WARP Speed Leadership

What does it take to be a leader in 2024? With Rob Baker

• Richard Parton • Episode 1

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In this episode, we're talking about what it actually takes to be a great leader in 2024. 

We'll be walking through some of the key themes and trends shaping workplaces right now with my co-host Nikki Tugano. 

And then I'll be talking to Rob Baker, he's the founder of Tailored Thinking in the UK, and he was named by HR magazine on this year's most influential thinker list. 

Links and further reading:


Richard:

Hello, and welcome to the first full episode of WARP Speed Leadership a show about everything you need to know to be an incredible leader in this rapidly evolving world of work. I'm your host Richard Parton. And in this episode, we're talking about what it actually takes to be a great leader in 2024, we'll be walking through some of the key themes and trends shaping workplaces right now with my cohost Nikki Tugano. And then I'll be talking to Rob Baker. He's the founder of teller thinking in the UK. And he was named by HR magazine on this year's most influential thinker list. He has some really interesting things to say about leadership And how he helps his clients to create engaging workplaces. We're coming to you from Wurundjeri Land in Melbourne, Australia. So let's kick off our first segment, which is talking points in this section. We'll do a Roundup of the news and trends in the world of work that we think leaders need to know about. And as this is the first time we're doing it. I'm going to start off with some of the major trends from the last few months. Remote and hybrid work continues to be a huge trend. A number of large workplace surveys show that remote and hybrid work are definitely here to stay. The most recent report, for example, from buffer showed that 98% of remote workers surveyed globally so that they wouldn't go back to in-person work. Echoing similar figures from Gallup, which also showed that returned to work mandates appear to be backfiring, driving, lower engagement and higher turnover. 2024 is shaping up to be the year that generative AI comes to the workplace. Although the number of official company-wide world roll-outs remains relatively small stats shared by a deco from their workplace survey of 30,000 people. Worldwide showed that 70% were using AI in their work, despite many saying that they wanted their workplaces to better support and enable their AI use. Ethan Mullock professor of management at the warden school has outlined four key principles for integrating AI into our lives and work. Number one, always invite AI to the table. So bring AI into various tasks and try to explore its potential and get familiar with it. Be the human in the loop. So that's maintaining oversight and human expertise., in AI implementation. Number three, treating AI like a person. So what he highlights is thinking of it as a bit like a coworker or colleague and collaborating with it. To get the best out of it. And then number four, assuming that this is the worst AI that you'll ever use. So thinking about not only how you can use it now. But understanding that what you're using right now is going to continually improve. So what are the opportunities that are coming down the pipeline? What are the ways of working that are going to enable that? And also related to that, making sure that you're thinking about what are the drawbacks of the particular models and approaches that you're using, where are the potential harms? So you can find out more about that in his excellent book that was just published called co intelligence, living in working with AI, which I'll link to also in the show notes. And finally returning to the news, surveys of business leaders are showing 2024 to be a key turning point across a range of different areas. In multiple surveys by the world economic forum this year, for example, top challenges highlighted by business leaders included. Impacts on climate change and rising extreme weather events. Greater social polarization, as well as interstate conflict and geopolitical tension. I need to address both labor and skill shortage, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion, quite a challenge to, to balance the both of those. Economic uncertainty. Linked with supply chain, restructuring inflation and widespread cost of challenges. And cyber crime with both the rate and sophistication of cyber attacks rapidly rising. So now to help us digest and explore all of that and more I'm joined by my cohost Nikita, Garneau, CEO, and founder of seeing culture. Hey, Nikki, how are you going?

Nikki:

Hey, I'm doing really well. How are you doing?

Richard:

I'm doing very good particularly since we're now finally actually recording the first proper episode. So What are some of the things that you've noticed out there that you think leaders should know about right now?

Nikki:

Recently there was a release of Australia's first gender pay gap report. Um, And that's come off the back of new laws that have been introduced, And the thing that's been on my mind just today, is I've recently put a job post out. I got hundreds and hundreds of applicants within a space of just a couple of days. And typically that's a really great thing. But I'm feeling a little bit disappointed in having reviewed all of the applicants because I don't feel like I've had a very diverse talent pool to, to screen or shortlist from. And it's had me just reflecting on what does that mean? At the hiring process for the outcome on the gender pay gap report. And so it's just had me reflecting on, what we as leaders can do. To better prepare for that.

Richard:

absolutely. I got to say that as a hiring manager I've had that same issue a bunch of times where you go out to market and sometimes you only get a couple of people, but other times you just get this flood. And, the flood isn't always a great thing. So. Given that you actually know your stuff in this domain, what are the tips that you would give to to a hiring manager who's got that issue of I've got this vast array of people, what are the things that they should be doing differently?

Nikki:

Well, I think it's being really intentional about why might it be that we're not attracting a diverse pool of talent? And it's very easy to fall back on the fact that, I'm hiring for an engineer, and it is a very male dominated industry. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't incredible, for instance female engineers that are out there. And so I think it's more that intentionality for attracting them, not only in the way that the job advert is communicated but the channels that we use and also just being intentional about, Looking at the candidates. And so for me in my situation, I personally want to repost the job ad. to say, Hey, we've had an overwhelming amount of applicants like very happy about that. However, before I start to screen and shortlist, I'd really love to see more diverse talent pool. And so for those people that are out there that really care about Diversity, equity, inclusion, can you help me find uh, some more potential candidates that might be interested in this role that can help provide me a more diverse a more balanced diverse talent pool.

Richard:

So actually specifying exactly what you're looking for, which is so great. I mean, even as a candidate, it's sometimes really good to know. So linked to that a number of reports recently highlighting that when we've come through that hiring process and then they're arriving in the job. Particularly Gen Zed experiencing higher levels of psychological distress and thinking about all of the different things that managers are needing to Have on their plate at the moment in terms of you know, on the one hand, you're almost acting as like a a therapist and coach to people, whilst on the other hand, thinking about, the D and I aspects of trying to make sure that you're actually reaching diverse sort of audience when you're doing things like hiring and that kind of thing. And it just really highlights the range of things that the leaders need to be across at the moment. And I guess how challenging that can be. I think that One of the one of the tips that I would that I would share on that is that, as a leader, the so called soft skills are increasingly really, really critical, as much as the sort of business acumen side of things. I think there are some really great. Resources out there that you can draw on. I'm Actually it links to one of the other things that I've noticed which is other reports around AI in the workplace and how basically this year is very much gearing up to be the year that there's no organization almost, out there. that doesn't have AI in the workplace in one way or another. It's just that in the vast majority of cases, it's like a shadow AI implementation where people have picked it up and just started using it. For me, what I, one of the things that I think is really cool about that though, is that there are these additional tools, and if you're really intentional about picking out, Tools that are that are going to be appropriate to the situation. There's a lot of advice you can actually get. So I've been prompting a few different chatbots. So not only chat DPT but also the Claude II model is really good at this. And also perplexity on. So as a hiring manager, for example, how could I improve diversity? What are some ideas for diversity type type initiatives as a manager, what should I do about particular issues. I found the advice that I got back was actually quite good. It's a really good way to bounce ideas and to upskill on things that might be a bit of a blind spot. So my tip would be to deliberately prompt for what might I be missing. A lot of the, a lot of the concerns that people have around the, about AI in hiring is actually the creation of blind spots. But if you prompt specifically for how do I avoid that? What I found is that, the data that sort of been ingested is so broad that it's actually quite good at giving you a leg up. Well we've taken in a quite a range of different things there. So. Thanks very much for helping me to do this little roundup. What we're gonna do now is move on to the interview with Rob Baker. I think you, you got a chance to have a little look at the the, a preview of the interview. He's so great, right? He's knowledgeable, so great. Yeah.

Nikki:

Wealth of knowledge, especially when it comes to leadership.

Richard:

Yeah. Yeah. He was so self effacing in the interview, but it really, like I, I'd actually thought it would be great to talk about job crafting with him, you know, that's a domain that he particularly has expertise in. Well, what I feel like the interview ended up being was very much a, like a masterclass on how to be a great leader. He touched on so many different things that I thought would be great. I was actually especially pleased that we got to talk to him as a kickoff. So thanks a lot, Nikki. And I'm gonna hand over to to Rob now and and the interview.

Nikki:

Thanks Richard.

Richard:

Hi Rob, great to have you on the show. Tell us first of all, a little bit about yourself and how you got into your work.

Rob:

thanks. I started TaylorThinking six years ago. My background's always been in consultancy. I started life as a consultant with PwC, but then went into go stand alone HR roles. And it was when I was working at the University of Melbourne. So I'm based in the UK and I'm a Brit, but I was lucky enough to work in Melbourne for four and a half years. And in Melbourne, I discovered positive psychology. So it wasn't, it didn't exist when I was a graduate because I'm that old as it were. So the first papers were written about positive psychology in 99, 2000 by Martin Sullivan and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and. So Google was my friend. I discovered positive psychology one day. And I was like, where can I, where can I discover more? And it just so happened that the university of Melbourne they were starting a world leading center, like from a donation. And so I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I studied. positive psychology, did a master's, some wonderful lectures and wonderful colleagues. And I was really aware of this disconnect between what the research was showing in terms of great practice, particularly from an organizational perspective. That was the thing that I was most interested in and actually what was, what we were doing on the ground and what I was doing on the ground as an HR leader in this space. And there was disconnect. And so from that point onwards, really, I've always been curious about saying, what can we do to practically apply ideas from. Positive psychology, occupational psychology, behavior science to bring them to workplaces, to enable people to do better work, to make work better.

Richard:

Yeah. There's a lot of parallels to my own journey. do you remember what the first thing was that you came across that kind of really sparked your,

Rob:

Do you know what? I really wish I could, but I do remember where I was. I was literally at my kitchen table cause it was late, cause it was dark, it was late at night, and I was, Googling on that, but I can't remember the exact article, but I do remember just going down a bit of a rabbit hole. So it was one of those things that I looked up about an hour later and I just had been studying and looking at all these different aspects to it. So it was just something that was a complete blind spot to me. Sometimes these happen, right? But we have, we realize we, we could have, something's happening that we, that, that actually we would be a source of connection for us, but we're just not aware that it's, that

Richard:

It was very, very similar for me. I was actually listening to radio for but this is back when I was living in the UK and Professor Richard Layard came on. I was actually hoovering at the time or vacuuming People in other countries and I just found you know Like you like yourself sort of an hour later. I found myself just sort of sitting still in the front room Just madly googling like oh my god, all this all this different stuff. So Sounds very similar. So what would be great to hear about is what you'd say some of the key challenges you're seeing in your work for leaders and managers at the moment, what are some of the big, big chunky sort of trends that that you're coming across?

Rob:

Sure. Well, I think there's, there's lots of, there's lots of chunky trends out there, but maybe two that would be of interest to kind of explore from a leadership perspective. And I know that's kind of an area of focus for you. So one is around kind of accidental managers. I think there is a challenge that we have organizationally where actually we have managers and leaders who. aren't necessarily equipped to do the work in the most effective way. We can maybe talk a bit about that. And second is around, maybe also linked to that in terms of leadership style. So actually understanding how people can lead in an empowering and engaging way and dig into a little bit of the research there. So there are two, two aspects I'm seeing is emerging and saying, actually in this current world we're living in, in terms of being able to lead ourselves and lead others during uncertainty. It's absolutely important that people have a skill set and I think we're finding some people don't have those skill sets And some do but they could be sharpened effectively

Richard:

Yeah, absolutely. And what are your sort of go-to approaches if you're kind of, you're coming across or working with leaders who, who haven't already got that kind of skillset. Where, where do you usually go?

Rob:

Yeah, really really interesting So I think in terms of well just to say a little bit about the size of that that issue kind of first because I was doing a bit of kind of digging around in terms of this space and It was just a shout out to bruce daisley who I could have follow You who, who has a great podcast and written some nice books. And he, he was summarizing this recently and some of the research that he was sharing with that and this comes from the the Institute for Managing Institute Gartner and HBR, but it was showing that 82 percent of managers in the UK have no formal leadership training when they take on the role and 75 percent of managers say they're overwhelmed by the growth of their job responsibilities. Is there, when they become. Managers. We're not designing enough space or the abilities to enable them to do effectively. And I think that's a kind of like a significant problem in terms of being able to, to manage organizations and lead organizations in an effective, in an effective way. So that's kind of like a big issue. And I think there is statistics and research that shows that people tend to leave organizations because of managers. I think that's maybe overstated sometimes, but I think the, the negative impact Of a, of a, of a poor manager can't be kind of overstated yet. These are things that we could probably all do to kind of this basic things we can do to remedy this, to make it a bit, a bit better.

Richard:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think I found in a lot of my work the leaders that I've worked with often, particularly folks who are in their, you know, the first couple of roles I think they're they're quite overwhelmed with the, the volume of different, different areas that you have to master. And, I've rarely come across anybody who doesn't, doesn't actually have the best interests of their team and their people at heart, but so often they're really just really struggling to manage all of the, all of those different things that that, you know, everybody's looking at you now. And what do you, you know, how do you, how do you go about it? Yeah, so I guess one of the things I'm sort of curious about if, is if you've got any particular areas that you tend to work with them on yeah, what's, what's your sort of,

Rob:

Yeah.

Richard:

kind of toolkit on on that kind of front?

Rob:

Well, I, again, this won't be a surprise for, for people based on the introduction about positive psychology, but I often talk about positive traits or empowering leadership traits. And

Richard:

yeah,

Rob:

again, the research here is really compelling in terms of when leaders Lead in a way that researchers call kind of autonomy supportive. So autonomy, supportive leadership leads to lots of positive outcomes. There's a kind of meta study around this that Gavin Slemp, actually from the university of Melbourne, so shout out to Gavin, did a really good thorough kind of analysis of this. And it makes a lot of sense, actually, if you just stand back in terms of actually what those great leaders do, they tap into the strengths of their, of their colleagues, they spotlight them. They understand the strength and diversity of their, of their colleagues. And they try and align their work if possible to, with those, with those strengths, so people are able to do the things that they're good at. And if they aren't, they're able to have the conversation with them about kind of why they can't do the things they want to do maybe, but they can understand their frustrations. They understand. What could have people, yeah, what like doing, don't like doing, what they're great at, what they could do more, and they're really good at kind of spotlighting that at an individual level than a team, a team level, so they take a very personalized approach effectively. And secondly, they kind of, so ones around kind of using their kind of strengths. Secondly, it's around freedom. So where possible they'll inject freedom or autonomy or agency into processes and approaches. So they were saying they want people to be really clear in terms of their sense of direction of what someone should be doing on a task or activity, but they don't tend to micromanage. They don't tend to go say you have to do it in a certain way. So they give people the freedom and flexibility to do their, They're working in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a positive personal personalized way. They feel that they've, they've, they've got ownership in terms of that project and that's been, when it's been delivered and again, that's not always possible all the time, but they will then could identify and probably spotlight when they can't do that. So I'd be saying, rich, I'm really sorry. I can't, you know, you need to do this task in a specific way. And this is for the following reasons. So you can't do it to deviate. There's no opportunity to. And they can explain why that, why that is, rather than just telling someone to do something in a certain, in a certain way. And then lastly, they all link to kind of purpose. So they'll be really clear about understanding and explaining the purpose of the role that the individual is doing, the purpose of the team, but also the purpose of tasks and activities. So people understand why they're doing what they're doing. And there's nothing more soul crushing, as you all know this, of doing something where you feel there's no point doing it, there's a waste of time. And in terms of doing those things. And individual, if they, if a leader is doing those, those, those kind of three aspects, they'll also be creating kind of, and you hear about this a lot, and they're kind of a psychological safe environment where people can, can be open, they can challenge, they can make mistakes, they can share kind of ideas, and that's a more compelling and more positive environment. And again, from a global perspective, when you look at people who retention, when we look at performance. The leaders that demonstrate those styles are the ones that have the most, the most impact in terms of those, those spaces. The challenge is that for some people that just comes naturally, for others it can feel difficult and a bit of a threat. They don't necessarily have the language to talk about threat to, to, to strengths. They don't necessarily have the confidence to give people the agency because they've been taught in the past, they've been promoted because of what they did and how they did it. Rather than necessarily kind of how others could, can, can do that, to do that work. And I think we beat up on managers and leaders a lot. I think some, and I've done this myself, to be honest with you. You kind of, I rolled my eyes at bad managers. We have books and TV films all about kind of bad managers and we kind of poke fun at them. But actually, I think a lot of the time we're setting people up for bail and I don't think that's necessarily responsible or reasonable or in the interest of, you know, The organizations or employees or the people they serve. So I think, I think my, my thinking's changed in that space quite a bit in the last year or so.

Richard:

Absolutely. Yeah. It can be, it can be quite, quite a challenge when you're sort of first stepping into into sort of a leadership role. And I, I'm wondering do you have any if you were to you know, imagine a a a You know a leader that you're, you're working with who, you know, want, wants the best in terms of outcomes, but they're not quite sure where, where to start, what would be, what would you, what would you point them at? Is, is there anything in particular that you'd sort of

Rob:

Yeah. So I think

Richard:

thinking about as a first, first couple of steps?

Rob:

that's a great question. So what are some first great first steps? I think it depends often when I'm coaching people could lead us in a one to one or running workshops. I explain these elements and I get people to say, what's an experiment? What could you do a bit more deliberately in any of these spaces? And often it comes to just using language. and deliberate intention and action. So for example, in terms of like the strengths and celebrating success is a small thing, but actually taking the time to spotlight when someone's done something well and explain why. So it's not just, thanks for doing that presentation, Rich. It's like that presentation was really clear and articulate. And I particularly loved how you nailed the last, you know, they presented that, that detail, that information. So you're giving more context. And I think we don't have the time to, you know, we're time poor and we don't rush off to that. We might say, well done at best, but not why. And that takes another 30 seconds or a minute to do that. But it's something that we don't often do. So I think a small thing is just spotlighting the, the, the, the, the, the successes. Another thing is just sitting down and having the time with a check in in terms of people saying what are the things you like about your job? What don't you like doing? What ideas have you got for improvements? Again, most people have those ideas, but don't have the opportunity to kind of share them. And I think when it comes to agency, and this is a difficult one, I was saying for lots of reasons about why people want to hold on to, to doing work in certain ways. Is around experimenting with holding the leash a bit like a looser. So if you're kind of like, if you think about walking a dog and it's kind of, it's kind of having a tight leash, a lot of employees may feel they're on a very tight leash, but actually saying, what would it look like to, to just, To, to let that go a little bit and see, see what happens. And it tends to actually be people get repaid for, for, for doing so. Not always, cause sometimes it's not going to, you know, sometimes there will be issues and you need to course correct, but that's, that, that's a practical thing we do is like spotlight strengths, let go of the leash a little bit and have, have a conversation about what people's loves and lows are about work. I think in terms of enabling people, it would come back to those three kind of elements that I've talked about. I think we've talked about this, the, the, the, the strengths. I think being clear on the purpose and the why of work is something that I think is under, under stated. And I think actually it's also different for different people. The people's different connections to why they do work is something that's worth considering. So You know, you might, I've worked in with say hospitals and kind of care settings or any universities, and you were kind of an assumption that I care about this work because I care about kind of, say, from an academic perspective, furthering the knowledge of in the field that I'm in. But actually you might find that someone else's kind of orientation is more towards actually, not just furthering knowledge for the sake of furthering knowledge, but because they want others to learn from that, because actually they as an individual was someone who actually was inspired by research or a great teacher or something that they, that they, they took forward. So understanding why people could have, what people care about in terms of when it comes to work. And understanding how the team operates in terms of how that kind of contributes towards Making a difference to others again is something that I'd say next level after the first elements that I've talked about In terms of getting people people connected to what they're doing and often as a leader You may not know that yourself and again, it can feel clumsy You can feel a bit woo woo sometimes with this this stuff But actually if people don't feel they're working for something It's really hard to motivate it if you don't really clear on that purpose And then as a leader, once you're clear on the purpose, once you're clear on what's, what, why people want to work, your role, I'd say is to try and find as many opportunities for that individual to kind of get feedback that they're making a difference to the thing that matters to them. So it could be if you're someone on the contact center, And you're answering loads of things at a time, but you care about, the thing that you care about is you're giving great customer support or helping people really what you want to do is for that person is creating opportunities to get some feedback. So you're saying, Oh, look, do you notice the logs are actually in terms of people saying we're helping on this, on this in the content center going up, that's really helpful. Or is it that someone's saying, actually, the thing that they care about and work with just the ability to support their family and do nice things. And so therefore with that individual, it's like. checking in and saying, how's the weekend? How are the holiday plans? So, so again, it's just understanding with individuals about what matters to them and how they can be connected to the things that matter to them when it comes to work.

Richard:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. One of the things obviously that you're, you're particularly known for as an area of specialism is, is around job crafting. And we've spoken about a lot of the different elements of of job crafting. So we've spoken about strengths and and understanding people's motivations and that kind of thing. It would be great if you could take a few moments to sort of, you know, sort of broaden that out a bit in terms of. You have a particular approach to, to job crafting as well. And I'd love to sort of hear a bit more about that.

Rob:

Oh, thanks. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to a particular approach, but I'll take it as a good thing Rich. And so

Richard:

a good thing.

Rob:

we talk in the thing I've spoken about already. I haven't mentioned job crafting explicitly, but I've talked about a personalized approach to it. We're all humans. We're all individuals. And what often is kind of miss missing from work is the ability for people to feel that they are individuals. They feel that they belong. They feel that they're kind of connected, that their work is a good fit for them as an individual. And one way that we can kind of try and close, make it better fit for individuals is through a concept called job crafting. So job crafting is around making small changes to your job to make it a better fit for you as an individual. Which you're tapping into your strengths, your skills. And you can do this in a number of different ways So you could change maybe your tasks and activities in terms of how you do your your tasks. So it could be that you're working in the digital space and actually your your Bombarded with meetings. So one of the things you might want to do from a task craft in perspective is to create some kind of carve out some more space for yourself or be a bit more intentional in terms of what meetings you're saying yes to, or set up certain tasks that you do first thing in the day. So you might, that's an example of kind of task craft. And there's, there's, there's thousands of these and there's resources that people can kind of find in this space on our website and others So that's called task crafting, the skill crafting. So how you can develop and refine your skills. So that could be broadening your knowledge in an area or deepening it in a certain area, or just developing something new, so a new skill. There's wellbeing crafting. So this is how you can make your job healthier for a mental or physical perspective. And so that could be finding ways to shut off at the end of the day, because that's something that we're good at. You find that your work bleeds into your evenings because of people, because some people do that. So it might be actually saying that's how can you make that healthier from your perspective? Or it could be. Bringing more activity into your day that could be taking the stairs or making sure at lunchtime you can pop outside and Really relational crafting is around connecting to others. So it's a that could be your colleagues your customers Anyone you deal with in terms of work and that might be amplifying those relationships or it might be buffering those, the mood hoovers, or someone's referred to as a soul sucker the other day. And I like, yeah, I do know soul suckers sometimes that I've dealt with in terms of work, and it might be kind of limiting your relationship with those, with those individuals. And then lastly, I think I've done five now, purpose crafting. So this is around how you connect to the meaning and purpose of the work that you're doing. So there's task, your skill, your relationship your wellbeing and your, and your purpose. So they're the kind of ways that you can, you can, you can job craft. And again, when it comes to checking conversations with managers and individuals, we find that actually you can frame conversations around those different elements. You might not want to do them all in one go, but you can actually say what's something you can do with your tasks that you can develop. How, what skills is it that you would like to refine or deepen in terms of your role? What are the relationships that are working for you and not working that you need to kind of renew and review? And job crafting itself is not about, again, so it's around bringing autonomy and agency to people about how they do their work. But it's not around letting them just define how they do their job from rip up their job descriptions or set fast their role profiles. That would be fun, right? To kind of, to do that. But it's not around creating that anarchy within the workplace. It's actually, it's a, it's a, Job crafting is done in a very kind of positive and proactive, responsible way when you actually monitor it. And the way I describe it is often a bit like a semi tailored suit. So if you think about your jacket, so you kind of every day, when you start your job, you're given a jacket, a work jacket, and you're like, here we go. And you're like, Oh, I hope this jacket fits. It looked, it looked nice in the shop when I applied for it. But I haven't actually put it on. You have the interview and you talk about the jacket, but you don't actually put the jacket on, right. Until you actually step in the role for the first day. And job crafting is around actually saying, how can you make that jacket a better fit for you? So it's not about saying, I don't like the colors, I don't like the fabric. You can't change that. That's kind of fixed. But what you can do is maybe take the edges, take the, take the sleeves up a little bit or change the buttons or put a flower in your, in your in your lapel. So it's around actually making small changes, the footprint of your job to make it a better fit for you as an individual. And when you have that fit, you're more motivated, you're more engaged, you have high levels of wellbeing and you perform better.

Richard:

Yeah.

Rob:

And if you think about this from a, some of this is from a bottom up perspective, in terms of how changes you could make as an individual, from a top down perspective, it's around talent optimization. It's around talent agility. It's around talent adaptability. These are skills that we're all going to need increasingly in the, in the workforce going forward, you know, for example, generative AI is here. It's disrupting how we do our jobs. I'm sure it's changing how you're doing your work. Some people will naturally be better at dealing with those than others, but actually we can all learn to adapt and personalize our work as a skillset. And the more that we have that ability, that confidence, the more, the more we're all going to be better able to, to adapt and shape our work in positive and proactive and personal ways.

Richard:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know you have quite a few sort of companies that you've worked with in, in this sort of domain. I don't know, is it, what would be an example, could you sort of talk us through a little bit of an example of how you've gone about that and, you know, what the challenges were and, and what how it worked out?

Rob:

Yeah. So I'll give you a small example of a, a Company we work with kind of relatively recently called connect health. They're a physiotherapy kind of company so But the the fact there are physios is kind of less related here. What what was related is that they were a Physios, they were, and they continue to be, a very, kind of, thought after skill set, kind of, globally. So, actually, holding on to kind of, physios, and retaining them is, is, is hard, because there is a, kind of, global, a global shortage of physio, physiotherapists. So, in the UK connect health, their work is predicated on providing physiotherapy support to organizations. So external, so that could be privately or through the public health system, the NHS in the UK. And we introduced chronic crafting as an approach to see if actually it would help with retention, but also particularly the issue that from staff surveys that they had was around actually is the opportunity for me to grow and develop here within this organization. And we tested job crafting out to start with in terms of actually, is this an idea that would resonate and connect with people? So we did some kind of test, test pilots and it, and it works. And then we could have thought, okay, how could we embed this into. working within the organization. And so we designed as part of the quarterly check in process that they were just kind of introducing job crafting kind of activities that people could do that were very simple that a manager individual could do in the moment or in preparation in advance of the, of the, of the kind of check in conversation, which were themed around a different area of job crafting. So as I said, around that tasks or that relationships or what kind of wellbeing. And I'll give you a very specific example. So one of the activities we had, which was around your tasks was around autonomy. So one was around or or let's say, let's say feedback. So let's take them one of these things in terms of feedback. So one was around feedback. And so in terms of the check in questions, one, they had the ability to kind of say a scale of one to 10. And you can write this down if you want to doodle it, scribble it, or you could just have the conversation. How much feedback do you feel you're getting? And between no and 10. How much would you like it to not attend? What, and what could we do differently to kind of bridge that or change that gap? And some people, most people say, actually, I'd love more feedback. And they talked about what's the type of feedback that mattered to them. And that could be performance feedback, or it could be connected to their purpose in the way that we said, like, I want to feel that I'm actually helping people. Like I need that feedback. Cause I don't, don't get it. And others were like saying, I'm drowning in feedback. These are people who are working in the kind of the contact center where they're just, everything's measured like all the time. It's like, actually, I, I could do a bit less of this stuff'cause it's actually not helping, like in terms of this and it's out of my control a lot of this time. So actually I want more personalized feedback. And that was just one question that we did in terms of the, the different elements. But we collected data and feedback and had lots of positive outcomes when it came to retention and engagement. But a quote that kind of stuck with me and that we had as a result of the review of this is saying, no one at this point had ever asked me about how I could make my job better before. And this was something that was just eye opening for the organization. It's like, how have we got to this point where we don't? And it's because we don't often have that deliberate intentional conversation. And that's the thing that we're doing through the work that we do. It's like being deliberate, being intentional about it. And some people do this naturally, but we don't all do this by, because that isn't the case for everyone. So it's around being more intentional and liberal in this space.

Richard:

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. It sounds like some great outcomes. I love, I love that sort of moment that you had at the end there around, you know, not that that thing of not having been asked before.

Rob:

Yeah.

Richard:

so you don't have the opportunity to actually say, Oh, actually,

Rob:

quote that we had from that, and I'll miss, I haven't got that. I haven't got it. I couldn't remember, but it was around saying what this, this kind of, the check in conversations make me feel like a person, a human rather than a cog in the machine. And again, that's another thing is around because they're all coaching led on in questions focused on actually understanding the individual, their motivation and making closing the closing. Creating better understanding between the manager, the leader, and the individual about their motivations, how they're operating, how they're feeling. And again, what we found from anecdotal feedback is that. Sometimes there was an assumption that Rich looked great. He looks happy and he's doing stuff, but actually Rich has got loads of ideas of how we can make things better. There's loads of mini frustrations, micro frustrations that you're just managing that actually we could just get rid of for you or at least acknowledge to make you feel even more motivated and engaged in terms of what you're doing.

Richard:

Yeah, that's amazing. I wouldn't mind if if you don't mind I'm going to change tack a little bit here cause before, before we wrap up I'd love to touch on a little bit zooming out a bit on, on kind of workplaces and HR in particular I've seen that you've been You've blogged a bit about some of the aspects of HR that you feel are a bit broken or not working in the way that, that we want them to. And I think that's not for want of trying. A lot a lot of the HR folk that I've worked with, they really want things to, to work better, but often feel like. This isn't quite happening the way that was intended. So I'm wondering what what things you're noticing are and, what might be some of the things that you'd want to see. Happen a bit more.

Rob:

Yeah. Well, this is another podcast or maybe a series of podcasts in itself and Rich maybe. I think, and this comes back to our various

Richard:

I think it

Rob:

strong starting point. This around me. Having, thinking, oh, okay, actually the way that we're doing things in HR, the way that I've been doing things in HR actually disconnects between actually what we think works in practice. So a couple of things that I could have spotted, I think, and I think hasn't been fixed and still need to kind of change when it comes to HR. In terms of this perspective is around What are the things that we can do to make people feel more than a personal human that personalized approach? So we used to call things personnel and then you can actually we need to be think about personalized actually is a better approach so that is around the employee experience and so one of the things that we have a that I have Kind of issue with is around job description So I think actually job description is a fixed document that is very that kind of limits people it boxes people in doesn't get adapted, is out of date as soon as you've, as soon as you, as soon as you've written it costs a lot of money, actually, if you could have scheduled time, so it could be a thousand to two thousand pounds, so that could be three thousand dollars to create, but actually doesn't get looked at once someone's started. So one of the things that we've, we do with organizations to look at, say, a job campus, which is a more agile and flexible document in terms of that, in terms of that approach to have a more continued, continued approach. So that's one, I think when it comes to change. We often think about changing in terms of, from an HR perspective, an organizational perspective is around putting people into new roles or or when it comes to relation with shocks. So we think about roles rather than people. And we often think about just the hard work is done when we've got someone wearing a different job description. So it's like, right. I've moved rich from. And this team, so this team, job done, like in terms of their perspective changes, but actually what we forget is the personalized aspects, like, does Rich understand what he's doing? Does he feel connected to it? Does he feel motivated? Do we, are we providing the leaders with it with leaders feel that they're engaging people in the right way? Because what's happened in the past when I've led some change programs is that technically they've been. Yeah. They've worked, but actually we've paralyzed an organization for a period of time while people have just had to find their feet with their new roles in terms of what's happening. So that's another kind of element, I think, in terms of HR. And I think more broadly, and I think this is a, as a bigger statement on like on this is around actually understanding what HR is for as well. And I think there's a big tension. within organizations and within the, within professional bodies as well, in terms of what HR is there for. Is it to, as I see it as enabling people and enabling people to do their best and actually unlocking and unleashing people within workforce and, creating the policies, the process, the advice, the guidance to organizations to be able to do that. Is it to be more command and control? Is it to kind of actually you're there to protect the organization and make sure that people can do what they're supposed to do in terms of that perspective? Is it a blend in between? And I think we need to have a conversation about that. Cause one of the issues we have in the profession is that we're doing a bit of all that stuff. And we're maybe again, not doing it as intentionally and positive as we possibly can. And that's a, that's why it's so important to get the People leaders could have recognized at the senior level within organizations. I hate the idea of just saying there's a seat at, there's a bang on the thing about a seat at the table, but actually what we need to do is making sure that the people function as representatives at the highest level of the organization. They can set that agenda or they're part, and they're part of embedding that agenda within the organization's strategy.

Richard:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, often it's when the the HR folk have got have got that recognition of the value that they bring. And sometimes that can be, through, through strong leadership. It can be through the, the operating model and, some of the Some of the terms around taking a people ops type perspective or, where where there's a closer linkage between. You know, the value delivery of the organization and how the people function contributes to that. That those are some of the things that I think I've seen helping. But I also, I agree. I'm not sure that it's more your space than mine, but we've got a way to go to, to figure out. The how to solve it all. Cool. Well, that kind of, we're a little bit out of time now. We've just To sort of wrap up. Are there any particular things that, you know if people are interested in either learning a bit more about. Yourself we'll put some, I'll put some links to some of the things that you've referenced in there. That paper that you referenced from Gavin Slemp is fantastic. So I'll put a reference that in the in the show notes and also the the canvas that you mentioned as well. I'll I'll pop that in there as well, but yeah any places that you'd recommend people go to find out a bit more or even to find out a bit more about yourself.

Rob:

Oh, thanks. So I think for the links, you just shared a great starting points. I'll share the Bruce Daisley that kind of mentioned that in terms of his, kind of some of the stats you pulled together about managers. I'll share that with you. And in terms of finding out about us and the work that we do just Google tailored thinking and you'll find lots of stuff about us, but we're also a friendly folks. So just, if you've got any questions about anything that we've talked about today, happy to be able to connect on LinkedIn or drop me a note and share information as best as I can.

Richard:

fantastic. And before seeing as you would say it yourself you I would add for our listeners that Rob's book is a fantastic read very digestible and goes over a lot of the concepts that we've been talking about in a bunch more detail. So I'd definitely recommend that as as a good way into, to getting your head around this

Rob:

Yeah, thanks for that. Thanks. And there's a TED talk as well. That's important as well. I'm thinking about that. I've forgotten about the book. I've forgotten about the TED talk, but yeah, there's lots out there. There's lots out there.

Richard:

Yeah, super. All right. Thanks very much, Rob. Thanks for being a good friend of our meetup and our podcast. And we'll see you again sometime soon, I'm

Rob:

Oh, thanks. It's been fun. It's been really fun

Richard:

And that brings us to the end of the show. Thanks for joining us. If you found the show useful, please like subscribe and leave us a review and share us with your network. Also check out the show notes for how to get in touch, join our community, or take part in our monthly live recordings. Finally, we are looking for senior leaders with stories to share about their experiences, tackling the big challenges of leadership today. So if that's you or someone, you know, we'd love to hear from you. Our contact details are in the show notes below. Thanks again until next time.