Joy: point, they could be with the right support, with the right
Helen Joy: development, but businesses just don't invest
Helen Joy: in that. They seem to expect that people, you instantly give them that job
Helen Joy: title and suddenly they're bespoked with that job title and all the skills and
Helen Joy: abilities to do that. And they invest lots and lots at senior
Helen Joy: level in the C suite, in executive coaching and things like that.
Helen Joy: Lots of technical organisations invest huge amounts of money in technical
Helen Joy: skills and abilities and inductions, but they completely forget
Helen Joy: that the biggest asset in their business is their people. And if their
Helen Joy: people aren't being led, managed,
Helen Joy: supported by people with the right skills to do that, that will
Helen Joy: always be the blocker from any significant
Helen Joy: growth, productivity development for that organisation. And
Helen Joy: you create environments where people are not happy, and when people
Helen Joy: aren't happy, it impacts on every area of their life. It means that they
Helen Joy: don't want to be there, they underperform, they eventually leave, and
Helen Joy: you end up with this constant cycle that
Helen Joy: just by improving the skills and qualities of your
Helen Joy: managers, people want to work with you, they want to stay there,
Helen Joy: they want to be. We've all had those managers and leaders
Helen Joy: that we would do anything for. And when you question people about
Helen Joy: that, because I always talk about that when I'm doing a management programme, we always
Helen Joy: start by talking about leadership and management and that your job title might be
Helen Joy: manager, but you're there to lead that team. And whenever we talk about the
Helen Joy: characteristics of the managers that have brought the best out in you, lo and
Helen Joy: behold, they're all the skills of leaders every time. The
Joanne Lockwood: other problem I found when I was in that zone, if you
Joanne Lockwood: like, was I hadn't let go
Joanne Lockwood: of my old job. I was still good at what I did. I was
Joanne Lockwood: a good it technician, a good electronics engineer, I was a
Joanne Lockwood: fantastic at installing servers and flying around the world and putting this
Joanne Lockwood: stuff in and making it happen, then suddenly I had to care and
Joanne Lockwood: motivate and worry about people, whereas my focus was on getting
Joanne Lockwood: the job done. I didn't realise for many years that actually
Joanne Lockwood: my job, my role, was actually motivating the people.
Joanne Lockwood: And then whatever my role was other than that,
Joanne Lockwood: was second, you come in the morning, your
Joanne Lockwood: mission is to deploy your team, your troops, make sure
Joanne Lockwood: they're happy, you do your toolbox talk, do whatever you do, you brief it, you
Joanne Lockwood: do your agile, whatever scrum. And
Joanne Lockwood: then, and only then, once you've dealt with everybody and got them
Joanne Lockwood: motivated, then you can step back into your techie role or your
Joanne Lockwood: senior accountant role, whatever it is, and do get on the tools again.
Joanne Lockwood: I think that's the other trouble. We promote people without letting them
Joanne Lockwood: let go or they don't want to let go. They didn't realise that.
Joanne Lockwood: They thought it was just about being in charge,
Joanne Lockwood: not having to worry about things. Well, that's it, isn't it? I'll tell you what
Helen Joy: to do and you'll do it. And that's that kind of shift of people. I
Helen Joy: think it's because people aren't given the real clarity about what their
Helen Joy: role involves, rather than it just be they're just told, yes, you're promoted,
Helen Joy: here's your pay rise, which everyone go, yeah, brilliant. Now I've sourced that,
Helen Joy: the rest of it will just happen. And it doesn't, because we
Helen Joy: also motivating, driving, supporting,
Helen Joy: developing people. It's hard because
Helen Joy: everybody's different and everybody takes a different tweak and a different
Helen Joy: motivator and a different conversation and all of those things,
Helen Joy: and suddenly we've got to think about 15 people's motivators rather than just our own.
Helen Joy: So it's so easy to drop back into the comfort zone of,
Helen Joy: as you say, on the tools or whatever that may be. Going back into that
Helen Joy: is like, well, I feel comfortable here because I know I'm great at this, whereas
Helen Joy: that bit is hard, so I'm going to avoid that. And all that happens is
Helen Joy: the problems get bigger and bigger and our team get more and more disillusioned because
Helen Joy: they're not getting what they need, whether they've had what they need from your
Helen Joy: predecessor or not, they have those expectations
Helen Joy: that you're going to deliver those. Yeah. Another thing I learned about
Joanne Lockwood: myself is that I don't enjoy managing
Joanne Lockwood: people on a day to day basis. I really don't.
Joanne Lockwood: But I do enjoy being a senior
Joanne Lockwood: manager, a senior leader, a director, where I have people,
Joanne Lockwood: managers beneath me. And we can have kind of. You have shortcut
Joanne Lockwood: conversations, don't you? You don't have to do all of the. Are you okay?
Joanne Lockwood: Sorry. I'm not saying you don't have to do that, but you have to do
Joanne Lockwood: it in a different way. They tend to be self starting achievers,
Joanne Lockwood: getting on with stuff and then kind of their problem to
Joanne Lockwood: communicate the plan downwards. And I think I need a level of
Joanne Lockwood: obfuscation or separation between me and the coal
Joanne Lockwood: face because I really don't enjoy that.
Joanne Lockwood: I like to see big pictures and it's often hard to translate a
Joanne Lockwood: big picture into everyday speak when you've got people who are too
Joanne Lockwood: worried about where the widget goes. So I've learned that about
Joanne Lockwood: myself. I don't think that's uncommon because
Helen Joy: again, like you say, the bit that's difficult about
Helen Joy: managing people on a day to day basis is you are, to a degree, you're
Helen Joy: carrying their problems in your head quite a lot
Helen Joy: because there are those people who are those ultimate
Helen Joy: nurturers who are just amazing at doing that one to one piece with the
Helen Joy: individuals in their team as well as the whole bit. And they love it and
Helen Joy: they thrive on that. But actually, I think those people are quite
Helen Joy: unusual because I think most of us, because I'm exactly the same as
Helen Joy: you, I spent a lot of my time talking to managers about how they do
Helen Joy: that, get the most out of doing that day to day bit. But I know
Helen Joy: for a fact I'm much better when I've got that separation. I can just
Helen Joy: go, okay, right, well, this is where we need to get to your job is
Helen Joy: to get them there, because that's me being
Helen Joy: able to go, right. You deal with the really hard bit and I'll do
Helen Joy: the forward thinking bit and not the
Helen Joy: tactics bit, but you kind of go off and actually do those
Helen Joy: dealing with 810 people's issues because, and
Helen Joy: I know there's getting older as well. The older I get, the less kind of
Helen Joy: patience of sometimes, but it's hard.
Joanne Lockwood: It is. You've got three people want holiday at the same time. You got
Joanne Lockwood: to have the same old argument at Christmas about who gets the three days off,
Joanne Lockwood: who has to come in. They're all no win
Joanne Lockwood: conversations. You got to try and deliver the bad
Joanne Lockwood: news in the best way possible to people. And it is. It's exhausting
Joanne Lockwood: managing people. And I don't think
Joanne Lockwood: anybody does it with ease. There's always a challenge
Joanne Lockwood: there. People are different every day, aren't they? Yeah. And you think
Helen Joy: the way that workplaces are these days in terms of hybrid working
Helen Joy: as well, when you could go in and you were physically with your team every
Helen Joy: day, it was easier to spot instantly if somebody wasn't quite themselves,
Helen Joy: because within half an hour you could usually tell if someone was in a bad
Helen Joy: mood, someone was in a bit down or something like that. And I
Helen Joy: think for managers who had really good, strong
Helen Joy: relationships with their team, shifting to hybrid has been easier than people that
Helen Joy: didn't. Because again, with people working at home,
Helen Joy: it's easy to put a brave face on for 20 minutes while
Helen Joy: you're on a call with your boss and then turn off and
Helen Joy: crumble in a way that you couldn't do when you're in the office. You either
Helen Joy: had to maintain that facade for the whole day, which is really hard,
Helen Joy: or somebody would spot it. And I think a lot of
Helen Joy: frustrations and challenges and issues that people are dealing with got
Helen Joy: spotted a lot quicker than they do now because
Helen Joy: managers more stressed, they're busier, they're having
Helen Joy: to take all the skills that maybe they weren't always great at
Helen Joy: in the office and apply them in a completely different setup in
Helen Joy: a way that they don't always know how to manage.
Helen Joy: And some organisations do it really well,
Helen Joy: most don't. And I think where the ones that
Helen Joy: do are the ones that support their managers to learn the
Helen Joy: skills to manage remotely, because obviously, like
Helen Joy: you say, when you were in your old job, you were flying around all over
Helen Joy: the place and doing stuff like. So you got used to
Helen Joy: being remote and lots of people have got that knowledge and experience, but also a
Helen Joy: lot of people haven't. And I'd be so interesting, when you were
Helen Joy: flying around and being remote and doing all that stuff, how were you managed
Helen Joy: at that point and how did that work for you? I was kind
Joanne Lockwood: of empowered with the project, so I would be
Joanne Lockwood: touching base user management to be touching base. That's a
Joanne Lockwood: bit you're. If you're
Joanne Lockwood: in Hong Kong, Singapore, La,
Joanne Lockwood: San Diego, then you've got eight hour time differences. You can't sit
Joanne Lockwood: and say, I can't do anything until people come in because your day is gone
Joanne Lockwood: and their days started sort of thing. So you had a level of empowerment.
Joanne Lockwood: You get on the plane and all you would do is cheque
Joanne Lockwood: in on a regular basis. This is back in the pre
Joanne Lockwood: email, you weren't texting each other. This was a phone call. It had
Joanne Lockwood: to be a phone call. And so it was a phone call, just not
Joanne Lockwood: necessarily every day. Every time there's a situation or a problem, but
Joanne Lockwood: also we were hooking stuff up between
Joanne Lockwood: them and the UK and so sometimes there was conversations happening
Joanne Lockwood: anyway, but very often, and I was going to talk about this, it's about this
Joanne Lockwood: asynchronous form of management where we look at the
Joanne Lockwood: evolution of email. We started that, so we ping an email off, can you
Joanne Lockwood: do this? Someone reads the email, does something and says, that's done.
Joanne Lockwood: Or can you clarify? That's not an interactive conversation or synchronous
Joanne Lockwood: asynchronous. And now with teams with Slack
Joanne Lockwood: WhatsApp, all these sort of messaging tools, we're now far more
Joanne Lockwood: comfortable having one liner asynchronous conversations to fire
Joanne Lockwood: people off. And that's, again, a different management style. If you need
Joanne Lockwood: me, call me. If you don't get on. I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's how it was for me. It was empowerment and
Joanne Lockwood: responsibility, knowing. And I knew myself what
Joanne Lockwood: I had to achieve by the end of the week because the flight is booked
Joanne Lockwood: on Friday and I have to be on it sort of thing. Write a very
Joanne Lockwood: clear project plan, get in, do this, do this, do this, get
Joanne Lockwood: out. And if it was going badly, then I'd have to report that quickly because
Joanne Lockwood: I'd need someone to change my flight and push back the next schedule. So, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I think it was empowerment, trust and personal
Joanne Lockwood: responsibility to communicate back. And I think know if you think about Daniel
Helen Joy: Pink's model for motivation, where it's autonomy,
Helen Joy: mastery and purpose. And so for you there, that autonomy
Helen Joy: was a great way of making sure, like you say, you've got
Helen Joy: those boundaries and those parameters that you've got to deliver in and
Helen Joy: you know that you're trusted and that you're valued and that you can deliver that
Helen Joy: and that you've got support if you need it. And I think where we are
Helen Joy: now, I think, like you say, with the advance of technology, there
Helen Joy: is almost for someone that just feel like they have to be checking in all
Helen Joy: the time and they feel like that's their job. And actually it's the complete opposite
Helen Joy: of what we need as humans in terms of being able to have
Helen Joy: that desire to deliver and to do our very best
Helen Joy: at something because we're constantly being kind of micromanaged.
Helen Joy: I did some work with a client earlier this year when we were talking
Helen Joy: about time management and prioritisation, and
Helen Joy: we talked about how they communicate and they had 15 different
Helen Joy: methods of communication and it was chaos
Helen Joy: because everybody was using something different and
Helen Joy: getting frustrated that everyone was. So we ended up. They put together a communication charter
Helen Joy: of how they would communicate, when they would communicate, which method they'd use for
Helen Joy: whichever purpose, and which ones they were just going to bin. As a business,
Helen Joy: they're clearly not going to stop people using them from their private lives. But as
Helen Joy: a business, this is how we communicate. And it's then down to you to
Helen Joy: talk to your manager about how often you need that and for your manager to
Helen Joy: start to and work out how you develop that trust,
Helen Joy: because it can feel, I don't know if you've ever had it. I've had it
Helen Joy: sometimes with clients where you're kind of working on something and they're constantly kind of,
Helen Joy: what about this? What about that. What about the other? And it's like, just
Helen Joy: absolutely want you to be involved. But let me get to this
Helen Joy: point first, and then we'll talk about it and then discuss anything. We're
Helen Joy: too easily accessible now. But also, it's too easy to
Helen Joy: avoid all of those interactions if you want to, which is the other end
Helen Joy: of it sometimes for managers, which is that we don't know if there's
Helen Joy: a problem sometimes until it's too late, because it's easy for people to
Helen Joy: hide if they want to. Yeah. And I think sometimes
Joanne Lockwood: when you talked earlier about the cascading down and
Joanne Lockwood: what can happen is in that cascade,
Joanne Lockwood: the critical parts of the information or the plan aren't always
Joanne Lockwood: passed down as well. You're given this precy
Joanne Lockwood: where people at the top know exactly what the long term goal is, but
Joanne Lockwood: by the time it gets down to the person at the bottom, it just says,
Joanne Lockwood: step forward. It doesn't say why or how or what the purpose of stepping forward
Joanne Lockwood: is. And I remember doing a leadership development training with Hoskins at
Joanne Lockwood: the time. This was late 80s, early ninety s. And I
Joanne Lockwood: remember we were given a task to lead
Joanne Lockwood: our team to build a bridge between two desks. And so
Joanne Lockwood: we were given a bit of information. We said, okay, team, we need you to
Joanne Lockwood: build a desk with this box of Lego or Meccano over. Across this
Joanne Lockwood: desk. And some of the people built this really nice
Joanne Lockwood: rope bridge, this swing thing. And then people did
Joanne Lockwood: this and they did that. And then we,
Joanne Lockwood: as sort of like the leaders, got this next bit of information. We need to
Joanne Lockwood: be able to drive a car over that bridge. So we had to go back
Joanne Lockwood: to them and say, right, okay, the plans changed, the goalposts changed it. We actually
Joanne Lockwood: need to. So you need to take down the rope bridge. Now it is drive
Joanne Lockwood: a car over it. Anyway, this carried on, carried on, carried on. And the final
Joanne Lockwood: thing we found out was the bridge is actually over some
Joanne Lockwood: water and boats go under the bridge and sometimes the bridge
Joanne Lockwood: needs to lift up in order to get the boat under it. Of course, none
Joanne Lockwood: of the designs catered for that part of the plan. So it's all about
Joanne Lockwood: recognising as leaders, we need to communicate the
Joanne Lockwood: goal and buy people into the shared success of the
Joanne Lockwood: project and the outcome, not think, oh, I can't trust them with this just
Joanne Lockwood: yet, because that'll blow their minds. And then we protect people
Joanne Lockwood: and that ends up with this communication gap.
Helen Joy: Absolutely. And I do stuff around change
Helen Joy: management and using ad car to
Helen Joy: the ad car model that some people may or may not have heard of, is
Helen Joy: really simple, it's really easy, and it's just five steps that take
Helen Joy: you from awareness through to
Helen Joy: reinforcement. And it's all about communication, it's
Helen Joy: all about right up at the beginning. The more you communicate with people, the more
Helen Joy: you tell them and give them and share with them, the more aware
Helen Joy: they are, the more likely they are to engage with that. But there's this
Helen Joy: thinking, I don't know what happens as people get further and further up the
Helen Joy: tree. I'm using my hands. Nobody else can see this, can they?
Helen Joy: That people kind of lose the ability to see people's
Helen Joy: capability further down the line. And actually, the more you
Helen Joy: communicate and share pre change, the more
Helen Joy: different perspectives you get inside. And the more
Helen Joy: people you get talking about what that might look like and what the
Helen Joy: impact can be, the more chance there is of that being something that actually is
Helen Joy: going to work. Because when decisions are made completely in a
Helen Joy: bubble about, based on statistics, spreadsheets,
Helen Joy: data with no thought or
Helen Joy: consideration put into the reality behind the
Helen Joy: figures that are spewed out of whichever software, it's
Helen Joy: never going to be something that can be delivered, that there will always
Helen Joy: be better ways to do, better ways to add. But we just don't, as organisations,
Helen Joy: we so often just don't. Like you say, we're too scared of frightening
Helen Joy: people, when actually the more people hear rumours about what's
Helen Joy: going on without any consolidation of those rumours, the worse
Helen Joy: the fears. And there's a word, but my menopausal brain can't think
Helen Joy: of it. The conjecture. It's not conjecture, but it's that kind of
Helen Joy: thing. But the worse it gets. And I
Helen Joy: think the day that big organisations recognise that
Helen Joy: change can be done in a different way, they'll be so much
Helen Joy: smoother, so much easier. No wonder there's such a massive
Helen Joy: change or industry in people coming in and consulting on
Helen Joy: this, because just being honest and open with people,
Helen Joy: people are far more capable than they're given credit for.
Joanne Lockwood: And they want to be trusted, they want to be able to take responsibility, they
Joanne Lockwood: want to be able to bring some of their own creativity. And I appreciate we've
Joanne Lockwood: got. There's lots of psychological models about type x and
Joanne Lockwood: type Y people, or whatever it is, and some people like to be
Joanne Lockwood: given a task with very tight bounds and said, do this,
Joanne Lockwood: put screw a into hole b, do it and
Joanne Lockwood: repeat. Some people are artisans, some people are artists, some people
Joanne Lockwood: are technicians and creative and they want
Joanne Lockwood: parameters, not straitjackets. And it's recognising as a
Joanne Lockwood: leader. The different management styles you have to adopt with different people
Joanne Lockwood: to get the best out of them. And some people are high maintenance
Joanne Lockwood: and some people are low maintenance and some people react
Joanne Lockwood: differently. I know if you don't give someone a tight boundary,
Joanne Lockwood: they'll break down and go, I don't know what's expected. I can't handle this. I
Joanne Lockwood: don't know what's expected of me. Other people over manage, they rebel and go, hang
Joanne Lockwood: on a minute, I know what I'm doing. And you end up having to diffuse
Joanne Lockwood: these conflicts. And I think that's the biggest challenge as a leader is recognising that
Joanne Lockwood: people are different and really are different and surprise you.
Helen Joy: Yeah. As a manager or a leader,
Helen Joy: the time that you invest in getting to know and
Helen Joy: understanding your people and having the
Helen Joy: awareness that go into those conversations without an agenda,
Helen Joy: just go in and sit down and get to know them as people, as
Helen Joy: individuals and not as their job title,
Helen Joy: but just sitting down and saying, right, I'm your new manager.
Helen Joy: Tell me about yourself, tell me about you, tell me about what you enjoy,
Helen Joy: tell me about what you don't enjoy, tell me about what you want to do
Helen Joy: more of, tell me what your plans, what do you want? And some people don't
Helen Joy: want to share that stuff in work. They don't want to share anything beyond, I'm
Helen Joy: here to do my job and I want to just do my job and go
Helen Joy: home and that's fine. But
Helen Joy: you don't just make that assumption about everybody and ask the questions
Helen Joy: and over time, even those kind of quite tightly bound
Helen Joy: people will ease off and relax when they appreciate that you're doing it
Helen Joy: from a point of genuine interest and genuine
Helen Joy: concern for them as an individual, because you've got to. Yeah.
Helen Joy: If you can recognise what each of your team want and
Helen Joy: need to be their very, very best, and if you've got the
Helen Joy: skills and the ability to have those conversations,
Helen Joy: then you're making your job so much easier. I think people
Helen Joy: manage, especially new managers, get really, really caught up on the idea that they've got
Helen Joy: to be fair. And what they mean by fair is they've
Helen Joy: got to treat everybody exactly the same. Because I remember when I got my first
Helen Joy: management role and that's basically what I was told, you treat everybody
Helen Joy: exactly the same. And how I treated people got great
Helen Joy: results from some people, didn't get great results from others because they needed
Helen Joy: either more nurturing or more freedom, but because
Helen Joy: I'd been set this blinkered focus,
Helen Joy: it took me years to recognise that, oh, if I just give them that and
Helen Joy: give that. And I kind of started doing it under the table. It was a
Helen Joy: bit kind of like, okay, come here, we'll treat you. But then that
Helen Joy: creates unfairness in itself because you're doing it
Helen Joy: secretly, so people perceive it as favourites and things like that.
Helen Joy: But if you've got a culture where you back to recognising
Helen Joy: the uniqueness that everyone brings and the strength that that
Helen Joy: brings, but that needs to be coaxed out of different people in different ways,
Helen Joy: but you've got to know that, you've got to have that across the board. You
Helen Joy: can't just. I don't know about you, I've worked in organisations
Helen Joy: where there'd be one department or one function where
Helen Joy: it was amazing and everyone had a wonderful experience of working for that organisation.
Helen Joy: But different parts of the business, if you spoke to people there, they hated it,
Helen Joy: they had a terrible experience. And it's all down to the leadership, it's down
Helen Joy: to the cultures that are created and the way that they
Helen Joy: treat and value and respect their individuals. And that's the difference
Helen Joy: between those two. You're in the same organisation, same
Helen Joy: outputs, but completely different experience of being there. And the same can happen with
Joanne Lockwood: customer service. I can make a telephone call and have a wonderful
Joanne Lockwood: experience dealing with that wonderful human being. I can phone up another time
Joanne Lockwood: and there's a miscommunication, there's no lack of listening or whatever it may
Joanne Lockwood: be. And I have a terrible experience with that same organisation. Yeah, I'm
Joanne Lockwood: pretty sure. I'm pretty confident the organisation I'm dealing with wants me to have a
Joanne Lockwood: fantastic experience. Just sometimes it goes wrong and
Joanne Lockwood: it's often down to that human to human interface
Joanne Lockwood: where it goes wrong, a lack of whatever it may be.
Joanne Lockwood: You mentioned earlier the phrase psychological safety, which is kind
Joanne Lockwood: of a buzzy thing where everyone's talking about
Joanne Lockwood: it's one step forward from bring your whole self to work, isn't it? It's kind
Joanne Lockwood: of that bring your whole self to work and sub.
Joanne Lockwood: What does it mean to you in context, what you're just saying?
Helen Joy: Yeah, I can talk about psychological safety for about
Helen Joy: 18 years. So right back in the early days
Helen Joy: of Amy Edmondson coming out there and talking about this, because it really
Helen Joy: resonated with me as a person and how I believe
Helen Joy: managers and leaders should be in the workplace. And for me it
Helen Joy: is about creating an environment where everybody in
Helen Joy: your team is treated equally, is
Helen Joy: respected, is valued, is able to bring their
Helen Joy: very, very unique version of themselves and their
Helen Joy: perspectives into work every single day with
Helen Joy: no fear or concern around
Helen Joy: judgement, around fear of failure, around
Helen Joy: being judged. I was recording a video on this yesterday. She got to rattle this
Helen Joy: off the top of my head, shouldn't I? These fundamentals, learner safety,
Joanne Lockwood: creativity, all those kind of things. Those things. So, yeah, the learner safety, the inclusion
Helen Joy: safety, the challenger safety, the contributor safety. So all of those bits where
Helen Joy: you can come to work and you can be yourself. Absolutely. But that
Helen Joy: everybody around you is in exactly the same place and there is no judgement, there
Helen Joy: is no fear of failure. The whole thing, when you do
Helen Joy: workshops and training, there's no such thing as a stupid question, there really isn't. It's
Helen Joy: that sense of creating an environment where stuff
Helen Joy: happens and it's fine because we learn from it and we move on
Helen Joy: and we keep going forward. But everybody
Helen Joy: is valued for who they are and what they
Helen Joy: bring. And that for me is massive. One of the challenges
Joanne Lockwood: I find is that when you are that mid level manager or maybe
Joanne Lockwood: a supervisor or team lead, you're very focused on these things around
Joanne Lockwood: your team because you're that human to human contact. I think the higher up the
Joanne Lockwood: organisation to go in that there is less tolerance of failure,
Joanne Lockwood: less tolerance. You almost have expect to have this
Joanne Lockwood: robust adult conversation with someone, say, I'm going to tell you like it is,
Joanne Lockwood: and I don't care about your feelings, I just want to say, you need to
Joanne Lockwood: do this, you need to do that. So I think higher up there's less psychological
Joanne Lockwood: safety. And of course, as you go down, you
Joanne Lockwood: tend to bring, you repeat what you've been given. So if you've been
Joanne Lockwood: given fear and bullying or victimisation or
Joanne Lockwood: blame, all this kind of blame culture stuff, it takes a really strong person in
Joanne Lockwood: the middle there to be able to put a fire break in and says,
Joanne Lockwood: okay, I'll take the arrows in the chest, my team, my
Joanne Lockwood: responsibility, and then I come and have a chat with my team and say,
Joanne Lockwood: okay, this is how we need to work all this together, this
Joanne Lockwood: is how we can solve these problems. What are the challenges we're facing?
Joanne Lockwood: How do I push back? Because the
Joanne Lockwood: CEO just wants the share price to go up.
Helen Joy: And that to me, is kind of what's wrong with capitalism the
Helen Joy: way it is at the moment. I mean, that's a whole other thing, isn't it?
Helen Joy: We could go on to that for hours. But it is that you're
Helen Joy: absolutely right. The humanity seems to be stripped out the further people go,
Helen Joy: because I think you're right, that it's their experience of, I'm now in
Helen Joy: this role this is how I'm expected to behave. And
Helen Joy: I think, for me, one of the biggest
Helen Joy: examples recently was the ferry company.
Helen Joy: I can't remember which one it was with the ferry company. They just sacked
Helen Joy: so many people. Oh, yeah. Pno. They laid off all of
Joanne Lockwood: their low paid workers or something, didn't they? Yeah. And that
Helen Joy: was a decision. And when you kind of looked into the
Helen Joy: ownership structure of the business and how it kind of. The people
Helen Joy: making those decisions were so far removed from the
Helen Joy: individuals who lost their jobs, it really is just a case
Helen Joy: of they are numbers on a spreadsheet and they're numbers on a spreadsheet. In
Helen Joy: a spreadsheet. In a spreadsheet, in a spreadsheet. So they have
Helen Joy: absolutely no connection on a human
Helen Joy: level at all. And my view, that can't
Helen Joy: be right. No, but isn't that the whole challenge
Joanne Lockwood: around Edi? Discrimination, bullying, victimisation.
Joanne Lockwood: It's where people start using dehumanising language. And if
Joanne Lockwood: I describe you as not in the human way, then I could
Joanne Lockwood: do what I like to you, because I don't see you as a human. So
Joanne Lockwood: we invent these dehumanising words and we can do the same with our corporate
Joanne Lockwood: spreadsheet. We don't see people, we see numbers. The
Joanne Lockwood: Rwanda policy, for example, we're just seeing a boatload of immigrants, a
Joanne Lockwood: boatload of people, people who are costing us money.
Joanne Lockwood: Therefore we see numbers on a spreadsheet. Therefore those numbers need to be sorted
Joanne Lockwood: with another spreadsheet. I think that's what happens with
Joanne Lockwood: genocide and cleansing and all this kind of stuff is where
Joanne Lockwood: you don't see people as human beings anymore. No, and I
Helen Joy: think that the mainstream media. I saw something the other
Helen Joy: day that was saying that the amount of people reading
Helen Joy: mainstream media has dropped massively. Although when
Helen Joy: you see where they're getting the news from, I'm not totally sure whether that's a
Helen Joy: good thing or a bad thing. People are making up their
Joanne Lockwood: own mainstream media now. Viral on wacky
Joanne Lockwood: theories, isn't it? The media, over the last
Helen Joy: 510 years, the whole world seems
Helen Joy: so polarised and that you're either you're this or you're that.
Helen Joy: There's no grey anymore. People just kind of. But it's
Helen Joy: bizarre, isn't it? Because you see this, and this is social media, this is
Helen Joy: mainstream media, but day to day interactions with the people
Helen Joy: around you are not like that for most people,
Helen Joy: that most people interact with
Helen Joy: most other people in a predominantly positive way.
Helen Joy: Or maybe I'm still an idealist that likes to believe that
Helen Joy: humanity is still 95% positive.
Joanne Lockwood: I don't know if you've read humankind by Ruka Bregman.
Joanne Lockwood: He's also the author of Utopia for Realists. I've mentioned several times in this
Joanne Lockwood: podcast series. But yeah, I'm a great fan of Ruka's outlook on life and
Joanne Lockwood: how he sees people. But yeah, humankind. He proposes
Joanne Lockwood: and supposes that humans, by their very nature are
Joanne Lockwood: good and kind and people generally, most people,
Joanne Lockwood: don't wake up to be evil or nasty or horrible
Joanne Lockwood: or discriminatory or anything like this. Some of their behaviour is
Joanne Lockwood: learnt and they can be perceived as that, but
Joanne Lockwood: genuinely they believe they're doing right, being kind.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a difference between intent and impact sometimes. And it's a very interesting book. And
Joanne Lockwood: he talks a lot about the psychology of warfare and how they
Joanne Lockwood: believe they could destroy people by carpet bombing and bombing and bombing and bombing
Joanne Lockwood: and believing the civilization become demoralised.
Joanne Lockwood: And actually the opposite occurs, as we've seen in Ukraine.
Joanne Lockwood: The Russians haven't destroyed the will and the backbone of
Joanne Lockwood: Ukraine. What they've done is they strengthened it. And that's what happened when in the
Joanne Lockwood: Second World War, we were bombed, we had the Blitz spirit and
Joanne Lockwood: then we did the same in Germany and carpet bombed residents
Joanne Lockwood: in other places. It didn't destroy anybody, it just made them more resolute.
Joanne Lockwood: So this old mantras of warfare and human psychology,
Joanne Lockwood: we've got to step back from these. I think we can take a lot about
Joanne Lockwood: this in the workplace. Have faith in people, in their
Joanne Lockwood: humanity, treat people as people, recognise them as human
Joanne Lockwood: beings and they will behave as human beings. If you treat somebody in a negative
Joanne Lockwood: way or a disrespectful way, they'll learn that behaviour and they'll
Joanne Lockwood: respond in that way as well.
Helen Joy: For managers, it's just that bit of recognising that
Helen Joy: when you've got conflict in your team as a manager, the first time that happens,
Helen Joy: it's terrifying because you don't know how to deal with it. For most people, you
Helen Joy: kind of sit and look at these two people that are just not getting on
Helen Joy: and you're just like, oh, my God, I've got to deal with. That's my problem
Helen Joy: now. I've got to deal with that. But actually, if you
Helen Joy: go into those conversations and again, back to that, no agenda, but
Helen Joy: just go in with genuine curiosity to find out, right, what's the
Helen Joy: problem? You tell me what the problem is right now. You tell me what the
Helen Joy: problem is now. Let's work out, because actually the
Helen Joy: problem is often just a misperception, it's
Helen Joy: a mixed message, it's a lack of understanding
Helen Joy: of something that's happened at some point in there. And once you can actually sit
Helen Joy: down and take the emotion out of it and just sit people down and go,
Helen Joy: right, let's talk about it. But as a manager, that's one of the most
Helen Joy: terrifying things to do, because your expectation is you're going to
Helen Joy: get yourself in the middle of this and everyone's going to start screaming and shouting
Helen Joy: and it's all going to be your fault all of a sudden. But actually recognising
Helen Joy: how to deescalate things is such a
Helen Joy: powerful thing to do. And the more what you're
Helen Joy: then doing is exactly that is taking them back and going, right, this is just
Helen Joy: another person who's trying to do their best in this
Helen Joy: situation, in these circumstances. And that's why sometimes
Helen Joy: miscommunications in organisations. I say, when that cascading comes down,
Helen Joy: people hear rumours, they hear
Helen Joy: sometimes what they want to hear or what they don't want to hear. And that
Helen Joy: causes fear, which when we're afraid, quite often we
Helen Joy: push out because we're frightened and it's getting beyond
Helen Joy: that. But it's, again, the managers having the skill to understand that this
Helen Joy: behaviour isn't that person's normal default. So if they're
Helen Joy: acting out of their normal parameters of behaviour,
Helen Joy: what's going on? What's the problem? And being able to
Helen Joy: have the confidence to go into that conversation, and that's one thing our managers
Helen Joy: lack massively. Yeah, I think I learned a lot
Joanne Lockwood: about humanity and humans having children. I think
Joanne Lockwood: anyone who's suddenly found themselves with a two year old
Joanne Lockwood: laying on the floor in Marks and Spencer's, pummeling the floor with their fists, saying,
Joanne Lockwood: I don't want to, I'm not going to, or whatever it is, and you end
Joanne Lockwood: up having to pick them up, stick them over your shoulder and watch everybody around
Joanne Lockwood: you judge you for a. Your child's behaviour and your
Joanne Lockwood: reaction to it. You'll go, nothing to see here, just another two
Joanne Lockwood: year old. So some of the people just go, I feel for you, but
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes as a manager, you do have to
Joanne Lockwood: give some parental or pastoral guidance, which may
Joanne Lockwood: actually be out of your own comfort zone. We're
Joanne Lockwood: supposing that managers are good at all of this. They're not, are they?
Helen Joy: No. Especially in more technical
Helen Joy: organisations, where people
Helen Joy: are employed for their technical skills and abilities, and
Helen Joy: that's the way that their brains work, that's the way
Helen Joy: that they compute the world around them. Is
Helen Joy: very logical,
Helen Joy: strict parameters. And then when you start throwing emotions and
Helen Joy: things in there, that can be really hard for people in those
Helen Joy: organisations. And we do, we just make this assumption that they're going
Helen Joy: to be able to deal with it. And until we provide them with the skills
Helen Joy: to do that, and not everybody wants to do it. I used to
Helen Joy: run, it's one of the things I'm still really passionate about is the
Helen Joy: preskilling. So doing leadership academies, where
Helen Joy: you're getting those managers before they're promoted and you're saying, these are the skills you're
Helen Joy: going to need. And when I first did these 20 years
Helen Joy: ago, we would take a group every year of 2024
Helen Joy: people and by the end of that year, half of them would have been
Helen Joy: promoted. Probably six of them would have turned around and said,
Helen Joy: I absolutely never, ever want to go down that route in my life because
Helen Joy: I have not got the tolerance, the patience, the desire to
Helen Joy: be in that role. But for us that was a win because we could sit
Helen Joy: down with them and go, right, that's great, we know that now. So we're not
Helen Joy: going to put you into that position and watch you fail. We're going to go,
Helen Joy: this is your career path then, and these are the people that we'll bring in
Helen Joy: to do that pastoral piece for you. Do you find it in. I mean, I
Helen Joy: was talking to a solicitor recently about the fact
Helen Joy: that lawyers make some of the worst managers in the
Helen Joy: world and it perpetuates, like we said earlier, the behaviours, you
Helen Joy: continue the behaviours that you've seen and they are just. Because they are
Helen Joy: just trained from the moment they set foot in an
Helen Joy: organisation. It's about billing, it's about revenue, it's about getting the job done for the
Helen Joy: client and that's it. So then you start to bring people in and start to
Helen Joy: look at the softer side of things and it
Helen Joy: is such a struggle for so many of them. I read an article
Joanne Lockwood: recently about surgeons in the
Joanne Lockwood: healthcare sector and they were saying that the best
Joanne Lockwood: surgeons and consultants are the ones that have the worst bedside
Joanne Lockwood: manner because they need to stay detached and
Joanne Lockwood: objective. And as soon as you have a better bedside
Joanne Lockwood: manner, you become invested in that person and you can't make objective
Joanne Lockwood: decisions. So they're actually saying you actually want a search or
Joanne Lockwood: a consultant who has no bedside manner because he's likely, or she's
Joanne Lockwood: likely to be far more efficient at doing the right
Joanne Lockwood: thing for you. I've read something, I don't know if it was the same article,
Helen Joy: but there was a doctor who said we cut people up? You can't
Helen Joy: be emotionally attached to someone you're about to slice into. And that was
Helen Joy: like, I never, ever considered that before. Like, say
Helen Joy: we complain about doctors and surgeons not having a good bedside manner, but actually,
Helen Joy: yeah, I'm with that one now.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. As trouble is, when you have a lot of empathy and
Joanne Lockwood: compassion yourself and a bit of high EQ,
Joanne Lockwood: you see people as being grumpy, dismissive,
Joanne Lockwood: nasty, horrible, when really they're just being clinical
Joanne Lockwood: and efficient. We want people, everyone, to be kind of touchy,
Joanne Lockwood: feedy, warm and cuddly, but actually they're not. I think you got to get over
Joanne Lockwood: that as well. I've learned my own communication
Joanne Lockwood: style changes when I'm stressed under pressure, busy
Joanne Lockwood: under things. I know that I could become cold, grumpy, all these kind
Joanne Lockwood: of things. I'm sure most of us can if we're under pressure. So it's having
Joanne Lockwood: the EQ or the emotional intelligence to be able to recognise that and be self
Joanne Lockwood: aware and step back and go, actually, give me 5 minutes,
Joanne Lockwood: let me focus myself, centre myself and I'll be ready for that conversation. But
Joanne Lockwood: just, if you come to me now, I'm prickly. I know it, I'm sorry.
Helen Joy: Yeah, I'm exactly the same, actually, in that
Helen Joy: my natural default is I'm the person at the front of a training room
Helen Joy: bouncing around and teasing and energising and getting everybody where they need to be
Helen Joy: to get in the way. And there's some people in the room that I have
Helen Joy: to be very conscious, that I've got to rein myself in for you because you're
Helen Joy: just looking at night, oh, dear God. But then under pressure, I can
Helen Joy: be very. I just want to get stuff done. And I used to, like you
Helen Joy: say, I used to say to my team, I know I'm going
Helen Joy: to get really crossed in a minute, so can you just let me deal with
Helen Joy: this and then we'll deal with that. Didn't always do that the very first
Helen Joy: time. I may have shouted and got a bit grumpy for a couple of years,
Helen Joy: but learned in the end. But that's the basis
Joanne Lockwood: of EQ and emotional intelligence and it is that self awareness piece. Unless
Joanne Lockwood: you actually look in the mirror or if someone has the courage to tell
Joanne Lockwood: you in those appraisals and 360 feedbacks and those sessions
Joanne Lockwood: you have, if people keep shying away from
Joanne Lockwood: the constructive feedback and you're doing all right, you're doing all
Joanne Lockwood: right. But if someone actually said, did you know, in a constructive way, you
Joanne Lockwood: go really? I never knew that about myself. I did a very interesting exercise a
Joanne Lockwood: few years ago when I was just starting out my own. I wrote to everybody
Joanne Lockwood: I knew and just said, look, I'd just like to know how I come across.
Joanne Lockwood: Come up with some words that you could use to describe me. And it was
Joanne Lockwood: really interesting just to get their feedback on how people perceive me, both as a
Joanne Lockwood: human being and in what I did. So there's a separation between, if you think
Joanne Lockwood: about disprofiling, it's always your natural self and your business
Joanne Lockwood: self, if you like. And it's good to reflect on how people perceive
Joanne Lockwood: me and how much alignment there was between how I thought
Joanne Lockwood: I was perceived and I was actually perceived. And I thought that was really positive.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a few things that people went this out there. I'll go, actually, I
Joanne Lockwood: know that you're not surprising me there, so there's nothing surprising. But
Joanne Lockwood: people did notice that I can be a bit grumpy and a bit kind
Joanne Lockwood: of sometimes. Yeah. But it's a good exercise,
Joanne Lockwood: I think. I reckon everyone should give it a go if they trust their
Joanne Lockwood: friends. Or you soon find out who you can
Helen Joy: trust. Yeah. It's like going to toastmasters,
Joanne Lockwood: having a speech evaluation. You have to trust the people in the room that are
Joanne Lockwood: going to be objective and not just go, I didn't like it. I was going
Helen Joy: to say, but you answered the question. Did you get any feedback that
Helen Joy: surprised you? What was the most surprising thing that
Helen Joy: people. I think people. I
Joanne Lockwood: was pleasantly surprised that most. Quite a
Joanne Lockwood: few people described me as very generous with my time and
Joanne Lockwood: willing to help people that
Joanne Lockwood: I probably hadn't seen in myself. It was just something I did. And
Joanne Lockwood: my wife, Marie, she always says that I'm an extremely
Joanne Lockwood: generous person, not just money, but just
Joanne Lockwood: in what I will give. And that has a downside, is it end up cutting
Joanne Lockwood: me into multiple little slices and I end up giving too much of myself away
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes. But diversity of spirit, I think, was one of the things that I really
Joanne Lockwood: warmed to. And I thought, I'd never thought of that before. But no, thank
Joanne Lockwood: you. I'll put that in my box. I'll keep that. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: it's interesting. That's interesting. That's one of the first things I noticed about you when
Helen Joy: I first met you and the generosity
Helen Joy: of the time that you give to people within the PSA
Helen Joy: and supporting people there. And just, you're the first
Helen Joy: person to kind of support and offer suggestions and
Helen Joy: recommendations. And I come away from most of the meetings with
Helen Joy: a little note of must go do that. Thank you very much. That's a great
Helen Joy: idea. I'll go and do that. I
Joanne Lockwood: think sometimes when we're given feedback, I always think that the first question or
Joanne Lockwood: the best question is, how do you think you did? Because
Joanne Lockwood: I need to know how you think you did, because actually
Joanne Lockwood: it's not about me. I can give you my perspective, my opinion, my
Joanne Lockwood: view, but really what I'm looking for is how did you think you did?
Joanne Lockwood: And then that's the basis of a conversation. Because if you think you did amazing,
Joanne Lockwood: I can take a different tact to if you thought you did badly, I could
Joanne Lockwood: tailor the feedback to now, you weren't that bad. No, there's a few things that
Joanne Lockwood: you could have improved on. There's a few things you did really well and focus
Joanne Lockwood: on those areas, whereas if you think you did really well, then it's harder
Joanne Lockwood: to be a little bit negative. So you got to build up the positive stuff
Joanne Lockwood: and then think, actually would be better. If I think just having
Joanne Lockwood: that first question, how do you think you did? What do you think you could
Joanne Lockwood: have done better? I recorded the podcast on the other day, and I
Joanne Lockwood: talked about rubber ducking, and it's all about this concept where
Joanne Lockwood: instead of coming to me and asking for my opinion,
Joanne Lockwood: you talk to a rubber duck that's on a shelf somewhere, and you have the
Joanne Lockwood: conversation with an inanimate object. And often speaking out loud
Joanne Lockwood: and hearing yourself, analysing something is enough for your brain to then
Joanne Lockwood: reinterpret. It's got to go through that cycle of brain, mouth,
Joanne Lockwood: ears, and that helps you solve problems. And
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes asking somebody just to listen and shrug
Joanne Lockwood: their shoulders occasionally is all you need. So I think getting someone to say how
Joanne Lockwood: they think they felt and then how do you feel about that? How do you
Joanne Lockwood: feel about that? Allows them to bring out some of the anxiety or some of
Joanne Lockwood: the challenges or the bits they're proud of that you can then validate.
Joanne Lockwood: So, actually, this brings me back to something you said right at the
Joanne Lockwood: beginning, and as we've woven through this recording is the art
Joanne Lockwood: of listening, and we often want to fix.
Joanne Lockwood: Not here. I want to solve your problem. I want to tell you what to
Joanne Lockwood: do. Actually, sometimes what you just need is space to gather your
Joanne Lockwood: thoughts. Absolutely. I'll
Helen Joy: do exercises with managers around listening because we'll say to them, where's the last
Helen Joy: time you had a good listening to? Because we don't often
Helen Joy: we have conversations, but like you said, the other person is always waiting to jump
Helen Joy: in with their solutions and their ideas and they're trying to be helpful, they're not
Helen Joy: being difficult or anything, they want to help,
Helen Joy: but it's getting them. When we talk about coaching and getting
Helen Joy: managers to ask questions and listen
Helen Joy: and to not think about generating the next question until that person stopped
Helen Joy: talking and allowing pauses, because how often do we
Helen Joy: wait that somebody stops and we're straight in? And actually
Helen Joy: they're just coming to the really juicy bit because
Helen Joy: exactly I said that brain process is going blah, blah, blah. That's the first bit.
Helen Joy: Oh, actually this is the issue.
Helen Joy: Managers don't because they feel like their job is to go straight into
Helen Joy: problem solving, into fixing, but recognising that.
Helen Joy: Using coaching is actually giving people that opportunity to
Helen Joy: learn and develop and grow. And every time you give them a solution, you're
Helen Joy: actually preventing them from growing and developing.
Helen Joy: But it's hard to just listen.
Helen Joy: I have to physically do that sometimes I'm sitting there like that because I'm
Helen Joy: like focus and I know it's not one of
Helen Joy: my strengths, so I have to work really hard at it. Yeah, I run
Joanne Lockwood: some training courses and one thing I have the right at the beginning is a
Joanne Lockwood: listening exercise and each person's put into a breakout or
Joanne Lockwood: goes off and finds a space, just two people, and they have to
Joanne Lockwood: say, tell me how it feels to be, or tell me what it feels
Joanne Lockwood: like to something like that. And then they have to talk for 5 minutes and
Joanne Lockwood: the other person, all they're allowed to do is, and if they freeze,
Joanne Lockwood: you say thank you, please tell me what it's like. And all they have to
Joanne Lockwood: do is restart the conversation. And I found when I've done that
Joanne Lockwood: exercise is that you start very superficial, that
Joanne Lockwood: veneer of feeling, and then every time you go round the cycle, you go
Joanne Lockwood: deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and then you uncover
Joanne Lockwood: things that you never even thought of. And that's the power of the rubber ducking,
Joanne Lockwood: if you like, or having no one trying to fix you or solve your
Joanne Lockwood: problem, allowing you to really get down to what it really means. And I guess
Joanne Lockwood: in the coaching model that's what you're trying to do as well. You're trying to
Joanne Lockwood: take people from a five to an eight, from an eight to a ten, and
Joanne Lockwood: what do they need to do to get there? Yeah, and managers
Helen Joy: really struggle with that. They really struggle to let people come up with their
Helen Joy: own solutions because it's not their solution and it will probably
Helen Joy: never be their solution because that person's got a different way of doing things
Helen Joy: and having to let go because they feel that accountability of that it
Helen Joy: needs to look exactly like that. So they try and steer
Helen Joy: conversations, whereas actually listening properly and asking
Helen Joy: the right question. And like you say, going deeper and deeper.
Helen Joy: And it can take time to build the relationships so people feel confident to let
Helen Joy: you go deeper. But that's the
Helen Joy: beauty of having a coaching approach within your team anyway,
Helen Joy: is that the more they get used to you asking questions, the more
Helen Joy: they get used to thinking for themselves and the more open, the more honest that
Helen Joy: they actually become. It's the old school management style of walking to a
Joanne Lockwood: meeting saying, this is the problem and this is how I think we should solve
Joanne Lockwood: it. What do you think? Everyone goes, okay, that's what
Joanne Lockwood: you want to do. Whereas the enlightened manager will say,
Joanne Lockwood: we've got this big issue, I'm looking for ideas. Anyone got any thoughts?
Joanne Lockwood: And then working the room to get those thoughts out and then trying to summarise
Joanne Lockwood: them at the end going, does that make sense for everybody? They go, yeah, that's
Joanne Lockwood: what we said. Because they're all excited, because they're all participated.
Helen Joy: And we go straight to solutions as well. We don't spend anywhere
Helen Joy: near enough time actually talking about the
Helen Joy: problem and finding out the absolute solution to the problem. So quite often
Helen Joy: we're problem solving something that's just a symptom of
Helen Joy: the problem rather than the problem itself as well. Yeah, rather than
Joanne Lockwood: fix the root cause, we're trying to fix the problem, if you like. And we
Joanne Lockwood: do that a lot in health care and other things. The government's now
Joanne Lockwood: realising if they can stop people getting to this point,
Joanne Lockwood: then they'll never have to spend more money later to resolve that. So if we
Joanne Lockwood: can stop people smoking, stop people getting heart disease, stop people being
Joanne Lockwood: unhealthy, if people are starting to get. They lose their eyesight,
Joanne Lockwood: it's better to give them an eye operation immediately, find it, rather than
Joanne Lockwood: put them on a waiting list for six months. And then they get. Then you
Joanne Lockwood: end disability benefits that people can't see, they can't work. So, yeah, it's the
Joanne Lockwood: preemptive strike. And looking at root cause, I think, is the be there.
Joanne Lockwood: And it's getting people around the table to start looking at those root causes
Joanne Lockwood: rather than just the solution, the preventative element. Yeah, but
Helen Joy: again, that takes time and that's something that certainly in a lot of
Helen Joy: organisations at the moment, where there's a lot of pressure to get results
Helen Joy: immediately, then people aren't given the time to do that, unfortunately, which
Helen Joy: can, but causes exactly those same problems further down the
Helen Joy: line. So I think, just to summarise what we've talked
Joanne Lockwood: about, being a mid manager is a really tough job, isn't it?
Joanne Lockwood: You're under supported, undertrained,
Joanne Lockwood: you're the conduit of the brown stuff that flows from the top and you're
Joanne Lockwood: expected to hand it out to everybody beneath you. And
Joanne Lockwood: then you are in equipped when people react in a way that
Joanne Lockwood: you weren't expecting as well. So, yeah, middle managers, I think we need
Joanne Lockwood: to give them a gold star for being there, hanging in
Joanne Lockwood: there. Absolutely. Helen, it's been fantastic. I've really enjoyed this
Joanne Lockwood: conversation, and I know I said this right at the belonging in the green
Joanne Lockwood: room, that I would tell you that I'd enjoy the conversation and I could talk
Joanne Lockwood: to you all day and I could. And I look forward to meeting up with
Joanne Lockwood: you again at another professional speaking association event
Joanne Lockwood: somewhere around the country, somewhere in the near future, because it's been absolutely
Joanne Lockwood: inspiring and thank you for your time. So, how can people get hold of you
Joanne Lockwood: if they'd like to chat more? Oh, lovely. Well, yes. So, thank you, Joe.
Helen Joy: It's been absolutely fantastic. Again. Yes. We could go on for hours, really could. I
Helen Joy: could talk about this for bites. So, best places to find me. So,
Helen Joy: website is www. Dot. Do you even say that these days,
Helen Joy: people,
Helen Joy: LinkedIn is where I can be found most days. Those are the
Helen Joy: two places that I'm around. I'm not great on other social media,
Helen Joy: but, yeah, LinkedIn is always a great place. Fantastic. And I'll make sure we
Joanne Lockwood: put all of those details in the show notes for people to connect with you.
Joanne Lockwood: So, Helen, thank you very much. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to
Joanne Lockwood: express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for
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Joanne Lockwood: jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
Joanne Lockwood: And let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this
Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return
Joanne Lockwood: with more enriching narratives that challenge,
Joanne Lockwood: inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more
Joanne Lockwood: inclusive world, one episode at a time. Catch you on the next
Joanne Lockwood: bite.