Reset, The Podcast

Sarah Harbon is the General Manager, benefit, UK and Ireland, where she has worked for over 15 years. Sarah and I discuss how important it is as leaders to create a culture of kindness in a business. She shares how she tries to build her team at Benefit with a focus on the people within it. They encourage colleagues, customers and all others to be unapologetically themselves.

Creating a strong team of kindness with colleagues who support each other, she argues, can enable them to be more commercial and resilient to change. And as we are all only human, everybody has moments of weakness, and everybody makes mistakes, it’s how you deal with that in a business environment that makes all the difference.  

This week we discover a little of the essence of one of our high street’s best loved beauty brands and some of the passion of the leader behind it.

Thanks again for listening.

* Sarah's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-harbon-3b405615/

* Benefit website: https://www.benefitcosmetics.com/en-gb

*  Suki's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suki-thompson-07615b6/

* Let’s Reset website: https://letsresetplus.com/

This week my guest is Visha Kudhail, Director Business Marketing EMEA, Pinterest talking to me about speaking out and giving other people a chance to have their voices heard, which is so important in creating open and collaborative cultures. 

Visha shares her insight into how she felt that her life was defined for her as a young Indian woman. She believes society often sets the rhythm and we as humans have to follow after it, whether that is in relation to our friends, partners, education or career paths. It can become so linear that people lose sight of who they really are.

She explains how she took her moment of reset and broke away from what she felt she had to do, to find her own rhythm in the extremely creative,  advertising and marketing industry. With an early career at MTV, Thinkbox and Google it became apparent that the excitement of this industry brought out her best side. Her passion for her work, her people and a desire to drive change helped her to define herself again. 

Together we discuss how to not only speak up ourselves, but how to also encourage our people to speak up and out. We reflect on some horrible bosses who made us doubt our own confidence and just how daunting speaking up can be in that environment. She reveals her top tip for personal growth – take time to stay on top of trends, learn more and listen to others, this can help ensure what you say is correct and relevant. 

Visha reminds me that life is a learning process. You don't always have to be right, just be open to others, kinder than kind and maintain a positive outlook.

This week I am talking to Rania Robinson, a female powerhouse, CEO & Partner at Quiet Storm and president of WACL. We cover marginalization on a gender basis, race basis and on a parental basis.

I learn how she fell in love with the advertising industry at a young age. When Rania first started in London she found herself amongst so many people from different cultural backgrounds and yet in the workplace she was one of the only people of colour. She reflects on the time her gender, race, the fact she was a mother and her educational background resulted in resistance from others as her career progressed.  

She shares how her background and past influences have led her to treasure female influences, acknowledging the importance of strong women, who speak their minds and speak up for others who may not be able to and why she is delighted to be the President of WACL this year. A club with the empowerment of women at it’s very centre.

As culture is a hot topic for both of us, we discuss how her husband and business partner Trevor have created an agency culture with strong values of inclusivity, fairness and empowerment.

Thanks again for listening.

Jaz Thompson, Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP), NHS, helps Suki this week to deep dive into mental health, the brilliant support offered by the NHS in the UK and how you can learn to protect your own wellbeing. 

We discuss the key themes from the first 5 conversations of this series, the impact of suicide on friends and family, why being non-binary can be particularly emotionally challenging, how measuring our wellbeing and performance impacts our behaviour and why going for counselling can really help anyone.

Jaz provides some expert advice on how we can all learn to cope when living in a state of constant uncertainty and helps us understand how to feel calmer in a situation that is out of your control. We also touch on how to support friends or family who are seriously struggling with their mental wellbeing leaving us worried and unsure how to support them. 

This week on RESET the podcast, we have the wonderfully energetic Kathryn Jacob, OBE, CEO of Pearl and Dean. Alongside her 17-years at Pearl and Dean she has also written two fabulous books with Sue Unerman: Belonging: The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion and Equality at Work and The Glass Wall.

In this podcast we talk about being a woman in the workplace. Kathyrn and I discuss some of the stories of sexism we faced when we first started as young women in a tough industry. We reflect on the weird environments we walked into, the discrimination we faced based on our sex and the dog-eat-dog nature of the media world. She empowers us all by reminding us to assert our dominance and speak up when we feel something is wrong or someone is mistreating us or those around us.

Kathryn shares how her team at Pearl and Dean find their rhythm working together and learn to be the best version of themselves. She tells me how she creates a culture of openness and support to ensure her team always feel confident, inspired and motivated to work together and how important collective responsibility is when encouraging people to work to the best of their ability.

We also take a moment together to talk about weakness and why we shouldn't be scared of showing this. Weakness is just a development area for us, we can all learn from it. Without weakness we cannot have strength. 

I hope you enjoy the show and if you do, please do like, follow us and let us know what you think! It makes all the difference. 

This week on RESET the podcast we have our mental health counsellor and leader of our POHAY workshop, David Beeney. David and I discuss the difficulties many people find with asking for help. David helps break down the stigma of asking for help by sharing his expert knowledge on the tricky process of a selecting a counsellor who works for you, encouraging everyone to give counselling a chance.

Content warning: we discuss suicide as we cover the language used when speaking about someone who has taken their own life and the terrible impact this has not only on them but those around them.

We debate why people are comfortable to tell their peers that they have invested in a personal trainer for their physical wellbeing, yet we are still so afraid to tell people they have a therapist for their mental wellbeing and why big boys and girls DO cry. 

At the heart of Let’s Reset are the frameworks that we teach to embed a culture of openness, energy, wellbeing and performance into an organisation.  We discuss why and how we measure the impact of this through the 7 needs test and the all-important ‘Power of how are you?' programme. 

David discusses with me why as leaders, the moment we share our own vulnerablity we give others permission to share their vulnerability too. Something we all need to be reminded about and practice in our daily work lives.

When we started Let’s Reset in the HKX offices, I met my guest this week. They are one of the best office concierges I have ever met, an empowering individual who brings a bright ray of light onto everyone they interact with. Their work to champion the LGBTQ+ community has led them to be an IPA iList & British LGBT Award Winner with Havas Pride.

Ari Humirang is non-binary and talks with me about how they learnt to become comfortable in their own identity whilst growing up without similar role models to turn to in the Philippines.

As a warning, in this podcast we cover some sensitive issues including suicide. Ari bravely discusses why to date they have chosen not seek counselling and the coping mechanisms they use when struggling with their darkest thoughts.

Ari's disarmingly honest and helps me navigate some of the more difficult aspects of talking about non-binary people, they tell me 'when you assume, you make an 'ass' of 'me' and ‘you’. Our society today is notorious for assuming things about each other, so what I have learnt from this conversation is that it is only by taking the time to get to know what people really think and the experiences they go through, that we can appreciate the differences that makes someone so special. It’s OK to ask questions but be considerate and kind.

I hope you enjoy the show and if you do, please like and follow us, it makes all the difference.

TRIGGER WARNING we cover in this week’s episode a conversation surrounding suicide. If you, or someone you know, are impacted by this topic please see the helplines and resources below.

This week on Reset, the podcast I am joined by the inspiring, brilliant and brave Emma Woods. Emma was the CEO of Wagamama until June 2021, following an exciting marketing career starting as a grad at Unilever,  and has since ‘reset’ and begun a career as a Chair and Non Executive Director.

But that is not really our focus today. Emma has chosen to share with me how she has learnt to cope and manage her grief following on from the sudden loss of her beloved brother Ben. After an ongoing battle with bipolar disorder, Ben tragically took his own life. Since it is world suicide prevention day tomorrow (10thSeptember) Emma wants to use her experience to raise awareness of some of the issues around, and impact of, suicide.

Emma talks to me of the struggles she saw Ben go through and shines a light on how hard it can be for those living with bipolar, maintaining normality and taking a medication that can often lead to people feeling like they are living life in a narrower spectrum of emotion.

I think one of the most important lessons I can share with you from this podcast is to remember to ask someone not just once but twice how they are feeling and never be afraid to ask for help.

I have known Sara Tate for a long time as an accomplished agency leader. She is an advertising mastermind, now a qualified coach and organisational strategist. Sara has a fascination with business culture and what makes people tick, how we are different and what can help bring people together.

We cover so much in this podcast but there are 3 main themes to our discussion.

The first is to ask for help. We discuss how hard it can be to reach out and ask for help when we feel like we are drowning. Sara reflects on how a loss in her past made her take a step back and lean more on those around her and how that taught her to not be afraid to ask for help anymore. Together we discuss the ways we learnt how to ask for help and the amazing people that we learnt from.

The second theme was learning to take a break. We also discuss the importance of taking recovery time for your daily rituals. Just like athletes take recovery periods from their sports, we too need recovery breaks from work. Sara shares some tips of how to raise your own self-awareness of when you need to take a break and how to find a way to recover.

We move on to the importance of relationships. We talk about how to create stronger relationships at work. A good team is always in progress and Sara shares how to make them focused and high performing.

Talking with Sara this week was like a breath of fresh air and a reminder to take a moment to pause, reset and re-energise. It made me reflect again that you just can’t control other people you can only control yourself. But what you can do is take accountability for yourself and change your own behaviour for the better and I’m doing so you are able to influence others.

Suki’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suki-thompson-07615b6/

Suki’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sukithompson/

Let’s Reset Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letsreset1/?hl=en

Sara’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraktate/

Sara’s new book is available on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sara-Tate/e/B09XLQPZZP/ref=zg_bsnr_268294_bl_23/000-0000000-0000000?pd_rd_i=1398606014

In this week’s Let’s Reset: the podcast, I talk to the brilliant young entrepreneur, Shanice Mears. She is an incredible woman who is a passionate leader in the marketing and advertising industry. She is the Co-founder of The Elephant Room, an agency which helps companies to build inclusive brands. 

In our conversation Shannie highlights some disturbing insight into the continued lack of ethnic minorities still in the industry today and what can be done to improve this.  With this in mind we discuss her own career journey through advertising.  She speaks of the stark contrast between her work life then, where in her office she was one of the only people from a minority group, compared to her personal life where she was surrounded by empowering black women and how this drove her to find more ways to represent and embolden her peers. Now she spends time teaching people from minority groups to believe that the industry deserves their talent, and that they deserve their positions in business and agencies. 

I learn from Shannie some ways that I, as a white female businesswoman, can support others from the black ethnic and minority background communities in the workplace and in my own personal life. 

Together, Shannie and I reflect on the colleagues and leaders who have motivated us to keep pushing to be where we are today. She speaks of her empowering journey alongside Vanessa Sanyauke , CEO of Girls Talk London, who gave Shannie the freedom and support to start her own community and then provided her with empowering career insight and support to maintain it. 

How Shannie handled her own personal losses and negative experiences with such grace and power is one of the many reasons she is such an inspiring woman to me and I wanted to share some of her story with you today.

* Suki’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suki-thompson-07615b6/

* Suki’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sukithompson/

* Let’s Reset Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letsreset1/?hl=en

* Shannie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanice-mears-frsa-41b36510b/

* Shannie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shannieloves/