Working from home or remote working in some shape or form is going to continue and depending on which report you read, it’s a good thing for work life balance (flexibility and productivity are up) or a bad thing for our mental health (stress levels and feeling isolated are also up). The reality is managing our people remotely is harder and leaders may be underestimating how poor their emotional connections really are.

While the increased use of digital tools has meant we can continue with our jobs, we have found ourselves overwhelmed by those tools, feeling unproductive and inadequately supported by our bosses. So much so that 1 in 3 of us will be looking for a new job as soon as we can.

And there’s also the fact that your remote work culture may be harbouring toxic behaviours which are harder to locate when it’s distributed electronically rather than physically experienced or observed. 

Better spec kit and strong internet connection fit for home working, working time flexibility and maybe a pay rise might fix the mechanical aspects of work but what about feeling that our boss cares and knows how to be remotely supportive?

If we agree that the quality of our relationships is directly related to the quality of our conversations and time together, then our emotional connections could be the powerhouse of managing our people remotely.

So, how can we earn that emotional credit with our direct reports and people generally?

✦

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

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My guest today is Bettina Palazzo. She is an expert in business ethics and advises companies and non-profits on how to look after the leadership and cultural dimension of compliance. She is a big proponent of speak-up cultures and ethical leadership. 

Living in Switzerland, Bettina also teaches ethics in business at various Swiss universities and, from what I know about her, she’s always bridging the gap between theory and practice.

I’m really looking forward to this conversation and hearing Bettina’s point of view, certainly one of things I’ve picked up in conversation with her is her capacity to hold opposing thoughts in conversations… I will also be asking her about her best and worst conversation, do stick around for that, I promise you, it will be worth it.

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest today is Jason Ring. Jason joined Global Shares in 2019. After spending a decade within hyper growth cyber security companies helping them build their global go to market strategies and achieve unicorn status.  Jason was brought on board to help drive the next stage of growth within Global Shares particularly in their SaaS business.

Having worked in market disrupting pre-IPO start-ups across EMEA, NA and APJ Jason has built up extensive knowledge into the day to day challenges facing Start-ups, Founders and early stage companies as they grow and scale.

Jason works directly with Founding teams of high growth start-ups, their legal advisors and their VC investors to make sure that the company ownership is tracked, employees have access to their share options and shareholders have full transparency into the value of their investment.

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest today is Lorenzo Espinosa. He works in tech - he’s currently Director of Data Operations and Product at Chattermill, a London-based AI startup “disrupting the unified customer experience ‘analytics space’ — which is means they analyse the feedback from your customers to give you insights that help you improve the experience, service or product to your customer.

Lorenzo has been innovating on products and platforms for companies like Amazon and American Express. He considers himself strategic in his thinking; he enjoys mentoring and we can also add, multicultural in his outlook. And from what I can tell so far, he’s pretty switched on when it comes to understanding people and motivating teams, which in my experience, tells me he’s got a high degree of comfort with being open and vulnerable. I love guests like this.

He’s also an MBA graduate from London Business School. He’s Spanish and has lived, worked and studied in the US, and he is a half IRONMAN Finisher in Boulder Colorado and has run 2 world marathons, one in Chicago and one in Berlin.

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest is Steve Chapman. Steve is an artist, writer and speaker interested in creativity and the human condition and, from conversations to date, he has a certain comfort being in the space of not knowing. He speaks to organisations, over 80 to date, around the world on the subject of human creativity — he remits that he has been to help them nurture a culture of creative freedom. As an artist, he’s sold his work across five continents and exhibited alongside the likes of Pablo Picasso and David Shrigley. He’s also visiting faculty on a number of well-regarded organisational change and coaching MSc programmes where he teaches spontaneity, creativity and not knowing. 

Hello Steve, so it seems that you are at your best when you’re not quite sure what you’re doing - for many listeners that would be a very uncomfortable place to be.

“The way I love to work is to come alongside them, be curious with them and just to notice what are the subtle patterns of human interaction that if we experiment, disrupt and disturb something else might happen."  

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest is Steve Gaskell a fellow coach, and author of ‘Business Shouldn’t be this Tough’ has a deep understanding of the difficulties leaders face today, he’s been helping leaders of businesses for some 18 years.

Steve is a former Army Master Coach, British Army, he helps develop a “pig-headed approach to personal discipline, drive and ambition”.

Steve and I have spoken previously and we connected on many levels, we speak the same language, so that always makes it feel like we’ve known each other a long time. 

“In conversations it is probably one of the most difficult things sometimes to define, what goes to make a really good conversation. I think in some instances if you out with your friends it is the one who can talk the most and you know, have people recognise and woo what it is your saying, agree with you, and yet there are other conversations where you don't get a word in edgeways, so for me I think the really best conversations that I as a coach are interestingly those that I don't do a lot of talking. I am in a position to listen more deeply.“

He’s doing some fascinating work with people who’ve been in a life of service and are transitioning into a new career and we’ll be talking about that a little later in the conversation.

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest today is Ian Moyse. Ian is the EMEA Sales Director for Natterbox.  He has sat on the boards for several industry bodies; FAST (Federation Against Software Theft), CIF (Cloud Industry Forum) and Eurocloud and as non-exec advisor to numerous other organisations. He got awarded the accolade of BESMA UK Sales Director of the year and in 2019 he listed in the top 50 Sales Keynote speakers by Top Sales World.  Ian is also a social influencer for a growing number of leading global technology brands.

“Bad things happen. It doesn’t matter how good you are — as a business, as individuals. Mistakes happen. Things fall through the cracks in the best of companies, with the highest net promoter scores on the planet. It happens. It’s how you deal with it and my advice is deal with it in a human way, in a conversation up front, not electronically, where you’re hiding behind something because that does more damage than facing up to it. Do not be afraid of it.”

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest is Amali de Alwis.  Amali is responsible for Microsoft’s strategic and commercial direction across Microsoft’s startup and scale-up activities in the UK. Prior to this she was CEO of Code First: Girls - a multi award-winning training company focused on increasing diversity in tech.

“It’s never a fait-accomplis… you never get a badge saying you’ve reached your maximum level of good communication. Different things are needed at different times, you need to wear different hats for different conversations… just making sure you give yourself that time to self-reflect when things either do go well or they don’t go well, what are the kinds of things that could have happened differently.”

She was a founding member at Tech Talent Charter, was named the ‘Most Influential Women in UK Technology’ and was awarded an MBE in 2019 for services to diversity and training in the technology industry. She is a board Member at the Raspberry PI Foundation, Ada, National College for Digital Skills; and D&I Board at the Institute of Coding.

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest is Kathryn Chapman. Kathryn is a photographer, mental health advocate and creator of Face to Face, a powerful photographic process for women. It’s about giving them the opportunity to see themselves in a more self-loving way as a way of helping with mental health recovery. She designed the process from her own journey and recovery from depression and anxiety.

“I think I get people who are a bit stuck, maybe a little bit lost, are looking for direction. Somebody to walk beside them for a while on their journey and mirror back to them what they can’t see, and that is actually what I love to do.  I love to show people, women especially, I do photography men, but especially for women, showing them what they don’t see, because woman so often are so critical of themselves and don’t know how amazing they are and being able to show somebody - that is such a joyous process”

Since picking up her first camera at the age of 8, Kathryn has been fascinated by the medium of the lens — the camera is another way that Kathryn connects with people, it’s an extension of her immense capability to listen, to hold safe spaces and her willingness to explore her intuition. I wonder whether, as a photographer, she sees moments, expressions, things unsaid that most of us miss.

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ

My guest is Dr Rob Bogosian the principal at RVB Associates, Breaking Corporate Silence: How High Influence Leaders Create Cultures of Voice and has been featured in numerous business publications including Business Insider, CNN Money, The Economist, Entrepreneur Magazine and more.

He partners leaders and businesses to make sure that their leadership development strategies are fit for purpose. Rob’s perspective is that if you get that right then you minimise operational risk caused by performance gaps at all levels, the individual, the group or team level and enterprise-wide. 

“If you have a high need for self-affirmation, approval, you’re going to have a hard time as a leader. You have to have a secure attachment in order to be an effective leader. And I’m not sure that enough of our leadership population is securely attached… meaning if you are anxious, that shows up at work and if you’re “attachment secure”, that shows up at work.”

He is particularly interested in corporate cultures of silence and cultures of voice and believes that leaders are not always aware of the influence and impact they have on their people’s behaviour and therefore what their people feel they can express and say — and I’m inclined to agree with him.

You will hear Rob get very impassioned when he talks about the damage that corporate silence does to people at work. Why this interest in our fear of speaking up?  It comes from a deep place in him — my sense is it comes from a profound appreciation for the suffering that his grandfather survived against the horrific injustice of genocide and an equally profound gratitude and respect for the opportunity and insight that that has given him. It’s like he sees and feels the echoes of terrible leadership and the suffering it inflicts on people in what he witnesses in his clients’ organisations today. 

He says we can do better in leadership, much better.

In our conversation, we explored the many things that get in the way of a leader’s ability to inspire and lead effectively.

We talked about so many things that get in the way of a leader’s ability to inspire and lead effectively including why it is that leaders forget the humans they work with? Why do many leaders show up as insecure? What stops leaders from getting the information they need to make good business decisions?

Catch the latest episodes of COACH/LEAD™ with Sehaam Cyrene on Apple | Audible | Podbean | Spotify | YouTube …and other fine places.

YouTube ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@sehaamcyrene

Amazon # 1 Best Seller — The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions & Phrases Practised Daily by Leaders Who Coach™  ▶️ https://amzn.eu/d/bm0J1BQ