Always the definitive gentle-man. Considerate, thought provoking, provocative, highly experienced, highly regarded, and self-aware, Bill generously shares honest and real stories of a career well-travelled in communication and PR.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
"One learns to control one's behaviours, one learns quickly to adapt to the people around one, and one learns from others as they're talking, they've all gone through that process…the bank at that time was full of lifers."
"You only needed the one mask, back in that day, everything was strict hierarchy, strict codes of dress and so actually you just took your slot and just move along with the crowd, today is much more difficult because everybody needs multiple masks and it's a much more challenging environment in a way."
"We couldn't have a standard dress code, we had to make them (clients) comfortable… my record was four different outfits in one day"
"If you're going to be safe in your work environment, people must play the game and behave themselves and appear in a certain light, tick the right boxes, say the right things in the appropriate meetings, not just the right thing, but in the right way… and one learns these things"
"The great communicators are the ones who can engage with the greatest number of audiences, my own expression is that they have the biggest footprint, so the more people they can engage with, the more effective they're going to be. So you find people being truly chameleon in the way they operate. Now that's fundamental to their success in their job and fundamental in their ability to engage with people. Whether that's good for them is a different question."
"Do we do it... sadly yes, go into any company and people are constantly in that mode they're holding meetings about meetings about what they might say to the chief exec about X… We're talking about people's ability to relax and feel confident that they can articulate a particular point of view or a particular emotion without there being a sanction which might be imposed on them."
"It's not because we are saying to Mary Have you're say and what your say goes it's just giving her the chance to be open and participate and to feel that she's been able to participate... it may be that Mary has a dumb idea, but she should still be able to articulate it and put it into the discussion."
"all of this mask stuff is great up to a point, it gets us through the day, it enables us to engage with lots of different people, but ultimately if you don't know who you are yourself you're alienated from yourself. The Marx things was about being alienated from your work, if you were in a mass production environment, you no longer had that personal relationship with the product you were making, and Marx extrapolated loads from that. I think the alienation today is between the individuals many masks, whether that's the social media masks, the ways they want to present, and the person that they are themselves and that for me is a real issue. The work you're doing, Being Humans at Work, encouraging people to be more comfortable being themselves at work is essential because it's not just the nice to have it's the necessity to help with this whole balance in mental health – there is problem there that people are suffering with."
"Finding one's Fundamental Self (John Paul Sartre) if one has a sense of oneself then when you put on a mask you know what you're doing, there's a relationship between you and the mask which is very clear and you take the mask of and you say "I don't want to upset old so and so also I'll wear this mask this evening .. when you lose the consciousness of masking and unmasking when the transition from one to another is just every day when you wake up and go to sleep perhaps without ever not having had a mask on then I think you are in real trouble, that's when I ended up with that 5000-word essay pointed at my head (which I couldn't write!)"
"so much of what we do is learnt as we go along, there are all sorts of people out there who look a bit like me as a communicator trying to manipulate what it is you learn, so you know I want to embed into your consciousness the view that when you walk down a street if you've got a choice between Costa and Starbucks you're always going to choose one rather than another … there's all of that stuff hitting us, there's all what we learn in a normal way, if there's is such a thing, and there is what we inherit what we imbibe from our families and our communities, and all of that goes into that fundamental selfness"
"Two non-negotiable behaviours that every leader needs to role model? Curiosity – a leader must always be willing to engage and learn from opposing points of view. Not necessarily accept them but be willing to debate them because if not that's not leadership, that's tyranny
Clarity – ultimately somebody's got to take decision, somebody's got to take responsibility, and somebody's got to do so unambiguously and explain what is expected of everybody, the alternative there is that we end up with a blame culture with a little bit of window dressing of democracy."
ABOUT BILL NICHOLS
Bill's perplexing career overlaps communications teaching, practice, research and business-building with France/India stints and diverse international lecturing/consulting.
Among highlights, he calls his 1980s incarnation as Sir Clive Sinclair's publicity supremo "formative, exhilarating"; 90s/00s co-building of Whiteoaks consultancy "an obsessional roller-coaster"; and closing health communications academic adventure "fascinating, rewarding, frustrating."
Some friends lament 'poor focus' but he quotes his younger GP son: "why be a neurosurgeon and only fiddle with brains. Seriously boring!"
A Durham, Surrey and Henley/Reading graduate and proud Pompey boy, he (?) retired to the Isle of Wight. His passions are cricket, literature/theatre, music and (sshhh) philosophy.
CONNECT WITH BILL
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbillnichols
[email protected]
ABOUT THE HOST – ALLI SPARGO
Alli is the mother of two daughters and a son, a wife, a daughter and a sister. She is also an executive leadership coach who passionately believes that every individual has the potential to be who they want to be, and do what they want to do (she is living proof of that!): to BE the BEST version of themselves. Alli specialises in behavioural performance as an executive leadership and systemic team coach. Her breadth of business experience, together with her coaching and facilitation expertise, enables her to enhance leadership capability and personal impact, whilst understanding the demands of the commercial and organisational environment.
WORK WITH ALLI
If you would like explore how working with Alli would support you to be the person you want to be, have the career (and life) you want to have and support your team to perform at their optimum, then please book a free 1 hour meeting with her: booking:-Exploring-Human-Behaviours-At-Work-with-Alli
CONNECT WITH ALLI
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HOSTED BY: Alli Spargo
DISCLAIMER
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to the host and guest speakers. Please conduct your own due diligence.
