Teaming With Ideas

I was introduced to Dr. Darryl Stickel by a mutual friend. Darryl was a practicing consultant, academician and author, and has written a fabulous book on the topic of trust, which is near and dear to my heart, but mostly because of the contrarian that I am. And Darryl and I, I think, share, uh, an orientation.

[Darryl] A few things that will help them understand my perspective. One is I was born and raised in a small town in northern British Columbia, Canada. I grew up in a fairly isolated community, which meant that I grew up feeling like it was important for us to help one another.

I went to undergraduate and did a master's degree at the University of Victoria. Then I went to Duke and wrote my doctoral thesis on building trust in hostile environments at the business school there. I left there, went to McKinsey and Company, worked there for a few years, and was injured in a car accident which meant that I couldn't work 80 hours a week anymore. And so I started a small company called Trust Unlimited. I spent probably the last 20 years of my career devoted to helping people better understand what trust is and how it works and how to build it.

You were a very humble guy, but you didn't hesitate to say, “Carlos. I'm one of the world's leading experts on trust.

 Well, we don't necessarily have a leaderboard or a scoreboard, but I listen to some of the other folks who are counted as experts, talk about trust, and I get frustrated. I was at a conference held at Duke that was labeled Building Trust in Institutions, and overwhelmingly what they talked about was the lack of trust. There was a real shortage of conversation about how to actually build it, how to make things better. I listen to some of the folks who are counted as experts on trust - and I don't want to offend anyone - the work they're doing is great. But there's little that you come away with thinking, “Okay, I could change my behavior,” or “There's something I could do with that.” There's little of that practical applied piece in a lot of the really great literature and thinking that they're doing about the topic. There's more about, “Yeah, we don't have those things.”

I've been involved in this space consulting to teams and their leaders for decades. I think it's fair to say trust is an essential element of any kind of collaborative endeavor. And in fact, there are people who will tell you, you can't have great teamwork without first having great trust. And so there are a lot of products out there, a lot of people trying to solve this trust problem. And a lot of techniques, a lot of tools, a lot of exercises. And I would say millions of dollars a year spent on trust. And then along comes this guy, Darryl, who says, “Wait a minute. I don't think that's all quite right.”

One angle is, of course, people are talking about the absence of trust, not what to do to build it. But look, all this trust building can't be wrong, can it? All this money being spent, all these exercises, all these consultants, Are we that far off base? What do you think?

 It's not wrong, it's just not complete.

I'll give you an example. One of the books that was really popular for a bit was a book called The Trusted Advisor. It was a book of lists. It was incredibly thorough. It took almost every social psychological bit of research and theory that we had, and it threw it against the wall. There were, I think, 70 or 80 lists. They averaged about seven or eight items. Per list. So you finish reading that and then you think, well, now what do I do? And when do I use which item? There's not a formula that people can use. There's a series of actions that get proposed.

 For those who haven't read the book, can you tell us a little bit about that and maybe give us an example of what one of those lists says?

 They would have a list of things around communicating more effectively, and they would talk about transparency. One of the items that really stuck in my mind was, free your mind. And I, I thought, what if it doesn't come back ? But you're looking at hundreds of suggestions.

When I was working on my doctoral thesis, I was working for the federal government in Canada. They would ask me these deep philosophical questions like, What is self-government? or What will the province look like 50 years after claims are settled? The last question they asked me was, How do we convince a group of people that we've treated horribly for over a hundred years that they should trust? This would be the First Nations folks who are still struggling today.

My first response was. “Maybe it would help if we were trustworthy.” That didn't get nearly the positive response one would hope for from the government. And by mutual agreement I left not long after, but it got me thinking about long term disputes and why they're so resilient.

As you say, there are thousands of people talking about trust. They wrote the book 20 years ago, The Trusted Advisor. Have things gotten better? No, they've gotten dramatically worse. And we still have people talking about it and it's still getting worse. It's at the lowest levels we've ever seen. I may not be the Messiah. I may not be completely right. But I can tell you there's something missing because if we understood this really well, we'd have fixed it by now.

 What attracted me to your work was that it is, on the one hand, intuitive. But it's also quite detailed. It gives you a process, not just a list of steps, a way to frame trust so that you can then do things about it. As you say, we've never needed it more. Early in the book, you talk about barriers to trust. Talk a little bit about those barriers and what you see them as.

 There are some things that prevent us from actually making progress on this, and I've run into them on a number of occasions and I still run into them. I think the one that's most prevalent is probably the belief held by most of us that we're trustworthy. I think the research suggests that 95% of people believe they're more trustworthy than average. Not only is that statistically impossible, but it creates problems for us because we have this profound lack of awareness about who we trust and how much we trust them. And we don't always identify trust problems as trust problems. But when we do, we assume that, hey, we're good. So, it's somebody else's problem, it's somebody else's fault. So we don't need to do anything about it. It's all on somebody else. That creates a profound barrier to us actually taking steps, proactive, productive steps to being intentional about building stronger relationships, because we assume it's somebody else's fault.

 So that's number one. I probably ought to be more circumspect about how trustworthy I am perceived to be.

 Part of what I try to do is help close the gap between how much we are trusted and how much we should be. I really try to help people be more effective at communicating how trustworthy they are and when they're trustworthy and getting a more accurate picture of that for themselves. So this is barrier number two, this lack of awareness. You know, I'll ask people, “Who do you trust?” And they'll give me these close, tight, personal relationships: spouse, best friend, sibling, parents. They give me these sort of really tight close relationships. And the reality is we trust people all the time. We just trust some people more than others. Having that awareness that it's not just those close, tight, personal relationships, but that it's a part of the fabric of everyday life.

A good friend of mine who helped with the writing of the book, Mike Wicks, asked me to think about what if we wrote a book about a world where there was no trust? And I started thinking about that. We wouldn't go out in public, we wouldn't go to restaurants. Money would cease to be a currency. Trust is a social lubricant that allows society to function. We've seen research that tells us that economies grow more effectively, companies are more effective, groups are more effective; there's all these things that are positive outcomes of some level of trust. and of being aware and able to build trust.

So, when I flip that question, and I say, not who do you trust, but who trusts you? I get these really long pauses. And then some folks will say, “Well, maybe the same folks that I trust,” parents and siblings, and those kinds of things. Leaders, in particular, will say to me, “Well, how do I know? How do I know if somebody trusts me or not?” Which is a good question. And so for me, partly I go back to the definition which is: trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to someone when you can't completely predict how they're gonna behave.

There's elements of uncertainty and vulnerability in that definition. And if I want to know if somebody trusts me, I ask myself, “How can they make themselves vulnerable to me?” And then do they? So, if I'm a leader, do they give me their real development needs? Do they talk about things outside the box? Are they willing to make mistakes? Do they push back against ideas they don't think are gonna work? Do they give me real feedback?

This has some resonance with the work around psychological safety. Do they feel psychologically safe in my presence?

 Yeah. When I use the book and when I talk about different elements of the book, I try to be inclusive of great work, like Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety or Brené Brown's work on vulnerability. Also, Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence, Daniel Kahneman’s work on thinking fast and thinking slow. All of these things are elements that you can bring to the table and say, “Hey, somebody's done really good work on this.”

1. I overestimate my trustworthiness or trust-ability.

2. I'm not as aware of how active and present trust always is in situations.

3. What's number three?

Three is that often people will believe that trust is what it is, that we can't do anything about it, that it's too complicated. I've had some people ask me, can we actually build trust or can we rebuild trust? Recently, Rachel Botsman, who's the Oxford Professor of Trust, said maybe it's inappropriate to talk about building trust, but instead we should talk about people giving trust, which changes the whole perspective.

I've seen different people talking about trust levels or trying to promote trust by making others more trusting. I hate that. There's some work that was done on the neuroscience of trust that talked about changing people's willingness to trust. That we could introduce chemicals into the brain, that we could create situations that would cause them to be more trusting. Well, we've done hundreds of years of research on that. It's called alcohol. We can make people make decisions that they regret later fairly easily. I am leery of making people more vulnerable than they're comfortable being. I'm more proactive around how do I make myself more trustworthy, and how do I communicate more effectively?

That notion of turning it around. It's not about them. It's about making myself more trustworthy as the fulcrum on which this may pivot. Now, the fourth barrier is what?

 People often think that while trust matters, it's a long term. And they're evaluated on short term so often, and they think, I don't have the time that I'm fighting all these fires. And what they don't seem to realize is that a lot of the fires they're fighting are underlying symptoms from trust problems. We can actually see fairly quick turnarounds. I have personally worked with leaders who have had profound changes in the response that they receive. In a couple of instances, it was a couple of dads who were struggling with their sons, who within a couple of months have gone from conflictual to closer than they'd ever been. We can make profound change fairly quickly. It's just we need to be thoughtful about it.

 I think one of the barriers to trust is the many, many, many different understandings of what it is. I was reading an article in Harvard Business just today about why spending too much time on trust can actually bog things down. One of the problems the author cites there is, it's a woolly concept. It's a bit fuzzy. People think they know what it means, but we don't necessarily all sit down and agree what it means. I think that's a barrier too. What do you think?

 I absolutely agree. I had the good fortune of doing some work with SAP, huge software company out of Germany. I did leadership workshops with folks virtually from all over the world. They kind of all came back and said, “You know what? This model makes sense. As you said before, it resonates. They've done remarkably well in terms of trust evaluations within SAP. One of the things they find really powerful is having a shared vocabulary. They're all using the same terms. They all have the same definition for what trust is.

I worked with a leader whose trust score was 13 out of a 100. Within three months, their trust score went to 80 out of 100. And really all we did was, I talked to the leader for a bit, but we sat down with their team and said, here's what trust is, and here's how the different levers work. Now, how could this leader pull those levers? And we all got on the same page. Within a couple months it was profoundly different.

And that's a perfect segue, Darryl, to talking about the model. On one level, it's pretty simple and intuitive. Can we talk about the bases of trust, the fundamental elements of the model?

 Yeah. I believe that when we're deciding whether to trust someone, we ask ourselves two fundamental questions.

1. “How likely am I to be harmed,” which is perceived uncertainty.

2. “If I'm harmed, how bad is it gonna hurt?” which is perceived vulnerability.

   Those two things, perceived uncertainty and perceived vulnerability, are the basis of trust and they combine. Uncertainty times vulnerability gives us a level of perceived risk.

We each have a threshold of risk that we're comfortable with. It's different for each of us, but through our lives and our history and our experiences, we've developed this tolerance. If our perception of the risk goes beyond that tolerance, we don't. If it's beneath it, then we do. This does a couple of things for us. It allows us to think more broadly about how I build trust. It actually seems fairly simple now because all we have to do is think about

1. Where does uncertainty comes in?

2. Where do perceptions of vulnerability come from?

3. How do we take steps to reduce those to make somebody else more comfortable, to get their risk perception below that threshold?

Now, all of a sudden now we've got tools that we can use and we understand that one approach is not gonna work in every setting, every situation. And we can think about relationships; early in a relationship, uncertainties high. That means the tolerance for vulnerability is low. As that relationship evolves, our uncertainty starts to decline, which means the range of vulnerability starts to expand, that we can accept and still fit.

 So, what you're saying there is in a normal working relationship, there is a natural movement towards a greater sense of trust.

 Yeah. As we get to know each other.

 So. those exercises where people get to know each other, whether it's your Myers Briggs or your DiSC profile, those do move you along the path of trust a bit?

 They do a bit. One of the things that I have to be leery of sometimes when I come to give talks is, is people are like, “Oh my God, it's the trust guy. We're gonna walk around blindfolded. We're gonna fall off of things. We're gonna be walking through hot coals.” I don't do any of that. There's no singing,  no drum circles, none of that stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things, but it's not what I do. Sometimes we need to collaborate to build trust, right? The article you were talking about - if we can actually reduce the level of vulnerability in those initial collaborations, they can serve as a mechanism for helping us reduce uncertainty with each other as we go forward.

If the stakes aren't too high right off the bat, then they can actually serve the function of building trust as we go. There are multiple ways we can reduce uncertainty. In fact, one of the “Aha!” moments I had when I was working on my thesis the realization that overwhelmingly the research is focused on uncertainty…

 And not vulnerability. Is that your point?

 It talks almost not at all about vulnerability, which means that we can't talk about depth of relationship. We trust some people more than others, and I say that and everyone goes well, “Duh. Like, how did this guy get a PhD?” But the literature doesn't treat it that way. It treats trust like it's a dichotomous variable. Like it's either there or it isn't. Like an old light switch either on or off. The reality is that you and I can trust each other in some settings and maybe not in others.

Trust exists in context. I'm interested in that because so many people out there are pedaling their wares. “Let's go off into the woods and do paintball or do rock wall climbing because you and I have got a project that's due at the end of the month. You haven't come through with the stuff you're supposed to do.” But, just because we did a rock wall together, it doesn't mean I'm gonna trust you're going to deliver. Context is different.

 Context really matters, and it's one of the things I discovered. I was working with the Canadian military trying to help them figure out how to build trust with the locals in Afghanistan. The reality is, is that one guy in a military uniform with a machine gun looks a lot like another guy with a military uniform in a machine gun. Those individual elements is where 95 to 99% of the research is. Uncertainty comes from two places. It comes from us as individuals, and it comes from the context. Early on the context bears much heavier weight when we're evaluating. Talking about the context helps us explain why we could trust some people immediately or mistrust somebody immediately without knowing anything about them as an individual. And over time the weight of those things, the individual traits and the context start to shift as we get to know somebody better.

The context is a powerful influencer. The example I like to use is the doctor's office. We go into a doctor's office. we're sitting there, somebody walks in with a white coat on and a stethoscope around their neck and they say, “Take off your clothes.” And we do. That doesn't work in other places even if it's the same person, right? If we were to go from that doctor's office to a washroom at a gas station and have the same two individuals and you're leaning against the counter and some guy comes in with a white coat and says, take off your clothes, it goes from credible to creepy and a heartbeat.

In part, I think of building trust as using levers. We all have the ability to build trust. Some are just better than others at it. Those who aren't very good have a lever that they pull and they pull it over and over and over again and just hope it lines up. Those who are better have multiple levers and those who are really good have multiple levers and they know when to pull which one.

What I do with the training that we do and the workshops and the book is I try to introduce people to multiple levers. Then I talk to them about how we pull each of those levers more successfully. Then we start to try to help them diagnose: Okay, where's the gap here?

 You've got this model that basically has perceived risk, perceived vulnerability within a context that yields how willing I am to take the risk trust, right? That's the basic equation?

 Uncertainty times vulnerability gives us a level of perceived risk. And our uncertainty is coming from a couple of places. From us as individuals and from context, and we can take steps to reduce those. Our perceived vulnerability comes from how we value the stakes, what we think is at stake. Then we've got our risk preference, which is based on our history. The stuff that talks about making us more trusting is talking about trying to move that threshold of risk that we're comfortable with.

 I want people to go buy your book. What's the title of the book, Darryl?

 It's called “Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World.”

 You say that it's about me becoming more trustworthy. It's not about building trust in some space between us. It's about me saying, “I'm gonna take responsibility for understanding how trustworthy I am,” and then pulling these levers move the needle on that. Is that accurate?

 Yeah. It's to make your perceptions of me more accurate. It's trying to communicate more intentionally, more clearly. And one of the struggles we run into is that people will say, “I do all those things. I do those things to reduce uncertainty.” And the question is, “Says who?” If I tell you I'm trustworthy, that's nice, but you actually have to believe it. So, the onus is on me to help you understand that.

 Got it. So, what you're doing is you're giving leaders, and I would imagine team members, anybody at any level, 10 levers, all of which you say you can have some influence over and therefore can affect how trustable or trustworthy you are.

 Right. It's giving people control over their own success. It's one of the few factors we actually have direct control over. The more senior we become or the more complex our team becomes, the less direct control we have over outcomes. And the more dependent we are on other people, the more important our people skills become for us to be successful.

 So, if I wanted to evaluate my trust capability, I would have other people fill out a survey that gives me feedback on those 10 levers.

 Absolutely. And in the book, I try to lay out approaches you can take to pull the benevolence lever. Here's some things you can do to pull the integrity lever. Here's some things you can do to pull the ability lever. Those are sort of the three levers within us as individuals. Here's how you pull the context lever to make your context clearer or to constrain yourself within the context to make it easier to predict you.

 It's very pragmatic. Here's the language we can share around trust. Here are 10 areas where you can work to shift levels of trust in yourself. Ultimately, if you and I both work on our levels of trustworthiness it ends up

One of my favorites: I teach in the Luxembourg School of Business in the MBA program. One of the tasks I have them do is apply the model to their own. They pick a relationship in their life that they're gonna take and apply the model to. I had a student, great guy, and he had been away working in Brazil. His kids were three and five and he had missed most of their lives growing up. He said, “I think this relationship is broken forever. I'm terrified. I don't know what to do. I react badly. They're scared of me.” Through the course of my class, he got some insight about the model. We had some conversations. I had some emails back and forth with him. After three months in his final assignment, he said, “Things have turned around completely. My children run to me. They fight over who gets to sit next to me at dinner. They fight over who gets to have me read stories to them at night. The whole thing is completely changed.” I get experiences like that often where I see profound behavior change.

The struggle I have, Carlos, is that I'm dropping grains of sand in the ocean. I would love it if you and your brilliant listeners would help me pick up some very big rocks to make waves to help us, because that's the mission I'm on, is to help us all get better at building trust.

 We will certainly reach out to all our networks and get people talking about this. I think we can start a wave. What you're doing is vital and I can't wait to work with you on something. I'm looking forward to a partnership.

 That'll be fantastic. I would absolutely love that.

 Run, don't walk to your computer. Click on the links, take a look at Darryl's book, BUILDING TRUST, his blog and his work, and spread the word.  I look forward to being with you all next time on the next episode of Teaming with Ideas.

Darryl Stickel holds a PhD in Business from Duke University and wrote his doctoral thesis on building trust in hostile environments.  After working at Mckinsey & Company as a consultant Darryl founded Trust Unlimited.  Through his company he has worked with a broad range of organizations and individuals helping them understand what trust is, how it works, and how to build it. Darryl’s clients have included financial services, telecoms, tech, families, and the Canadian Military in its attempts to build trust with the locals in Afghanistan.  Darryl has also spoken at some of the world’s leading academic institutions and regularly exchanges thoughts and ideas with other leading scholars.

Dr. Stickel has a rare blend of deep theoretical knowledge and practical applied experience.  The experiences of working with clients on a broad range of topics have provided a remarkable learning experience which allows him to approach new settings with confidence and compassion.

Darryl’s position at the Luxembourg School of Business combined with his ongoing work with global clients has allowed him to apply his model across a broad range of cultures and settings.  Consistently the response of participants is that the model used makes sense and allows people to make behavioural changes that have profound impacts on their relationships.

Darryl’s book Building Trust: Exceptional leadership in an uncertain world was released in June, 2022.  The book is a practical and applied guide based on his 20+ years of helping people solve trust-based problems.  Trust Unlimited has also developed a set of virtual offerings intended to help people better apply the model to their lives.  This virtual approach includes multiple learning modalities and represents a significant evolution of the training approach.  Early responses from senior leaders have been extremely positive.

To see what clients are saying please refer to the client testimonials.

Darryl suffered a mild traumatic brain injury in 2001 and has lived with chronic pain since that time.  Darryl has had to work with treatment teams over the last 20 years to cope with and overcome the ongoing challenges posed by his injuries.

I got to know Dr. Allessandria Polizzi whom we call Al through a friend of mine who was on a previous podcast, Quincy Troupe, and was struck immediately by Dr. Polizzi’s intelligence, creativity, sense of humor and couldn’t wait to get our discussion out to all of you.

Dr. Polizzi is the CEO of Verdant Consulting who focuses on building resiliency skills and psychological safety in the workplace.

I started this company back in 2021. My tenure really has been on the HR Leadership development side for a wide variety of multi-national organizations.

I think your organization has won some awards recently?

Yes. Our company focuses on teaching individuals, teams and leaders specific skills, accompanied by an app that has microlearning and mindfulness exercises that are actionable and no longer than 90 seconds. We do this through 60+ affiliates around the globe across every industry and almost every time zone who can support and deliver that training.

We are pretty unique in that we are focused on proactively building skills vs. reacting when we’re in times of crisis. We’ve been recognized in the industry as being in the

·        Top 20 workplace wellness providers among companies like WebMD and VirginPulse.

·        Top 10 change management providers

·        Top professional stress reduction provider based on the skills we teach to prevent burnout.

This is a podcast about collaboration. Your field is related but different. When I think of you, I think of stress. What you do is in the field of mental health. In our first conversation you said, “who’s paying attention to all the stress out there? A lot of people are paying attention and writing about it out there, but who is doing something about it?” You were a senior HR person, and you’ve only been at it a couple of years.

Early 2021 I realized I was in burnout, I was informed by my family. I looked for help but I wasn’t able to find anything that I thought would be useful. It was all opinion-based or somebody read a book somewhere, or some random person overcame burnout and now they were going to spread the good news.

A lot of people referred me to a yoga retreat center, but I was not looking for a spiritual awakening. I was just looking to feel better and not spend every night crying in the bathtub. So, I decided to take time off to recover. Part of my recovery was researching.

I started logging into my daughter’s college and researching scholarly articles and peer-reviewed studies on stress at work, burnout recovery and burnout causes. That took me down a rabbit hole. Very quickly, Carlos, I noticed a consistency in tactics that were known to work that we never talked about in the workplace. I found tons of research. Tons. Tons!

Any reason why we weren’t seeing that research applied in productive ways before?

My hypothesis was

1.      Academia makes things really confusing by not using everyday words

2.      I had to log in as my daughter to access this information which is not freely made available to the world.

She’s going to graduate this spring and I actually thought, “How am I going to get access to all this great data? Maybe I need to take a class or something so I can have access to it.” It’s hidden in the miasma of academia. It’s hard to get access to it, to translate it into everyday words.

Here’s an example of one that really hit home for me. I did it on my podcast a lot.

In 1993 there was an article written on burnout In HR.

That was 30 years ago! Yet when did we start talking about burnout in HR? Maybe recently? So for 30 years it’s been well known, well documented, study after study after study on burnout, compassion fatigue, toxin handling all these things in HR that we never talked about.

To me, that was a big gap. My goal is to take the latest information around building resiliency skills, because I believe that is THE competency for today’s workforce, and to educate people on what has been scientifically proven to actually work.

You mentioned that in all these articles there was a surprising amount of consistency…

Oh yes. One of them I absolutely hate because I hate meditating and I did not want mindfulness to be a big thing, but gosh darn it, it was a big thing. Mindfulness is a great example. We hear it everywhere, some of us are over it, but the consistency in the data is overwhelming. I’m terrible at it.

I must confess, I’m big into mindfulness, so Yeah for my team!

Yes! So I had to figure out a way to incorporate that pragmatically. We don’t teach meditation, we teach mindfulness. Again, what I’ve learned through the research, thousands of articles that I’ve read, is to observe your thoughts and feelings in the moment. One of the things that really stuck with me is that the Chinese character is “heart” and “now”, the present. So, if I’m listening to how I’m feeling, thinking, responding, just that pause can enable me, with curiosity and withholding judgement, to bounce back differently than I could in a reactive mode.

So interesting. I did a retreat over the weekend and there was a guy who didn’t like to meditate-

Hate it.

-but I love the way you just expressed it. I’ll have to be sure to send him this podcast episode!

So Mindfulness. What else?

OK, here’s another one that’s going to sound touchy-feely but it’s not: Self Compassion.

That was an epiphany for me and made me want to do this work: If I could have every leader learn how to practice self-coaching instead of self-criticism, we could change the world. As leaders, there is tons of research on the loneliness, the stressors of being a leader, ways in which we bring our own biases to the workplace. If, instead of self-criticism and negative self-talk, I focused on speaking to myself with kindness, I change the structure of my brain and how I respond to challenges. I am better able to support others. I have more citizenship behaviors which is caring about the people around me when I practice self-compassion.

The first two you’ve mentioned are self-centered. About a year and a half ago I’d had it with psychological safety. All these people saying, “See, I have to feel safe. If I don’t feel safe at work, work must be a terrible place.” I’d read extensively on it, even spoke to Professor Amy Edmonson at one point. But my manager may never be capable of creating a psychologically safe space: I’ve got to start with me. I’ve got to carry my own little Psychological Safety Kit wherever I go so that whenever I get into a situation where I don’t feel psychologically safe, where I can speak up and not suffer retribution for it, I’ll have a toolkit.

I couldn’t find anything written about the me side of psychological safety. Every article said, “Dear manager, dear executive, this is how you need to behave to create it.” What you’re telling me now is what I’ve got to do.

That’s it exactly. When we focus on leadership development, we talk at leaders: you should be compassionate; you should be vulnerable; you should be authentic. Ok, how? How do I do that and also attend to my needs, listen to my boundaries, listen to myself because I am still a human being. I don’t shed my human needs with the promotion. That’s what I focus on a lot. The number one thing I recommend is start with you.

Let me talk about psychological safety because I was an eye-roller until recently. That was just another mamby-pamby feel-goodery. But there’s tons of scientific research about what it actually is.

·        The World Health Organization just came out with their Mental Health At Work Policy and Guidelines

·        The ISO came out with theirs in 2021

·        There are national health guidelines and requirements that look at psychological health and safety as the same as physical health and safety because of the data shows how the negative impact affects the survival rate of our employees, the cost of healthcare and the performance of our business.

One study showed that high stress workplaces that really put that pressure on have a 1.5 times more likelihood of going bankrupt.

Even OSHA (the Occupational Health and Safety Association), not the most touchy-feely, yoga-retreaty organization, says that about 30% of muscle strains, which is our biggest cost in health and safety, are due to the lack of psychological safety. So, “my backache from picking up that heavy lifting comes from not asking for help. “I didn’t want to look like a ___________ for not wearing my PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) because my boss isn’t wearing it,” it goes on and on and on. There’s tons, tons of research on the financial impact of having a psychologically unsafe workplace.

It felt like a fool’s errand trying to get my manager to be better at it.

Let’s talk about collaboration, though. How do I collaborate with others? By starting with me. What do I bring to the party? Then, if everyone is understanding their own biases and what they’re projecting on the world with their stress responses, then they’re much more able to operate in a collaborative way.

The other thing about psychological safety and collaboration is you’ve got friction of ideas without it being about the person.

I just listened to a TedTalk, and this fellow’s key to successful collaboration was non-defensiveness because defensiveness takes the different point of view and turns it into a conflict. It’s certainly a valuable contributor. This self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-management is critical to so many things.

I have this picture in my head of you, Al, reading all these articles and seeing all these nuggets pop out that are in 5 or 10 articles. Are there any other golden nuggets that you saw across the research?

Yes. YMCA is Yourself, mindfulness, compassion and acceptance. In some circles it’s called tragic optimism – a term I hate but it’s measured through acceptance, but basically it’s like AA’s 12-step program: identifying the things you can control, the things you can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. And letting go of the things we can’t control which includes other people’s opinions of us is a huge differentiator in how we weather through a highly traumatic and stressful event.

A colleague of mine once said, “What you think of me is none of my business.”

That’s Rue Paul! Rue Paul said that!

Oh, really? That’s the first time anyone has mentioned Rue Paul on my podcast.

He just upleveled on the cool factor!

Now I just need to do more TikToks like you!

So, acceptance, another self-centric tool about who I am and how I think about and talk to myself.

Yes, it’s about recognizing what you can and can’t control. If I spend a lot of time trying to control other’s opinions of me, how others see me, the decisions others make, that’s exhausting and really unfruitful.

Were there any of these nuggets that were not about me and my relationship with myself?

There’s a lot of research on the impact that leaders have. There’s a ton of research on psycho-social hazards and risks, so let’s talk about that.

The WHO’s Mental Health Guidelines as well as the ISO’s 45003 focus a lot on psycho-social hazards and risks. Things like:

·        Organizational Design

·        Communication

·        Feedback mechanisms

·        Workload

Basically the processes and structures in your organization that would accelerate burnout and/or impact the ability of people to be psychologically safe. That’s the foundation. To me, it’s 2 sides to the same coin.

If I have a psychologically safe place to work and people are bringing their baggage, their trauma to work, we’re going to find ways to muck it up.

If I have all the skills in the world to navigate through whatever is happening to me, but I have structures and processes that undermine the ability for that to be successful, then it’s also going to be a struggle. So it really is both sides that need to be evaluated and understood.

Does that mean that stress in the workplace, lack of psychological safety is a global pandemic?

It absolutely is. It’s called the Second Pandemic. A little bit of trivia: the biggest threat to mental health is Climate Change. What we’ve experienced so far is just the beginning, unfortunately.

We don’t give ourselves enough credit for the stressors that we deal with. People say, “well that’s outside the workplace,” but we still have the same brain. We don’t get to swap it out for one that’s all clean and shiny. We’re bringing in the same brain that comes with all of our past experiences, the stressors outside of work, but then also a lot of the dysfunction that happens inside of work.

The WHO has just released, in concert with the ILO, the International Labor Organization, guidelines on creating a healthy and psychologically safe workplace that talks about three things:

1.      Preventive measures, i.e., the psychological hazards and risks we talked about

2.      Educating managers and individuals, what we at Verdant Consulting does

3.      Supporting people in crisis

This isn’t just about mental illness; it’s about supporting the psychological health of the organization so that you can achieve your goals and people can thrive.

A recent CNN poll showed a surprising amount of unity…

Yes, a recent poll from KFF that was published on CNN, New York Times shows that 90% of the US feels we have a mental health crisis. Data nerd that I am, I looked that up. One of the things they asked about was the optimism and pessimism about the future, about our country and about our world or climate.

·        About the future, we’re feeling aces: 70% positive

·        About our county, 50% were feeling pessimistic

·        About our planet, 50% were feeling pessimistic.

Those last 2 things are really hitting hard for us in the US.

Before I leave your office feeling depressed about those last 2 things, Dr. Polizzi, please tell me what I can do.

The first thing is to identify what you can and can’t control. The other thing is, and this was consistent, be really clear about your values and your goals. What’s important to you? Where do you want to be? Where are you headed? What is your true north? Getting grounded on what’s important gives you context on what you need to focus on and what things you can just leg go.

Can I be honest? I feel like I know that stuff and I’m still bummed.

Part of acceptance is accepting that “I feel bad about that stuff.” That’s a natural response. It makes sense that I feel the way I feel. Speak to myself with kindness, practicing self-compassion, and take a breath.

YMCA: Understanding Yourself, practicing Mindfulness, checking in on yourself with self-Compassion,  and Acceptance of the things you can and can’t control.

Those individuals who want to blame; who find their power pointing their finger at those who are making these bad things happen, whether it’s their boss or the oil company. “If only SHE would do THIS things would all be better.” What advice do you have for someone stuck in that place to get out of it?

I’m going to go back to what I just talked about.

1.      I’m going to accept that person is going to be that way and there’s nothing I can do to change it.

2.      I can make my boundaries clear and be really clear about what my values are, and then I have to let go of how I think they should behave.

3.      Talk to myself with self-compassion. “Boy, that was tough. How am I doing? What do I need? Let’s figure out a way to move forward.”

Once we can accept that people show us who they are, we can find tactics on how to work with people that are that way that still aligns with my values and my boundaries.

I wish I could say to the blamers, “you need to find a way to be less angry. You’re carrying a load of anger at those who you judge to have done you wrong. Is there some way to help you liberate yourself?” and I know that’s outside of my control…

You can stop being angry at people when you can accept them for who they are. The anger is really, “Why are they not changing?”

That stuff kills you.

It absolutely does because you keep wanting to be something that they’re not. Some of us feel like it’s our fault. “If only I said the right thing, did the right thing, showed up the right way…” We turn it inward. Self compassion: you don’t own other people’s behavior towards you, their belief in who you are, that is theirs. So getting comfortable with letting go is not easy. The best thing you can do is accept that it is hard. You’re going to struggle, but this is something that will work for you in the long run. Back to the individual’s locust of control. That’s what the data shows.

My theory of mental health and collaboration is that productive workplace relationships are fundamental to mental health at work. If my collaborative chops are good I can prevent stress and feel more fulfilled. What does your tell you about my never-researched hunch about that?

Yes. There are behaviors like citizenship behaviors, which is really about collaborating and sharing ideas. One study I read said that 70% of people would not share an idea that would make the business do better. Nor would they identify or raise their hand about a problem.

We can fill in the blank about why:

·        Fear of repercussion

·        Fear of career-limiting moves

·        Fear of being ridiculed

Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. And that’s what psychological safety means.

And if I’m not going to share my collaborative ideas, I’m not going to build productive collaborative relationships because that’s all about communicating and sharing…

And giving feedback, and bouncing ideas, and the collective being more than the separate. Collaboration is about teaming together. If I’m withholding information, afraid to share my opinion, have conversations in the shadows, we are not moving that forward, we’re undermining that.

Let’s imagine a relatively large organization accountable only to itself and not very compassionate or kind, just out for the bucks, and therefore abusing people. I’m going to look at your organization and think, “you know what I love about this? They’re not going to make me accountable. They’ll work with my people, make them figure out how to deal with all the crap I’m throwing at them every day: I’m hiring her for sure!”

And I would pass on that because without support from the top none of this will stick. I’ll gladly take your money, let me be clear. You’ll be hiring me back because this will not work.

You have to really look holistically at the business. However, if you want to start by giving people the skills to navigate challenges, that’s a nice way to start. It’s a relatively easy lift. It’s something you don’t have to mandate. You can just say, “Hey, we’re aware of the ongoing pandemic around mental health. We want to equip people with skills to navigate challenges.” But if you do that and then continue to treat people like garbage, it looks like you’re excusing bad behavior. You’re making that part of your brand. And I don’t think anybody in this talent market wants that to be their brand.

What I’m looking for are companies that want to be at the forefront of this movement that is coming. The World Health Organization, ISO, ILO – this IS coming. The UK, Mexico, Canada, Australia – they’re ahead of us in all of this. Do you want to be on the back end of it or the front end of it? I look for organizations that want to be at the front end of differentiating themselves as employers of choice. In 2023 we are looking at certifying organizations as being psychologically safe based on these guidelines so that they can demonstrate both to their current and future employees that they’re committed to providing both a healthy and productive workplace.

Visit Dr. Al Polizzi’s company website, www.VerdantConsulting.com and look into becoming an affiliate or client of theirs and make your organization a certifiably psychologically safe and productive workplace.

UN Mental Health Guidelines

WHO Guidelines on Mental Health

ISO Mental Health at work

Verdant Consulting Programs

Dr. Allessandria Polizzi

US Surgeon General New Framework for Mental Health & Well-Being in the Workplace

Quincy Troupe has just taken on a new role; Quincy is a broadly experienced leader of operations, supply chain – a guy who knows how to get stuff done inside complex organizations. A guy who’s been on many teams and led many teams. Someone I’m proud to call a friend, as well.

Thank you, As Carlos said. I am a businessperson with an operations background. I like to think of myself as engineer-trained, but an artist’s heart. I tend to approach things with both that left and right brain, trying to figure out what the best path for that situation is. 

We knew each other from Mars, but your background involves much, much more than that.

The word that I like to use to describe it is “transitions.” Physical transitions, technical transitions, interpersonal transitions. I’ve lived a life where I’ve moved around and done lots of different things across my career – my life, really. I’ve lived in ten to fifteen states, worked across what will be six companies in I don’t know how many different roles. I’ve just been someone who is really attracted to different difficult problems, working primarily with people. There was a stint in my career where I did a corporate engineering job, and I did that for about a year and half – like, “Yeah, no, this doesn’t work for me.” I don’t really like the ebb and flow of doing projects, I like the “get in the scrum and get it done” stuff. Since then, I’ve sort of pivoted and been mostly in teams. 

Campbell’s, Con Edison– I worked at Con Ed. That was my first job out of college. I worked at Abbott Nutrition; that was my first food experience. From a food standpoint, I’ve made everything from infant formula to candy to pet food to main meal, and last, alcoholic beverages, for those of us that like to imbibe. 

By the way, for those of you who aren’t from around the New York City area, Con Edison – Consolidated Edison – is the main power company in the New York City area. 

So, Quincy, we’re both men of a certain age, we’ve been around a little while, so I hope you can tap into this rich memory of yours. When you got into business, however many decades ago that was, what was one of the first things you learned about being an effective team member?

Right away, Con Ed. Right out of college, 22 years old, immediately put into a management development program in maintenance. New York City, union shops, difficult environment. I didn’t know squat, and here I am, working with people who are twice my age, who know way more than me, and I’m supposed to be the leader. A lot of times, young people – and some of us of a certain age – think that leadership is about knowing and telling. I discovered really quickly that it really was not about that; it was about creating an environment where those who had ideas could bring those ideas out and you could find a solution that worked. And I’ll tell a quick story, if I might, to drive that point home. 

So, my supervisor was a Greek immigrant. He gave me this job to get this 50-foot, flexible, iron spiraled hose about 50 feet in the air, from the sub-basement up to the mezzanine. There’s no easy way to do it. We had a team of about five or six guys to do this job. 

Pardon my asking, but what was this thing for?

I can’t even remember, Carlos. But let me tell you, man – obviously this was a long time ago, but I still remember it today. It was that sort of a moment for me. You would think that lifting this hose up, maybe 50 feet in the air, shouldn’t be that hard, especially with six people who are experienced. We struggled with this for about an hour to an hour and half, and everybody was really frustrated trying to figure out how to do this. I went back to my supervisor and said, “We can’t figure this out. I don’t know what to do.” He says, “Listen. If the Egyptians could figure out how to make pyramids, you guys can figure out how to get that hose up to the next floor.”

That’s helpful advice.

Yeah, it’s like, “Okay.” So I went back to the team and, you know, sheepishly tried to figure it out. I got very directive to try and get them to figure out what to do. And that was not helping. We had one of those moments where one person got really frustrated, vented his frustration, and it required me, then, as the leader, to respond to that with the entire team. This guy’s name was Mike; he was about 6’5”, just a big burly guy. I was scared to death. I thought he was gonna, like, crush me. I walked up to him and I said, “You know, Mike, I admit, I don’t know what the answer is here. But what would be more helpful is, if you have a better idea, for you to actually suggest that and help bring the team along with us.” He turned purple. He was embarrassed that that was the path he took – to sort of vent his frustration. And we had a good dialogue about it later. But it taught me a lesson: I don’t have to have the answer. I don’t have to go to my supervisor, who didn’t give me a great solution. The answer was right there in the team. And I had not done a good job, as the leader, recognizing that they probably have ideas about what we should do about it. 

So, his frustration: This is a member of the team…how much of that had to do with you, and how much had to do with the situation?

I think a little bit of both. Young whippersnapper, eager to make an impact, we were working really hard to do this… Have you ever had one of those things that you’re trying to do that looks really simple and it’s not, and you get more and more frustrated? You’ve got a little screw you’re trying to get in a hole and you can’t quite get the screw in the hole? Drives you nuts. It was that kind of a problem. What seemed simple on the surface just wasn’t. And I was not doing the best job of extracting creative thinking from the team. And that was my job. 

So your first job out of college, you were managing people.

Yeah, from day one. 

Day one, wow. What a challenge.

I always thought, “What the hell is wrong with these people, putting someone who’s got no leadership experience in charge of people?” But in hindsight, it was an enormous gift. I learned so much about people. What moves them, what doesn’t move them, how to talk to them, how to listen. Listening is way more important than talking. Managing conflict – you know, there’s always conflict. The best lessons I’ve ever learned have come through conflict.

Over the years, you and I have talked quite a bit. I often find that you’re sharing your frustration with your colleagues. You’ve been frustrated with the way they’ve been showing up and behaving as members of a team. What about lessons you’ve learned about being a good colleague? You’re always very honest and forthcoming about your own shortcomings. What are some lessons you’ve learned about showing up for your peers?

I think the first thing is that everybody’s human. Everybody has good moments and they have bad moments. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a colleague was from Mars, in a moment like that: assume positive intent. Everybody wants to get to a good place; nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to do a terrible job or frustrate you. That was a great piece of advice. Then, the second piece he added to that: remain curious. What he meant by that was, if we’re having a disagreement, it isn’t necessarily with each other. It’s with whatever idea we’re debating. So one of the two of us, in a given moment, has to be more curious about understanding the other’s view to bridge whatever that difference is. 

That’s the first thing I would say. Over the years, I’ve really tried to work harder at that. It’s really easy to lose sight of that, though. So, assume positive intent, and remain curious. It’s hard to do in the moment. You get locked in on something, a particular point. You think you’re right or you think the other person’s wrong, and they may think the same thing about you, but you can forget what you have in common, which is that we want a particular outcome. Trying to realign yourself on that outcome where you have shared interest, shared purpose, is a good path to being a good teammate.

I’m a basketball player; I’ve played basketball my whole life. I was primarily a shooting guard, but I’ve played multiple positions. So I pride myself on being a good teammate in that regard. I’m not an eagle-first sort of leader; I will do whatever my skill set allows me to do for the team. I try to skate where the opportunities are. But I’m human, and there are times when I want a certain outcome, and I get locked in on a certain outcome, and I forget that other people have other outcomes, too, that they might want. What makes teams greater is when they can blend those outcomes so that the whole becomes greater than the parts. In those moments when I’ve not done that, that’s not when I’ve been at my best. But I try to always remember: assume positive intent, remain curious.

As I listen to you, and I put myself into the position of a team member who’s in a perhaps heated debate about something – 

And you’ve seen me in those.

You remind us we’re all just human, and we have our failings. One for me has always been– I’m a little bit like you, I have something of an artistic background. Part of that is my emotionality. I think the old expression is “I wear my heart on my sleeve.” I would be a great person to play poker with because I cannot hide what’s going on in my head or my heart. I get the sense that you, too, have a strong emotional makeup.

I do. 

How do you manage that? You get into these situations where you want to remain curious, assume positive intent, and yet you’re bubbling inside. What do you do?

One of the things you told me a long time ago – that, in those moments when you get that way, your active listening skills tend to drop to zero. Like, immediately. You can’t hear anything, and your breathing becomes really shallow. I try to become more aware. You don’t know it when it’s happening, but you can catch it when you’re in it, if you’re really trying to focus on it. In my grizzled age of 56 now, I’m more aware of those things about myself. If I’m locked in, with Carlos or something, neither one of us wants that experience. So I then go inward for a second to say, “Why am I responding to Carlos this way? I respect him, I admire him, I like him, he’s super smart. Why am I responding to him this way, because surely there’s something good in what he’s trying to tell. Let me pause.” So, check my breathing, open up my ears, and then start asking questions. 

Get curious. “Okay, Carlos, let’s just take a breather. Walk me back through from the beginning. What’s the outcome you’re trying to solve for?” Make sure that we’re locked in on that, and then we can walk back to where the disagreement is. What I’m trying to do then is really find a place where we diverge, but where we can be okay with that divergence. Is there some nugget, at the point of divergence, where we can get to one or the other in a safe way?

I ask about the outcome they want. So, one of your tactics, then, in dealing with emotional conflict – you find it helpful to anchor it in an outcome. “Where are we trying to get?”

In a business setting, for sure. If we’re just having a debate over scotch, no. Then it’s just freewheeling. But in a business setting, we’re generally trying to solve something. An opportunity, an issue, something. So, for me, it’s most easy to know, do we agree on what it is that we’re trying to get to? If we don’t, well, we start there. If we don’t agree on that, let’s just talk about that. If we do agree on that, and there’s multiple paths, then we have something to work with. And honestly, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes, even when you find common ground with someone, the other person just wants what they want. At that point, when I recognize that, I think about, “Well, how important is this to me?” And if it’s really important to me, then we’ve got to have a conversation about that. You just want what you want – at least, that’s my perception. You’re not willing to entertain anything other than that path right there. What’s that about? They might say the same thing to me. I might just want what I want. Then, when confronted, I’ll say, “You’re right, I do just want what I want. Give it to me!”

That kind of honesty brings a certain level of comfort. 

And even that is a form of alignment or agreement. 

You’ve played a pretty high level in some companies, where things can get political. People have agendas where they’re not really being straight with you about what they want, what they’re trying to achieve. How do you maneuver in political situations where you have to have a certain amount of circumspection.

Yes, that’s a great word for it. 

Because even at low levels, politics can come into play if somebody’s working an agenda and they’re not talking about it.

I think at the root of it, for me, is a question of trust. Where I’ve gotten to on this is, “Can I trust Carlos to be who he is all the time?” Even if I don’t agree with your motive, can I trust that he is going to be moved to act in a consistent way all the time in similar situations? And if the answer is yes, then I don’t have to agree with you about your motive. I may not even like it. But what I try to get to is, okay, Carlos is who he is. He’s moved to do what he’s moved to do for the reasons that he’s moved to do it. Now Carlos and I have to figure out, how do we blend our skills, our experiences, our roles to get to those outcomes? And the politics becomes how each of us moves through the world to meet those same objectives, right? 

So, let me give an example. I’m not someone who has chased roles, titles, or things like that, but I have worked very closely with people who have. 

Let’s call that politics. The people chasing the title, chasing the power. That’s the essence of politics. 

Yeah. There’s a part of me that does not like that. It feels very much to me like they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. That’s my worldview on it. Theirs is a different worldview. Regardless, there have been instances where someone like that and I have had to work together on a particular problem. And they may feel the same way about me and my politics: “Well, that’s very naïve, let everyone rise to their best self” and stuff like that.

You’re saying that person has that judgment about you, that those things are naïve?

Yeah, perhaps. Like, “The world’s not organized that way. You’re in the arena, fight! You know, pick up a sword, man, nobody’s putting it down.” We have to find a way, though, to get to shared outcomes and trust each other’s intentions behind that. That you’re not going to stab me in the back to make yourself look better, and I’m not going to undermine you – because that’s really where my head goes when I start thinking about politics and why someone is doing a certain thing. It’s about status, power, and stuff like that, as opposed to “What’s the best thing for the team in a given situation?”

Politics tends to be a zero-sum game. To get to the place I want to be, I might need to get Quincy out of my way. Politics can get personal because you might be a barrier to this person’s desire to advance or have their status enhanced. That’s when it gets ugly. 

I think we have to remember that the originating idea is that we’re in teams. There can only be one captain. It’s not my job to pick the captain, it’s somebody else’s job to pick the captain. My job is to be the best teammate in that given moment, and that other person’s job is to be the best teammate. Hopefully, the person whose job it is to pick the captain picks the best person, and maybe that’s not me, because there might be interpersonal or cultural reasons why that other person might be the better choice – that are not about getting shit done, that are not about lubrication of the social environment, all the things that I do really well, I think. It might be about someone being quicker to provide clear direction and architecture. So I put that aside and say, “It’s not my job to pick the captain. That’s somebody else’s job. If they pick this other person over me, then it is what it is.” 

You are very accepting. 

Good and bad shit happens to good and bad people. I choose happiness. I choose optimism. I choose to want to be in a walk through life that adds to everyone else’s walk in a way that I feel is positive.

So you choose to see the best in people. 

I do. 

And that goes back to this idea of positive intent, and you’ve just decided that that’s gonna be how you roll. 

That is how I roll. Some people make it really friggin’ hard, I will say that. [laughs] But even in that, I say, I’m sure they’re not choosing to make it really hard for me to see positive intent in what they’re doing. They’re just really shitty at it. 

Even in the toughest situation, you manage to ground yourself in positivity and possibility, it sounds like. 

I think so, Carlos. One thing about life, for me – and I talked about those transitions – adversity; it’s tough. When you change a lot – situations, locations, circumstances – it’s hard. When I look back across my life and I describe it as just continuous transitions, I’ve built up this innate ability to just get through it. To find the crest of the wave and ride it, and gain energy, strength, knowledge, experience from it. And I enjoy it. There was probably a moment when I could have shrunk from it and gone the other way, but I didn’t. And so now, when I walk into these moments of transition, like me going to Zevia now – I’m going to be the chief operating officer for Zevia; it’ll be the first time I’ve ever been a chief operating officer – I am not at all scared about it. I’m anxious, I’m nervous, in a positive way. Wow, what a great new set of experiences that I’m going to unlock. I’m going to be responsible for supply chain, part of development, innovation, and IT. I know a little bit about all those things; I’m going to have to integrate them into a real cohesive strategy for the company, with my peers with whom I’ve worked. 

You’ve worked with them because you’re on the board. 

Yeah, but that’s a different angle. Now I’m going to be in the trench, at a level of detail with them, and we’re going to have some disagreements about stuff. We’re going to have lots of opportunities and we’re gonna have to decide which ones to go after. On the one hand, you might look at that and say, “Wow, lots of points of failure.” But I don’t really see that. I see the points of opportunity. 

That’s a beautiful thing. 

Yeah, so I’m really excited. 

Some of what you’re describing strikes me as resilience. You’ve developed a kind of self-taught resilience. You’ve put yourself into situations where you’ve had to say, “Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m gonna figure it out.” You’re an African-American male, growing up in American society, where that can create all kinds of problems. 

Has. Definitely. 

How much is that a part of this resilience you’ve developed?

I think that is a big part of it. I think in general, culturally, African-Americans are tremendously resilient. We talk about it in indirect ways. What do I mean by that? We know how to laugh. When we get together, it’s music, food, telling stories, lifting each other up. 

My daughter, Mina, just graduated from the University of Michigan. I am so proud of her. Three sessions, three graduation ceremonies: one was her department, where your chair and everybody has the students walk across the stage and reads their names, it’s a super celebration, it’s great like that. Then there’s the big commencement, where everybody gets into the big house where the football team plays and they give big speeches; that’s really nice too. But the one that was most impactful: the last one. The Black alumni come together, and they throw a celebration for all these Black graduates - undergrads, Masters, PhD. It is like going to a Black church. And if you’ve never been to a Black church, you won’t know what I mean. When you go into a Black church – a Black Baptist church – it’s very musical. There’s a storytelling aspect of it. It is uplifting in its feel, rhythm, etcetera. These kids walk into the auditorium to music, and sort of a dance. It was beautiful! Everybody’s standing and clapping and shouting, and it was so moving. 

That’s what our community is like, and we do that for each other. So that resilience that you’re talking about, that is part of our experience. And what makes my community different from almost every other community on the planet is that we all came from different parts of Africa. If we could trace us back to our roots, we wouldn’t all necessarily have common roots. But when we got here, we got forced to blend into a community because we looked the same. That created a need to bind community and create shared ways of language, music, literature, art, all across the board, that makes us a peculiar population within the overall population of the United States and the world. “Black,” in and of itself, is a cultural designation, not an ethnic designation. I could walk into a room in a place where I don’t know anybody, but I see a Black person there and we nod to each other, because there’s a cultural connection there that transcends any sort of national or geographic boundary. There is a resilience there. We draw from each other. 

I think at the end of the day, the thing I love about the workplace and humanity is the ways we come together. To me, that’s the most rewarding part of living. That coming together is, to me, the essence of humanity. 

Absolutely.

And I love the way that your resilience links into the work that I’m fascinated by, which is, “What does bring us together? What helps us be with each other?” I’m a tall white guy, so I come up in a very different kind of world than you, but it is my bonds with people that I cherish just like you, so I think we have that in common anyway. 

We have way more than that in common. A shared pursuit of excellence, a shared pursuit of knowledge and desire to help uplift others, a shared desire to explore the unexplored, Carlos. Our walk in the woods – we cover so much intellectual and physical ground. [laughs] It’s just awesome.

Quincy and I spent a fair amount of time walking through the woods and just talking about whatever comes up.  I thought this was going to be good; I had no idea that it would be so freakin’ wonderful. Thank you, Quincy.

I have so appreciated our friendship over the years. I’m very happy to have done this. We do this sort of behind the scenes; it’s kind of cool to do an act like this now. 

You can get to know more about Quincy by looking at his bio on LinkedIn. I look forward to having you all again on the next episode of Teaming With Ideas.

Mr. Troupe is a 25-year veteran of the consumer-packaged goods, food and beverage industry, and has served in a variety of leadership roles in manufacturing, engineering, supply chain strategy and planning, human resources, and enterprise shared services. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Supply Chain at The Boston Beer Company, where he led a multi-year capacity and capability expansion program and operational improvements that enabled Boston Beer to more than double in size and become one of the fastest growing beverage companies in the world. From 2010 to 2015, he served as Vice President of Supply Chain, and subsequently, Vice President of Manufacturing and Supply Chain Strategy, for the Pepperidge Farm brand at Campbell Soup Company. Prior to Campbell Soup, Mr. Troupe served in various roles at Mars, Incorporated, including as Director of Mars Chocolate Innovation and Operating Systems. Mr. Troupe has served as a Director on the Board for Zevia PBC since June 2021. He earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

I'm in not-so-sunny Australia at the moment, living in a small country town between Melbourne and Sydney. 

I was born in England and I first joined Mars in the early to mid-nineties. And then I emigrated to Australia with my wife. No family out here just fell in love with it as part of our honeymoon and said, let's go and start an adventure in Australia. When the immigration papers came through and said you've been accepted, I shook hands with Mars in a very amicable way and flew off to the other side of the planet. 

Couple of years working for a law firm heading up L&D and leadership for the law firm, which was a real culture shift from working for an FMCG company before. Fate conspired to bring me back to the mothership and I rejoined Mars, Inc in 2001 out in Australia. And since then, I've done a myriad of roles, but after about a year or so in sales, I was tapped on the shoulder and was told, “Hey, you're a bit of a troublemaker come and might trouble with us in HR. And that we want someone to shake things up a bit.”

Predominantly been a salesman. When I first started, I wasn't a great salesman. I noticed very quickly that I tried really hard and got average results at best. I wasn't bad enough to get fired, but I wasn't good enough to really go anywhere. Then I attended some training programs and I couldn't believe how cool the job looked on the other side of the desk, the guy running the training sessions, I thought, wow, maybe I could go over the desk and do that side of the equation. Then when I got the chance to do that in ‘96, I fell in love with it and I didn't seem to be working half as hard and I was getting twice as good feedback.

So that was my first little insight of right person, right role. And I think we'll come back to that when we talk about team configuration and untapping that potential. 

And then I got a global job heading up senior leader development. So, anyone at director level and above that Mars, Inc., basically, what are we doing in development for leadership for those guys? And I loved that job. And then I got a job to look after the leadership college for a couple of years I took over in February and COVID hit in March. So that was an interesting two year experience. 

And then finally, back to the senior leader program. I do a lot of work with our general manager population and general managers at Mars are like mini-CEOs, they head up a business in a geography. I’m starting my third week now in a sabbatical 

I've shaken hands with Mars. I'm going to six months sabbatical and then come October of this year. I'll reassess what I want to do, if anything. So you’ve found me in a very relaxed frame of mind.

What is the earliest really positive experience you have being a member of a team, what was it about it that made it so spectacular?

Spectacular as a high bar. Yeah, it's a strong one and it should be no, I think it's good to have those. You need those really powerful words to, to force you, to prioritize and cut through the clutter and the, in the sameness. 

I've been blessed. I haven't been on many, if any bad teams.  In my entire career I’ve had two line managers have been subpar out of probably 20. So I've had a pretty good hit rate and I'm blessed to have experienced that.

That first experience is the one that sticks with you. Isn't it? So for me, it would have been when I stepped out of sales that first time when I knew I was trying  really hard, but quite frankly, it wasn't going to go anywhere and I got that chance to go and work for a guy called John Williams. He was and he headed up the UK sales training team.

I was never turned on by chasing the number, the cyclical nature, it never did anything for me. People around me love that part of the job. It just wasn't something that resonated with me. But connecting with people, making them better versions of themselves was what I loved. But when I jumped across that desk to get a chance to run some sales trainings. Yes, you’ve taught sales, but you also taught presentation, negotiation, difficult conversations, all those soft skills people would term them, we taught all those as well. I remember. 

This was a specialist team, their aspiration was to be on it and work in that space.

And as soon as you've got that group of like-minded people that all wanted to be there, and quite frankly, they were good at what they did as well. You had that perfect storm. And on top of that, you had a line manager was a, and I always remember it. He'd have a conversation with you over coffee, and you think you're just having a chat about the day and you'd walk away from that “chat”, and you suddenly had this message in your head saying, “I think I want to go and do that.” And he wasn't some kind of a stage magician, the hypnosis, right. This was a guy that was, as I found out, a great coach and he would ask those right questions for you to unlock what you wanted to do next and how you wanted to go about doing it if you were stuck And so, and he was incredibly kind. He cared about you as an individual, and I can give multiple examples of how he demonstrated that for me. And I thought, wow, this guy cares about me. I'll walk over broken glass for him.

And I've got a team that love what they do. For those that use engagement lens, super high engagement. They were the right people in right roles doing work that was meaningful to them and making a difference. 

And for me, that was the lasting memory of a great team, that early experience when I jumped across into a thing that was a far better fit for me. 

 So, you know, one of my tenets was, have you got the right people on the team and are they in the right roles so they can really do the most good in their lives. And, and so that was, that was something that sticks with me. 

What struck me about that story was having people who want to be there is so foundational to a great team.”

If I look at patterns, another team, when I first got brought out of sales back, you know, back in that team where they said, you're gonna work on all these projects I jumped in and I looked around They weren't just good at what they did. They all had a good name. Highly regarded within the business. And I'm now in a team with all these highly regarded stars. They were really good at making a difference and all feeding off each other and being very, very supportive. But there was no competition within that team. I think that was another thing that stood out. 

Another common thing, the leader, the line manager, set in that environment, managing you through those things, ensuring that you've got the right fit of people on the team. We've all been on teams where we've had great work, but it only takes one noisy wheel to start to unravel.

Let’s go there…Yeah but there’s always a jerk…

Yeah. What do they say? If everyone you meet in life is a jerk. the chances are you're the jerk. I think that's the expression. If you find that happening a lot, you’re either very unlucky or you’re the problem. So, a bit of self-awareness for you. Hold up the ugly mirror and embrace it.

So let’s…what do you do with that jerk?

I would break that down into slightly more granularity: what if that jerk’s the line manager? 

Okay. Let’s get there. There’s the jerk that’s a peer and the jerk’s the boss. 

I've interviewed a lot of the senior presidents over the last few years about lessons learned. One of the global presidents said, “Look Foxy, one of the biggest learnings I've had was I didn't act fast enough. When I inherited the team I kept trying to turn it around and cut more slack to these certain individuals. And in hindsight, I wish I'd acted earlier. And that is a common thing I hear from many, many of their general managers. And sometimes that individual is thankful when you tap them on the shoulder and say, look, this isn't working out. because they know it and they're just not living up to it. And it's heartbreaking to see someone drive themselves into the ground into a role they're never going to flourish in. How long do you hang on to someone and keep trying to turn around before you say it's probably more humane for everyone involved to, to cut ties and find something else for them to do where they maybe are a better fit.

 And then there's how they go about doing that. Often when we have jerks, it's not…people aren't jerks because they can't do the job very well. Often people that can do the job just do it in a really shitty way. And they treat people poorly whilst doing it. It's a behavioral element rather than a competence element I would argue. Right. 

I'll start with my, my own team. I had a pretty good team across AsiaPac, and I had one person who was competent, very competent. Did the job well had a very complex geography and quite frankly, was really hard to replace. Often it is the ones that are hard to replace because that's where you tolerate it because you offset it against the fact that they're hard to replace.

I'd had a few other members of the team coming to me saying, “I can't work with her anymore.” 

And I'm thinking, “Oh, I kind of get it. She's hard work. By that point, I'd had hundreds of people in my teams across the years, and I couldn't work out what was going on with this. I could not read this person. I knew that she rubbed everyone up the wrong way, but the customers loved her because she worked her ass off. She delivered, she was relentless in that. 

But she wasn't a team player in any, in any part of the definition. She was just about, “I'm going to do what I need to do to get my job done. And quite frankly, screw the rest of you if you get in my way. I don't really care about that.” I had this tough equation and said, I can't let this geography hemorrhage by letting her go. But equally I've got to try and protect the rest of the team from her so that she doesn't bring the team down whilst we find a solution. 

And in hindsight, I should have gone earlier because that one person can, can erode the engagement of other team members to where they don't want to work, or the tone of the room changes when they come in. That's a slow burner. It erodes maybe 5% of the things around the edges, but across another eight people in the team you're eroding 40% of impact. So that was on my own team where I didn't act fast enough

They weren't happy in their role.

Let me just check this…you were hesitant but when did, you found out this person isn’t happy anyway?

I'd love to say in Hollywood style, it was that one conversation suddenly the whole world changed. She said, “But look what I'm doing! My customers love me.”

 I said, “Yes, they do love you. And you're doing great work with them, but the environment, the wreckage you’re leaving behind you I'm having to deal with and that's not acceptable.” So, it was all about the how and not the what in that person. When you look at jerks, it's the how not the what and the cultural fit, isn’t it?

Alright, that’s what you did as a manager. That is a conflictual situation. It’s even harder when it’s a peer. What have you done when you have been on a team with a difficult personality? Let’s say you and I are on a team, and you’re a jerk. What’s the advice to a team member in terms of dealing with that difficult person? 

So, there's, that's one example, but it's not a peer of mine. I'm not proud of it. My initial response was, “For the love of God guys, if you've got some interpersonal glitches with this lady, sort it out amongst yourselves. You're paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you’re big grownups, you’re professionals…

And in American dollars that’s like $5,000…

[LOL] Yes! Sort it out. I don't need to be the parent. This is not a parent-child relationship you need…Now. And I thought I was being very empowering all these kinds of things.

I don't think it went down particularly well in hindsight. The first point of call is, can they sort it out in themselves, or can you sort out yourselves? Do you need to triangulate through a line manager? I think that's your final kind of point of call if you can't seek resolution yourself. 

One thing I'm quite good at is finding that common ground with all different shapes sizes of people culturally political, whatever those prickly edges might be that offend others, I can invariably find a connection with those people. Over those 20 or so teams, I don't think I can think of a peer that was a jerk that I've not been able to work with. Indeed, I can think of two examples where the line manager was the jerk and I was on the team. So, it's just different dynamic at play when you've got a line manager. 

Let’s talk about when the manager is a jerk. We sometimes talk about it as managing up.

And yeah, absolutely managing up, and in some really tough cases, it becomes managing around, right? Managing around them up to another higher level. Because you haven't managed to solve it within your immediate sphere of control. 

I think, two examples: one was that classic looking down from above, pointing the finger and ruling by fear type role. That didn't work for me at all. Very counter to my own style. To that point, I said, this line manager’s an ass and why do I want to work for him? I just don't know how this guy’s got away with this kind of behavior for so long. So that was one example.

The other one was a guy who was very nice to talk with, very congenial, but completely hopeless. There was no structure. There was no clarity of what you're supposed to be doing. Some of the more senior members of that team were saying, “We're going to have to go above him because this isn't working for us and we're going to have to report this to HR and maybe the ombudsman or whatever because this can't go on. We can't keep being just left to do our own thing. It's negligence.” 

So, there are two examples of where the leader was a jerk for different reasons. One was a nice guy that just had no clue, quite frankly, and didn't really care that much. The other one just had a bit of a mean streak. Someone that liked to pick on people and demonstrate their inadequacies in front of the wider team, which is pretty poor. 

What do you do? You’re on a team, you want this to be a great experience…Is there a way to succeed with that going on?

It's really hard. think the natural human reaction is you try and find a way to work around it. You say, well, what work can I do that doesn't require too much input from that individual? How do I keep my own career moving and still keep kicking goals despite this person, not because of them? And, and that's, yeah, that's, that's heartbreaking. A line manager has a bigger influence and impact on your health and wellbeing than your GP.

So, let's just sit with that for a second. Your general practitioner, your doctor. Because you spend so much time at work, if that person lacks care, lacks consideration, has an axe to grind. So it's not just indifference. It's actually going out of the way to make your life difficult. Right? That will manifest itself, not just at work, but every time you leave work, every time you're thinking about going back to work you get filled with that sense of dread, and reluctance. It's horrible. Right? And I really feel no one should have to suffer that.

In my daily leadership RSS, there was an article that asked, what are the most effective techniques for managers with their teams? The answer was, “Put people first”, a lesson we’ve been learning for 50 or 60 years! Why do we have to keep teaching the same lessons? The world still has a problem finding people for leadership positions who know how to deal with people. 

Absolutely. Sometimes it's because they don't know any different. So, they're not getting the development that they need to show them how we want you to lead. I think that's, that's a big part of it. Sometimes it's the accountability within the system. I might work for you, and I might've given you feedback that says you're a 4 out of 10, not an eight out of 10 but no one does anything about it. It just sits as a 4 out of 10 in a, in a file somewhere. So, how do we close that loop? Their behavior was what got them there and therefore they keep doing it. And until someone calls them on it, until someone says, culturally, this isn't how we do things they sometimes don't realize. Now some are able to embrace change, and thankfully others just exit stage left because they're not able to, or choose not to do it.

I'm glad you picked up on it. This idea of how the hell can you pick up something from a cutting-edge, leading sort of a thought leader, if you will, and it tells you something that you knew you knew about read about and I've been practicing for 40 years.

And part of the challenge I think is that there are so many models and approaches and shiny objects out there that people are trying to peddle to organizations. Everyone wants to be at the cutting edge.

And often it's those things that aren't sexy, those fundamental things that will not change, that are part of human nature. The organization has taken their eye off the ball for a while, and then and it starts to drop off. And then it's only when the dashboard starts to show an organizational problem in terms of metrics that they start to think, hang on, we've lost the plot here, we've let go of those basic things that made people good leaders or good associates in the past. I think that's a real risk. 

We've done a lot of analysis recently. We did a massive sweep of all the data we had on our leaders. And I can share this, I think, for an organization that prides itself on being very people, relationship oriented, they're not great at process, they're not good at following command and control. It's all decentralized, but they're wonderful “people-people,” they're friendly, they get on, they connect well, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And yet, and yet this data painted a very different picture that said, actually your core areas of opportunity are empathy, are listening within empathy, talent development…

I was sitting there thinking, this is completely different to what I was expecting. There were a few others. Performance management. We had our own people saying, we just need you to manage performance better. And this is our people telling our leaders this.

I think the data challenges our stereotypes of what we think we're good at. And, and that was a good outcome for me. 

So. everything went to 12-inch Dell screens, and everything was done remotely. And as people sat in their rooms for two years and never left was that they lacked managers that cared about you cared about your family, what was going on in your life, outside of work and how they could help you be better inside of work.

The pandemic brought to surface the importance of humanity and checking in. I interviewed my favorite former manager, Sylvia Burberry in a former podcast. When I asked, “What did you learn?”, she said, “Its remarkably simple: Ask, “How are you doing?” Not just how are your projects going, but how are YOU feeling?” Wouldn’t you love it if when we get back face to face that’s the first question we ask each other?

Yeah, and it should have been the question even before pandemic. It should’ve been the question we should've asked people. Showing an interest in your team members as human beings first, I don't want to jump onto a call and talk to you about project X or pre presentation Y when I haven't asked how you and the family doing, because that foundational thing, if that's, if that's screwed or, or crumbling, everything else will fall over as result. And so, 

1. It’s the right thing to do anyway, 

2. From a purely cold calculated, How-do-I-improve-performance perspective, it's essential. 

Because otherwise if that foundation isn't that, and people don't feel that you care about them and we'll go into bat for them and have their back and all those kinds of cliches, if people don't believe that about you, they're less likely to go those extra yards and be resilient for you when you need them to be.

You mentioned the Q12 questionnaire where you’re asked to rate the phrase, “Someone at works cares about me.” When it’s my manager who cares, it makes it doubly powerful. 

Absolutely. People say to me, oh, but hang on, people are only engaged when performance is good. Doesn’t performance drive engagement? And I say, hang on, stop for a second. And just take a chill pill. Stop trying to be the smartest guy in the room because you're not. Let's just think about this: I will tell you categorically over a 19-year period the leaders we have today in our organization are so much better, so much better than they were pre-engagement. 

The culture of the organization is, “this stuff really matters,” and you're not going to be a leader unless you can embrace it. And that is a fundamental shift that I've seen. 

I have to believe that the commitment to measurable accountability has a lot to do with it. You talked about the extensive research on leaders at Mars that was done to find out what Mars leaders needed to do. Good on ya for asking the question, even after 20 years of using the engagement survey.

Data has challenged our, our kind of internal bias. But I do think you need that kind of accountability woven into the fabric. Metrics really help to really help you keep that thing alive. 

Common language is important. Leaders think, “Oh, I didn't, I didn't know how to refer to that, but now I've got this way of compartmentalizing it and seeing it now I can zoom in and say, that's the thing I'm not doing at the moment, and I need to do more of it. 

Language gives us a framework to talk about these things.

Which we know is important. You've read about that study on the blue sky, The Odyssey - 4,000 years old book. They looked at the number of times the colors were mentioned right in this, in this, in this massive ancient Greek text, and they found that red was mentioned 25 times and brown and all these things, but blue didn't come up at all. And then they looked to other ancient texts around the world of a similar period. And again, apart from the Egyptian texts blue never showed up ever in any of these texts.

Why is that? If you don't have a word for something, you can't see it. They found this, they found this small tribe in Africa, where they have about 13 words for green, but no they have no words blue in their culture. They had these guys, all these, these warriors for the tribes sat there with headphones on looking at laptops is out in the middle of this, you know, this station and they, they put up all these squares and they said, right, tell us which ones are these squares of blue, right? And you and I would look at these set of squares and you'd say, well, it's clearly the top right one. And these guys would agonize the 3 to 4 minutes and some would get it, some wouldn’t and it was completely random.

And then they put up a slide that showed, tell us the one that's darkest green. It was all green. You and I’d be looking at it thinking they look the bloody same. And yet within about 10 seconds these guys would say, “That's the greenest one.” But what it showed was because they had all these words for green, they could spot nuances in the physical sense, whereas they couldn't say blue and they couldn't pick it out. 

Why do I go down this, this weird wacky story? It is because, if you don't have that kind of construct, that language where people can identify something and name it, label it, it's very hard to be aware of it and notice it. And it's very hard to do anything about it. If you want to change a culture, if you want to lead a movement, to get people marching in a particular way, unique language is really important. There's a neuro link to having language - you don't see stuff you're not aware of stuff if you don't have a word for it. 

I reflect back on earlier story about someone who was a jerk not changing because there were no consequences

That's true. How much do you tolerate before you act? And people always tell themselves stories. “I'll give it another week it will settle itself.”

 Conflict’s another one. “Oh, it's probably me. We'll just let run it.” And the lesson that I've learned from this is it pays, with respect, to confront the issue then have the conversation to raise awareness. Sometimes the other person is totally unaware of the impact they're having. Sometimes just by flicking that switch, you can make life easier for yourself and your peers within that environment. Now, people don't do it often because they're afraid, “Oh, if I do that and I upset them, it's going to go 10 times worse.” And the numbers just don't back that up. Invariably, you'll make things better. And if things get worse than guess what you bring it to a head anyway. 

People sometimes don’t act on conflict in a relationship because they fear they can’t handle what they get back from the other person. In my experience, though, people are way more courageous than they know.

It's this whole bravery, courageous thing that in my head, I always remember bravery was things that you would do like that. And courage was being afraid, but still doing it. That was the distinction. it's okay to feel afraid or uncertain about something. And people catastrophize that in their mind, “Oh, it's going to be the extreme on the spectrum.” And invariably it doesn't become that extreme. 

Put yourself in the shoes. If someone came to you and told you something out of left field, you might be shocked, you might be a bit, “Oh, bloody hell really. That's what they think?” But ultimately, you'd be quite thankful that you knew what was going on rather than it just going on behind the scenes and you being oblivious to it.

So I think if you apply that thinking, we’re mostly wired the same way as human beings, right?  So, if that's the case, trust yourself, be courageous. You might feel uneasy, do it anyway and gradually that circle of courage will gradually grow as you do it and realize things aren't that bad. You do it more and more. Someone said to me, look, if you're going to get in a scrape over something Foxy, or they're going to bring that to head with Carlos, you need to weigh it up very quickly. Is it, is it small enough for you to be able to manage and is it big enough to make a difference? Right. And if it doesn't tick those two boxes, then let it go. And when I say, let it go, you have to let it go and move on. You can't just keep ruminating and going back to it, 

Foxy, Thank you for taking this time with me

Yeah, you're most welcome. Keep up the good work, my friend.

Visit Andrew Fox on LinkedIn

Mutuality with Gary Clarke

With over 30 years of business experience Gary is an authentic value driven business leader with global and domestic CPG experience. He was fortunate enough to build a 20-year career with MARS right through from entry sales level to General management. He is well known for his ability to coach mentor and lead teams that deliver sustainable long-term outcomes. With this experience and passion, Gary has now founded 360Resolve a company that is driven by the belief that business and leaders have a huge role to play as we look to build more sustainable businesses through better human social and environmental practices.

Gary, did you get a degree in business at some point?

No, I actually didn’t; that’s what makes it quite unique. I left school at fifteen and started a trade. So I joined the FMCG industry at the age of thirty. So I’ve done a lot of different things before actually joining Mars, which makes it quite unique.

What trade were you trained in?

I climbed power poles, electrical poles. And I started about the age of fifteen. 

That’s dangerous stuff, that’s risky!

It can be, yes, and that’s why I decided that I’d be better off selling things rather than climbing power poles. 

One of the things that’s interesting about you and your bio is that you chose to go from being a productive member of society to being a consultant. I’m just curious to know - how did you land on that?

It goes back just a little bit. In the last role that I had at Mars, I was fortunate enough to join an executive education program at Oxford called the Economics of Mutuality, and it explores the idea of businesses’ role in society and environmental practice and how you can build sustainable businesses moving forward. And that fascinated me and really hooked me in. I spent a lot of time working with the team, I went through the program, I went back as a guest presenter, and I’ve continued to stay in touch with them. At the end of my time at Mars, I was sort of - as we all do - wondering what I was going to do with my time, and I’m quite altruistic so I wanted to give back. I felt that I could play a role in helping business leaders prepare for the future, because I think the future is a lot different than the past that I grew up in.

My business has three areas. It’s a coaching business, it does some business consulting, but it also does thought leadership, and the thought leadership area is where I bring the Economics of Mutuality program forward through a partnership with them and other business units. It’s sort of uncharted waters. We’re all looking at the condition of the planet and we’re looking at how things are operating; we know we need to change, and I think business can play a significant role in that, so I’m here to help.

If  you Google Economics of Mutuality you’ll find a compelling area of social science and economics that was pioneered by our former employer, Mars Inc.

You’ve been a member of teams from your days climbing power poles, right on through your years with Mars. When did you lead your first team?

I’ve always led teams. I was lucky to be good enough at sport to be the captain, if you like. I always had a really strong appreciation for the value of players on a field, and I think when you’re young you don’t really understand the concept of teamwork other than to lead by example - what I was always taught. If you did your best, you would hope that everybody else would follow along. That concept was probably my first ever go at line management when I got into leading a business team. I thought, “I need to get involved and show everybody how it’s done, and then I’m sure they’ll follow.” It didn’t quite work that way. 

What kind of team was it? What function? 

I was working for Mars in the Petcare business. We had a team of territory managers. My idea of being a great line manager was to get in the trenches and do the work alongside the teams, which is one element. Boy, was I about to learn that there is a lot more to managing a business team than just showing them how to do things. 

What I would do was replicate the behaviors that I wanted them to carry out, but what I was missing was that they actually wanted to know that I knew they could do the job themselves. So I was, very early, taught the lesson of, “it’s not your job to come out here and do my job for me, your job is to come out and help me do my job really well.” It sort of changed my mind quite quickly. I got the concept of being able to coach and mentor and support, and get off the field, if you like - if you want to use that analogy - get off the field, be outside and watch people and help them when they need the support. That was a really good experience for me and I’m glad I got that experience fairly young in my career at Mars.

Within that experience, Gary, was there one of those tough “aha” moments, when either someone sat you down and had some straight talk with you, or you just had a sudden realization that you’d put your foot in it?

I think I started to understand quite quickly that I was getting a reputation as being a driver, and that didn’t sit that well with me. “Here he comes again, he’s gonna come out and drive me.” I didn’t really enjoy that, and I heard it through the team. The team was starting to give me feedback - “This isn’t how we want to be managed, this isn’t how we want to be led.” I was lucky enough to be able to (a.) have a team that was giving me feedback, which I think is a really important thing, and then (b.) having the maturity to be able to respond to it.

It was fairly collegial, it sounds like. Do you recall a leader you worked with early on who was either a positive or a negative role model for you?

Absolutely. It was my first field manager that I worked for in Western Australia, and she very quickly invested heavily into my development. I couldn’t believe it, actually. I mean, I’d been in the business world for fifteen years, and done it all pretty much by myself; I’d worked for small businesses, or worked for myself. And then to have somebody who’s (a.) interested in you, and (b.) prepared to put resources behind you and help you grow - I was shocked, to be honest, and couldn’t believe it was actually happening. And I’m ever thankful and grateful, because what she did was set me on a path which really did tie well into my whole career because development is important. It does make a difference, and it can really transform you - the person - and your business environment. She was an amazing line manager for giving me the confidence to grow, just by clearly taking an interest in me and investing in me. I couldn’t believe it was happening. 

She was a very firm believer in - there’s classrooms, and then there’s learning from others, and then there’s learning on the job. So she would constantly stretch me. I can recall I used to get quite angry because she’d just give me more tasks, more tasks, more tasks. But that was her way of finding out where my capacity was. At the time it didn’t feel like that. 

The lesson you learned was about “don’t be a driver,” but it sounds like she was driving you pretty hard, Gary. Towards your development, but she was driving you. 

I think she was, but not in the way that I probably was doing it to the team that I was experiencing, because I was probably going down this perfectionist trait as well. I wanted things to be done exactly right, all the time, in time, on full, no room for error. So it was a different type of driving, whereas she was driving me to find my potential. It’s a different feeling. 

I want to talk about that “leading by example” thing you talked about earlier, because that’s a very common phrase. Where is it right to lead by example, or is it ever?

I prefer to call it “setting the tone” rather than “leading by example.” I think when you’re talking behaviors - the way you want the business to run or the teams to run - then I think it is the role of the leader to set the tone of the business. But what I was confusing it with was that hands-on, right down into the detail, showing them everything, leading by example. But rather, setting the tone of the organization, and the values and the behaviors.

Whether you intended to do it or not, you were setting a tone of, “it’s got to be perfect, no room for error.”  Was there any room to learn?

It’s quite stifling, the “my way or the highway” type approach. Whilst it might give you some short-term wins, it’s not going to give you long-term sustainable business growth. 

Teamwork is a generic term that describes a general tone of helpfulness and a sense of mutual support, whereas collaboration is actually working together to produce specific outcomes. What have you learned about getting people to work productively together?

I’d probably go back to a line manager again that taught me this. It was, again, my first time working for somebody who, instead of working individually on each of the people in the team, he was very engaged in the team dynamic. And what he was brilliant at was having these environments where you talked about how you bring personal commitment to each other. What you’re at stake for - your team member and the greater team. And then getting the expectations really clear about each person’s role in that team, and then the ramifications if you don’t do it, the impact it has on the other person once you’ve made that commitment. So, for me, that was a real step change. Instead of that line manager theory of “get the best players, put them on the paddock and make sure they all do the right thing, then you’ll have a great team” - this was being able to really drive personal commitment and clear expectations amongst each other, so that we were at stake for each other and the business. 

What was this person doing, specifically?

There’s one that I’ve kept and replicated throughout my career: we used to go on walks together, basically. Each person would pair off. He’d give us a lead-out statement, something like, “If you were reporting to me, I would…” Or, “We would be better together if…” Usually he’d take us to a nice place for a team-building exercise and then we’d walk out into the forest or whatever it may be, and we’d have these conversations. We’d go round and round the team until everybody had had a moment with each other, and then we’d come back together and explore it. 

So everybody talked to everybody else?

Yes, and we’d have those leading questions that he would use to drive the conversations. Guaranteed, there’d be a far better understanding of each other. We’d understand what was bugging us about each other, we’d understand what we valued in each other, and we’d understand what our strengths were and what our development opportunities were. 

What was your favorite one of those questions, or two or three?

When you’re talking to a peer, and you open up with, “If you were reporting to me, I would…” I always found that interesting, because there was always that peer competition of who should be the next person to be the boss. You were sort of showing your hand a little bit by saying, “This is how I would want to have an interaction with you if I was leading you.” So that would always create a bit of a dance between the two of you. “If I was the boss, I would want this, and if you were the boss, you would want that.”

How well does that work with folks who aren’t terribly friendly with each other - it’s a new team and they just don’t know each other, or they just are different types?

I think then you’ve got to be a little bit careful about the questions that you send them out with, and you might not make them as provocative - which I actually experienced. I was leading a team that was multicultural. We had Dutch, we had French, we had different cultures across it, and they weren’t quite as comfortable with that type of interaction, so you had to sort of tone the questions back and build it in as a process. But what we did do was, each time they got together they knew that that was a type of thing, and they started to warm towards it and we built momentum behind it. 

There have been certain lessons I’ve just had to learn over and over again. I’ve learned them but then somehow I’ve forgotten them. You know, I’ll do something dumb and then go, “Ugh, I ought to know better.” Where have you found that you’ve had to go back and learn a lesson more than once?

One of the challenges that I’ve always had as a line manager is knowing when just not to speak. We all call ourselves great listeners and we’ve got great empathy and we’ve got humility, but it’s a constant challenge, I think, as a leader and as a line manager. That moment of knowing that it’s not the right time to have an opinion or to have a view on something, and being able to just remain silent and stay in the moment. If I could master that, I’d be a very happy man, but I’m sure over the years I’ve spoken when I should have listened and I’ve given advice when I didn’t need to. I constantly work on it, but it’s still something that I think all line managers can benefit from - putting your two ears on and taking your one mouth out of the equation. 

If you were coaching somebody who tends to talk more than they listen, do you have any tricks or techniques - pointers, simple things that you use for yourself or that you give others to use in helping them master listening?

I think in team dynamics in particular, I’ve worked with people (including myself) on a speaking budget, which sounds a bit strange. So, you’re only allowed to speak three or four times in this hour. I use a thing called TPS - think it, plan it, say it. I learn by talking, so I’m a talker - so I have to think about it before I say it. Another very small one which I’ve done many times over my career is that I just have a little box in the corner of my notepad, and I put a dot every time I want to speak but I manage to constrain myself, and I celebrate how many dots I can have in there at the end of the day. 

So, a lot of small things. They’re basic things, but any small trigger or tool that you can bring in tends to help better than just telling people, “You have to listen more.” They’ve got to be able to do something to identify a trigger. 

When you’re the general manager or whatever, your words are pretty powerful at times, so you’ve got to make sure that you measure them and what you say. 

I tend to be more of an introvert, but I do think out loud. When something pops up inside my fertile brain, instead of saying it, I write it. 

What do you do when you listen? What are the behaviors of listening? Someone once described a leader I knew: “He doesn’t listen, he reloads.” Keeping your mouth shut until it’s your turn to speak.

I’m finding it very challenging, actually. I think if I look at my interactions in the last year, they’ve all been via Zoom Teams or Google Meet. Even that’s a little bit different because part of the listening process is how you position yourself relative to the person you’re listening to, the body language. And here, it’s a bit different - you’re sort of staring into this screen and trying to listen. I like the reload thing; I think for me, my personal catch is asking myself, did I think about anything while I was listening? If the answer’s yes, then I wasn’t listening. So I think that the goal, always, is to truly listen and not think forward and try to take the conversation. I’ve been practicing that for the last two years now. You get more into that coaching element of listening, and not having to own the conversation. Not owning the agenda and not driving the conversation into any particular shape - just being okay with the conversation. 

I guess I should be embarrassed - I’m thinking as you talk. 

You need to!

If we isolate listening as one of the muscles of collaboration… My background is in the theater. I’m a conservatory-trained actor. It’s all about listening. The genuineness of what you speak, even though the words have been written by someone else, depends on having really heard what the person says. 

When you’re talking back to reflecting on being in that team and doing these walks and talks and listening, I think one of the key questions when you’re listening to somebody is, are you there to give or are you there to take? Are you on the team to serve the team, or serve yourself? And I think that makes an incredible difference, if you can help people understand that being on a team or wanting to collaborate with somebody is as much about giving as it is receiving. If you know that you’re there to serve somebody, you’re going to listen a little bit more, because you’re open to their agenda. 

So, if I were a new young manager stepping into my first people-leading role, what’s on your shortlist of most important things to remember if you’re going to start leading and fostering collaboration in a team?

I think, firstly, it’s recognizing that it’s a tricky transition. Everything you’ve done, usually, to get promoted to line manager, has been through self-delivery. So it’s been all about you. As of this day, it’s not going to be about you any longer; it’s about how your team performs and how you can support them and help them grow. I think that’s the first one - paying attention to the transition and not underestimating it. It is difficult because you have to let your ego subside a little bit and make it about others. 

Being really clear on the context that you’re leading your team in, understanding what the phase of the business unit is, understanding what’s happening in the marketplace around you, and then understanding what’s expected of you and your team is really important because you’ll need to select the right people, and you’ll need to build the right capability in the spirit of the context you’re operating in. If we’re talking about mistakes, that’s something I learned the hard way, I can tell you that. 

When it comes to people and talent, I think your role is to be on the lookout for talent and nurture it as much as you can. Find talent, bring the best people onto your team, get the best people you have into the hardest roles. But then there’s a little trick I think we all fall into when we come into line management - we think we can change people. I think you’ve got to accept that they don’t change much, and that you’ve just got to look for their strengths and build them, and have honest conversations with them about what their strengths are and what they’re not so good at, and be very clear on that.

And then, I think you’ve got to have fun. In business there are a lot of downs, and when the ups come, you have to celebrate that and really endorse how well your team has done, and make it fun. Make it a really enjoyable space to be in. If you can have a legacy where anybody who’s worked in your team, twenty years later, can look back and go, “Remember when I worked in Carlos’s team? It was awesome.” That’s your goal as a first-time line manager.

We started this discussion with this idea of mutuality. Can you put into a few words what the Economics of Mutuality is, and then, does collaboration have a role in doing this lofty thing?

The basic premise is that you shouldn’t be profting at the expense of any of the capitals that are available to you. So either society, the human capital, or environmental capital. If you tried to bring the whole ten years of work down into one line or sentence, that’s pretty much it. You’ve got to run a business that is actually sustainable, that can put back into the system what it’s taking out. So, understanding the broader ecosystem that your business operates in, identifying what the pain points are throughout the ecosystem, and then having management strategies to reduce the pain points, and making sure that you’re building a business that isn’t taking from the ecosystem. That’s the goal. In a mutuality sense, it’s about taking something out but putting something back in, and making sure that it’s a shared situation that you’re in, when you look at each of those capitals. If you look at Mars as a good example - you have a large environmental footprint; when we’re taking something out of the planet, what are we putting back in or how are we offsetting the issues that we’ve got? How are we managing that? So I think it’s a management philosophy, and it’s now becoming a management innovation - how do we build businesses that are doing this well? And it’s not just Mars that are focusing on it; the market is starting to shift. You can see it. Unilever were probably early leaders, and there are a lot of businesses that are really starting to drive that way. So that’s the thing that fascinates me. 

If you talk leadership, I think then you’ve sort of got to get above what it means to be an achiever if you’re a leader. The great leaders were good on their metrics, strong on their process - inspire their people, deliver results - and now it’s a bit broader than that. As a human, what’s going on here? What’s your business impact? What’s going on in society? How are you a trusted partner? How are you valuing your people? There’s a lot more to it, to lead into the future. We’re looking for those new types of leaders, ones that can stand up on the table and look at the big picture. 

So, if I’m not running a business or running a factory, what does it mean to me and my people to have that mutuality mindset?

People and entities and environments are all stakeholders to take into account when you’re making your decisions. You have to be in a collaborative mindset. It’s not just me saying, “I’m going to cut down that forest so I can plant cocoa.” That’s not sustainable; you start to leech the soil. So, you have to look at that forest and say, “We’re in this together, forest.” Much as you might to a teammate. 

I think you just hit the nail on the head. How do we both grow together, and not at each other’s expense? When I grew up in the boardrooms, it was quite a competitive environment. I think there’s not a lot of room for that now; it’s narrowing people’s focus. It takes a very different approach, very different leadership. 

Thank you for finding time; I really enjoyed this. And guys, if you have any comments or questions for Gary, you can post them on our website and we’ll make sure he gets them. Would you tell my brilliant listeners and readers where they can reach you if they want to?

[email protected]

Mark Ippolito and Carlos Valdes-Dapena, friends since 1986, together explore the importance, and benefit of being what AI cannot: vulnerable, humble and emotionally intelligent.

Kerry Wekelo, author of “Culture Infusion” and “Gratitude Infusion”, and a relatively new acquaintance of mine, had much to say on the powerful effects of infusion of gratitude on leading teams.

I’m the chief operating officer at Actualize Consulting. We are a financial services consulting firm, so we do a lot around strategies for companies. We’re not financial planners; we’re more strategic in different subject matters like capital markets, treasury, mortgages - so, very complex financial functions. And we’ll help with the advisory, system implementations, business process reengineering, and design, as well. I have a finance degree and a marketing degree, and then a minor in psychology. So a little bit of everything. I’ve been in consulting my entire career, in some capacity. I was on the business side, and then when I started at Actualize, more operational. But I have that systems process background, so building out a company was something I was very intrigued with, so that’s why I joined Actualize. And that had just really speared into more on the cultural side as well.

I still have my responsibilities internally, but now really sharing with other organizations how they can create and maintain a thriving organizational culture as well. I’ve been there for 16 years. Where everything stemmed from, with gratitude and culture and focusing on our people, really just came from needing to change our focus on our people. We had really high attrition rates. So, that’s really been my focus for the last 11 years out of that 16 years; it has just been on our people, making it a place where people want to work. It’s been a really fun journey and gratitude has been a really big part of that.

You have another book on culture. I always like a good model, and there’s one you developed, a very simple one called the Three P’s. 

Very simple. It’s “Pause to Pivot to a Positive.” So that’s your three P’s: pause, pivot, and positive. And I’ve kept it simple. I’ve added a bit to it. So, in that pause, you’re pausing in a moment of gratitude. And this is when you’re dealing with any type of challenge or something’s in front of you. Maybe it’s a personal challenge, maybe you got in a car accident or it’s something of that nature; or it could be with somebody on your team, or even personally. But in that moment, you’re pausing, you’re finding something to be grateful for about the situation. 

For instance, let’s say you got rear-ended. You could be grateful that everybody’s safe and sound. That's in really simplistic terms. And then you’re pivoting into this positive - what’s my positive resolution? What do I need to do to move forward in this situation that I’m in? In that instance with the car, do you need to call the cops? Do you need to call insurance? How can I move forward? And I give this example, and I’ve thought about it over the years. For whatever reason, I’ve been rear-ended multiple times; I don’t know, maybe I’m the bad driver. I’m trying to take some accountability. But anyways, I just remember the first time it happened, how many people I called on the phone - “guess what happened?!” And then the last time it happened, I didn’t call anybody. It was just like, “Okay, whatever, no big deal.” So you save a lot of time - okay, this is what happened, and then you’re moving, as quickly as you can - sometimes you have to take more time in that pause, it just depends what it is - but the quicker you can get to a resolution, the better you’re going to be and the more time you’re going to save. 

There’s been research on it. Michael Steger, I’ve looked at his research. You can have twins where one twin would be more predisposed to be grateful, and the other one is more negative, having a more negative connotation. It’s just kind of how you’re hardwired. It’s almost like you’re working out, you have to work out that gratitude muscle. And I always say there’s this cumulative impact if you always go to gratitude first, or always go to “How can I move out of this situation in a positive way?” It really does build, because I was not as quick to move or as quick to think about gratitude before I really started focusing on it with my teams and personally. And then I just saw how much easier my life was and how much more time I had, because I wasn’t spinning. I was using my tools much quicker, and gratitude is one of those tools that makes you feel better. It’s like breathing, right? If you breathe and have a moment of gratitude, you’re going to feel pretty good pretty quickly.

A quote from your book says, “I’m grateful for the openness of our firm that allows anyone to express an idea or concern freely and know it will be heard.” I want to understand how gratitude can help develop psychological safety. 

Well, there’s a lot to unpack in that statement. The way that we cultivate that at an individual and a team level is the sheer - and I use the word in my book, it’s called Gratitude Infusion - culture infusion. The reason I use the word infusion is because it has to be present all the time, and from a leadership perspective or a team-level perspective, how you’re coaching the entire organization is that our people come first. Your voice matters. Even how we do our performance, setting that up, there’s an aspirational section on what you aspire to do. And then we reward people if they are coming up with ideas to better the firm. They get rewarded with bonuses or star player, awesome team player awards, kudos. So, when people have an idea, even if we don’t do it, we’re usually recognizing that being brought to the table. 

Even though we’ve been in business since 2003, we’re still very entrepreneurial, and we believe we have been successful because our people have helped us continuously with ideas to help us grow. I talk about that in the recruiting process. So it’s one of those things. And I have check-ins with people; I still am very focused on having that individual connection with our people, as well. Sometimes people come into the organization and I’ll set up a meeting with them - and now I say “this is our check-in, I do it with everybody.” But at first, people are like, “Am I in trouble?” [laughs] And I’m like, “No,” but I ask them immediately, within two weeks of starting with the organization, “anything that you could have seen enhanced? Do you have any ideas? Be thinking about that.” I think that’s where that comment comes from - it is infused in the organization that we want to hear your voice, you are going to be recognized for contributions, and nothing is a bad idea. The worst we’re going to say is “no.”

People want to be able to feel they can speak truth without fear of retribution or someone holding a grudge. You recognize and reward that, too?

Well, go back to the Three P method of pausing to pivot to a positive. So if you have a criticism, I would like an alternative solution to that. You can criticize all you want; our philosophy is that it’s fine to have things that you don’t agree with, but what’s your resolution? How can we make it better? I don’t want to spend all that time and that negativity. I want to move to, “What’s a better way? What’s the process improvement?” Or maybe, “What’s the team dynamic improvement? How can we get there?” But we have to recognize that it’s okay. What’s the first rule of improv? “Yes, and.” People are going to come to you with ideas, so you want to hear them, but they also have to be positive and “Okay, this is how we’re going to solve this.” If somebody came to me and had just a flat-out criticism, I would say, “Okay, I hear you, yes, all right.” And if they didn’t come with the resolution, I’m like, “Okay, schedule time with me next week and let’s talk about how you would like to see it done better.”

Gratitude for their honesty. Don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions. Explain the problem so I’ll get what the solution is, but don’t just come to me with your problems. Come to me with answers. That’s what I pay you for. You call that positivity - that’s part of your three P’s. I think that makes a ton of sense. So, for someone managing a team, you want people to come to you with problems, and hold them responsible for the ideas that could fix it, right?

Or even, you could brainstorm it. Let’s think about it together. Like, what ideas do you have? I’ll think about it too. That’s one of the things that I think has kept us fresh as an organization - having those conversations about how we can do it better. I just had one last week, and we had a 30-minute conversation and we found three process efficiencies, just from me asking her, “What’s not working well? Why are you struggling in your role?” There you go. It was asking what was wrong.

I’ve had many cases where someone came with an idea, and maybe we already had that capability within the firm and they just weren’t educated on it. So, “Yeah, that’s a great idea, we actually already have it.” Or, “That’s a great idea, thank you for sharing. We’re going to go down this path instead of this.” But just circling back with people so they feel heard. That goes back to psychological safety. Most times, you really just need to be heard. That it was safe that you said what you said. 

You talk about this a bit in your book, and how gratitude can help. Talk about it - how can gratitude help team members in managing conflict, whether it’s with their peers or with their boss?

Definitely use the Three P method, but if you are having that internal conflict in a team - maybe it’s between a couple people - definitely always get people’s approval to use this technique; and I’ll prep them before, so they’ll have homework, and they’ll come to the meeting - some people joke that they’re going to the principal’s office, then they say it’s not too bad once they get out. Everybody’s always laughing afterwards. Let’s say that you’re having a conflict with somebody. Instead of starting with what the conflict is, you start with why you’re grateful for that person. I ask that they find something that has worked really well with the way that they interact as a team, or maybe a contribution that that person’s had on the team. So, why are you grateful for that person, and then what was your role in the challenge? How did you contribute? 

I’ll give you an example. We had a supervisor and employee type of thing, and when he said, “I could have been a bit more gentle,” then she said, “Well, I could have been a bit less emotional.” So they both kind of took accountability. Then, because they owned up to their part, when we got to the actual conflict, I said, “Do you want to talk about the actual conflict?” They were like, “No, actually, I think now we know we just need to be a little bit more mindful of how we’re showing up,” because one person’s a little bit more aggressive, she’s a little bit more shy. So they were already going to the resolution based on the contributions - “Yeah, you know what, I could be a little bit better in this regard.” A lot of times we’ll defuse the conflict if you start with gratitude, state your role, how you contributed - and I know sometimes people are like, “Well, I had nothing to do with it at all, that person is so wrong.” And it’s like, “Okay, take a moment, I’m sure you could have done something a touch differently.” And if you reflect, you go back to any argument, you could have done something better.

What’s your advice to those who want a simple gratitude practice?

I think it needs to be what works for you. I’ve done many things over the years. Where I’m at right now is, I do a weekly gratitude with my team. We talk about what we’re grateful for for ourselves, internally, because I think we’re sometimes so focused on the external piece. So, what am I grateful for for myself, what I’m grateful for externally, with my team, the food, or even personally what I’m grateful for. And then I also like to focus on, what’s a win that happened today?

I try to focus on those three aspects at least daily. And then if I forget, I actually have a notepad that has those prompts on it, because you forget. You get busy and don’t remember how amazing your life is. I do that, and then my go-to is that when I have a challenge or I’m feeling a little spinny, definitely take a breath, but I always use gratitude to help move me quicker in whatever emotional negativity I’m facing. And let’s face it, it happens. It happens when you’re driving, it happens at the grocery store, maybe somebody just rubs you the wrong way with a comment that they make.

I have an almost 16-year-old daughter. I’m divorced, so she was with her dad, and I said, “You know what, Kerry, you really need to do your own work, and focus on more positivity and gratitude with her as well, because it just feels better. I say that because, even though I teach on this, I write about it, it’s not always easy. I’m not perfect. I’m sure your listeners are like, “Oh, good.” No, it’s okay, I don’t have to be perfect.

I spent a good deal of my life anxious and even depressed. I discovered the simple power of being able to acknowledge the things in my life that I’m grateful for on a daily basis. Just like mindfulness meditation, it alters the way your brain cells work. I think gratitude does the same thing.

And those coupled together, it’s extremely powerful. Do you know Brené Brown? She’s such a good storyteller, but she also is such a researcher. And she said that the number one thing when people are having extreme hardships in their lives - from losing a child to a house burning down to losing a high-figure job - the number one thing, when she did her research, was that the people who moved through it the quickest are the ones that are focused on gratitude. What they were still grateful for. Like, okay, maybe my house burned down, but I’m alive. That simplistic of a thing, that was the number one thing. And she was blown away that it was gratitude.

With my boyfriend, we do weekly gratitude on Sundays. Sunday evening at dinner. We keep it in our phone in Notes and we share that, and I think it’s extremely powerful. We have that negativity bias, right, that we are focused on the negative, but how about we focus on everything positive that happened this week? And sometimes you’re like, “Wow, there’s a lot that happened this week.” Gratitude, personally and professionally, is brilliant.

I personally sometimes have a hard time accepting gratitude. I’m like, “Oh, it’s nothing,” or, “it’s okay.” One of my friends told me one time - he’s really big on gratitude - that when somebody gives you a compliment or expresses gratitude, it’s a gift. If somebody brought you flowers, you’re not going to not take them. Just breaking it down in simplistic terms of saying “thank you,” number one. And the other thing, with your teams and expressing it… So, for you receiving it, just simply saying thank you, and catching yourself - I catch myself about to go into “it’s nothing” - and people now will reflect back to me and say, “Kerry, just say thanks.” I’m like, “Okay, sorry, thanks.” You personally, just saying thank you, leaving it super simple. 

Now, with your teams - and this is what I’ve found - being very cognizant of how people need it. I’ll give an example. On my team I have people that I need to be very grateful on every task, and need to really be grateful. I have other people that if I did that, that would really annoy them. They’re like, keep it moving, right? Got it. And then I have other people who like when they get an award or a grand gesture, because that’s how they feel more appreciated. So, really taking the time to, like - how are people reacting? What do they need from an appreciation perspective?

Each person is different, and the ways that they’re going to process gratitude will differ. So, managers - know what each of your team members is like in this regard?
Yes. If you’re going to have a group exercise, just recognize that some people are going to be more excited about receiving gratitude than others. But at the end, if you are doing an exercise in gratitude, they are going to feel better, for sure. Even if they’re really like, “No, I’m not doing this.” And I’ve had that happen, in seminars and internally, where people are like, “I’m just not feeling the gratitude today.” Like, okay, that’s fine. You just have your little adult time-out and you do you, boo. And then everybody else is being grateful and they just look like, you know– and then they’re like, “Okay, I’ll be grateful.” Always. If you’re breathing, you can be grateful for that. It can be that simple. Just focus on that you’re breathing right now. And that’s usually what I kind of joke - like, you’re breathing, you’re good. So I kind of try to make light of it, but I also don’t want to force somebody.

So it sounds like, at your firm and in your life, gratitude is just an essential element of how you operate. And I believe you also share this with your clients.

We do. And going back to being in the financial services industry, the Association of Financial Professionals, the Treasury Cash Management Exchange - even those organizations have had me speak on gratitude. Since the pandemic, I think people are really getting a lot more on board with these easy tools. People are also stretched on budgets right now. Gratitude is absolutely free. 

It’s easy. Everybody always goes away feeling a little bit better about the team and having a bit of connection.

Kerry Wekelo, thank you so much for talking about gratitude and your book, Gratitude Infusion: Workplace Strategies for a Thriving Organizational Culture. There’s so much in here that goes beyond thriving organizational cultures. It’s just about being a happy human.

Emma Magenta owned a successful yoga studio in New Jersey. When the pandemic hit, she saw a dire need for people to reframe their values, priorities, worklife and their lives in general, and transferred her considerable skills into becoming a certified life coach.

Emma Magenta and I have known each other for almost 20 years. 

The way we met was that you were one of my very first yoga students, and I taught yoga for 20 years, starting about 21 years ago.

Yoga has been a profound influence on my life. It has shaped the way I think about almost everything. It shapes the way I live my life day to day. This doesn’t mean I get up every morning, eat nothing but barley, drink decaffeinated herbal teas, and sit in meditation for forty hours. That’s not my day. Yoga has been an influence on my life in more subtle, deep, and persistent ways. 

You have really embodied yoga. More than just studying it yourself, you have also held the responsibility of imparting it to other people.

Enough about me: What is your journey?

I started my professional life in the internet business, and I did that for five or six years, and at the end of that I was specifically producing websites for an advertising firm. I was feeling pretty unfulfilled by that, so I did a yoga teacher training, and I became a yoga teacher. After I’d been teaching yoga for five or six years, again, I wanted to do something to shift it a little bit, so I opened a yoga studio in New Jersey, which I owned and operated for 15 years. And then, right before the pandemic, I had decided that I wanted to shift gears and do something different. I had no idea what that was going to be; I’d been in the yoga business for 20 years. 

At the height of my yoga teaching career, I was so passionate about it - it really defined me as a person - and that transition out of the yoga business was really challenging. But the pandemic gave me the opportunity. It kind of gave me an off-ramp of my yoga business. Because the business had to change so radically to accommodate covid, it became something that I could actually allow myself to think about - what I might like to do that was different. So I started training to be a life coach pretty early on in the pandemic, and now I’m a life coach full-time. 

From interweb design to life coach. It’s sort of an individually-focused career, and yet you’ve always worked with people. 

Oh, I never thought about it like that, but yeah, that is the truth. I mean, when I was producing websites, I ended my internet career working in an office with a team. But at the beginning of that, the way that I learned to build websites - at the time, I did a lot of that work at home. It was very ahead of its time because I was working from home at that time. And then as a yoga teacher, there is this wacky thing where you go through teacher training and you’ve got a bunch of people with you, and the person who trains you is ideally there and is present and giving you feedback. And then once you start teaching, it’s just you in a room full of people who are looking to you to tell them what to do.

And there is that sort of feeling of isolation. As a person that owned a yoga studio, I was the face of the business. My vision of the business is what drove us forward, and in some ways that felt very isolated as well. I had to really learn how to prioritize creating teams and creating community around me, because I found out in all of these different careers that I’ve had, isolation - while it was sort of the default or easiest way to approach it, I’m a little bit of an introvert - that became really problematic as time went on. I had to really learn how to reach out and create networks around me of people that could support me.

Early in my life in yoga, I learned this term kula, which I think of as the root word for cult, but also means the community. The studios I was drawn to had this sense of commonness; each felt like a community. And I think great teams have a sense of community about them. What is it that you think underpins a feeling of community?

Gosh, what a great question. That is something that all of my yoga endeavors emphasized, and it is something that they were known for. People used to leave reviews online that said that the thing they really loved about my yoga studio was that when you went in there, you really felt the presence of a warm community vibe. When I think about what went into creating that, one thing that comes to mind is that idea that we really tried our best - me and my husband - we really tried our best to know every student that came in the door. We really tried our best to see them. I took a lot of pride in knowing almost everybody’s name and getting almost everybody’s name down the first time that I met them. It became kind of a joke amongst my students that I really only had to hear a name once or twice before I knew it.

I would make a point before each class, even in the biggest classes that I taught - at the end I was teaching classes that were, like, 35 people - I would go around to each student at the beginning of class and I would look them right in the eye, and I would say hello, and I would take a couple of minutes and just engage with them about whatever was going on with them. I really feel like the vibe that I brought into my individual encounters with each student not only made that individual student feel seen, but then the other students in the room saw me doing it with each of them, and then they treated their neighbors with the same respect. 

So, you know the old saying: fish stinks from the head. [laughs] Well, what I hear with that saying is that a leader can really determine the culture of a community, for good or for ill. And I feel like when my students saw the way I treated each individual student, they learned to treat one another with that same degree of respect and warmth, and to really take the time to see one another as individuals and as human beings, to see their vulnerabilities and their strengths.

I was never a terribly hands-on boss at the yoga studio, and I really feel like the main way that I imparted culture to my team over time is the way that I showed up when I was teaching classes. I would have these interactions with my students that really allowed them to feel seen, and then the students would bring the vibe into the other classes. Everybody was learning from everybody else. These values were being embodied without me having to actually go around to each person and say, “Let’s be respectful! This is what respect looks like!” Instead, it was something that was present in every moment and every level of the community. 

Culture’s a mysterious thing, right, (there’s that word cult again, by the way) because it is transmitted that way: person to person, often nonverbally. It’s intention and gesture, to a great extent. I’ve always been fascinated by is this relationship between the individual and the group. You were treating your classes as collections of individuals who you affirmed as different and unique, and yet somehow out of that arose a commonness. I just think that’s amazing. That’s almost like magic.

I love the metaphors of magic, and one of the ways I think about them is that magic is something that is happening on levels that we cannot fully perceive. And I think that’s exactly what was happening at that studio and in my classes: the warmth that I brought to each encounter that I had with each student trickled out. It just sort of spread through the whole studio. And it actually took me years - because I taught yoga for 20 years. 

It's not something that I was good at right from the get-go. At all. In fact, I remember this exchange I had with my husband, where my husband had been in sales his whole life; he’d grown up in a family business, so he really knew a lot about sales and customer service. One day, maybe a couple of years into owning my studio, he took me aside as we were leaving the studio and he said, “Listen, I notice that when you get done teaching, you come out into the lobby right away, and you hover around the near cubbies where your purse is, and you look like you can’t wait to get out the door, and you don’t really interact with the students that much.” And I was like, “Well, yeah. At the end of the class I'm freaking tired. I wanna collect my purse and go home.” And he said, “Well, [laughs] have you considered interacting with the students?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” It was like a classic argument between a husband and a wife. I want to do things my own way, and I don't want you to be judging what I’m doing after class. 

But on a deep level, I knew he was right. He was speaking to the values that I had as a teacher. And the values that I had as a teacher, even when I didn’t really know consciously or intellectually how to embody them, were that I wanted each student, in a very profound way, to feel this sense of being seen and respected - not just for, I don’t know, their external accomplishments, but for the spark of life that is inside of each one of us. And I knew that the way that I was acting after class, where I would kind of just sweep out and be distant from my students, wasn’t serving the deeper underlying goal or value of my yoga teaching.

So I had to learn to be different. It was a learned skill for me to know each student’s name, look them in the eye, have conversations with them that indicated that I gave a damn about them as a person, and then to be able to replicate that again and again and again with each student, even on days when I didn’t really feel like it.

If I were to distill a lesson for people managers out of this, it would certainly be to start with hearing and seeing the individual, as a foundation of building a collaborative environment at both the beginning and the end. I remember later in your teaching life when you walked over to someone and very quietly offered a suggestion about how they might be doing this particular pose. It was much more personal.

Yes. As time went on, my teaching became much more focused, in part because I grew in my confidence as a leader. When I first started, the way that I was trained to teach - and you were actually trained in the same school of yoga that I was trained in - my perception was that we were taught to sort of stand on one side of the room, where we could see the most students at once, and then call out any feedback that we had to the students. Like, I was trained to say, “Carlos, turn your back toes in more,” or, “Sally, bend your front knee more deeply.”  “John, lift up your chest more,” right? I was trained to do stuff like that.

Then, in 2012, as you know because you and I were trained in the same school of yoga, there was this enormous…I’m going to use the word rupture or falling apart of the yoga organization that we were originally trained by and associated with. After that happened, I really had to learn what my own values were, and among the many, many things I learned is that people don’t necessarily want to receive feedback shouted across a room at them!

It seems really obvious now. And I’m sure there are situations - like, especially for your listeners who are in corporate or what have you - I’m sure there are situations where there is a benefit to other people hearing the feedback that you’re hearing, right? Maybe you’re on a team and your whole team is, I don’t know, building websites, and everybody is making the same mistakes, so you want to make sure that Sally hears what John has been doing wrong, right? I’m sure that there are cases where that’s so.

But the thing is that a yoga practice is so deeply personal. The students are having a profoundly intimate experience with themselves when they’re on the yoga mat. And so, for me to stand at one side of a room and call across to them… Over time, once I felt more liberated to step into my own values as a leader instead of embodying someone else’s ideas about how I should teach, it became more and more clear to me that I wanted to meet the students in the quietness of the intimacy of the experience that they were having with themselves, and that if that’s what I wanted to do, I needed to go across to them [lowers voice] and I needed to speak to them like this, [normal voice] instead of standing at one side of the room [raises voice] and talking to them like this!

I think COVID and work-from-home stuff made this even more intense. I think when I'm at my desk doing my work, that’s also a deeply intimate thing. It’s me, myself, and I. It’s me trying to solve a problem, or answer a question, or learn something that I can then share with others. I really love that notion. You’re with yourself in a very intimate way. And I think in a work-from-home world, you can be left too much alone. You want to be left to yourself and your intimate relationship with whatever your task is, and you do want the teacher/manager/boss to come around once in a while and say, “looks like you might need some help with that; here’s a thought.” And then back away and let me have my practice again. 

The intimate space of our personal relationships with ourselves, that is the source of everything that human beings have built on planet Earth. In the intimacy and the sort of…I want to use the word silence of the inside of our own heads. But all of those ideas - e = mc2, the great ideas of engineering, the great works of art and literature - all of those things come from the darkness and the intimacy of a person’s relationship with the creative spark inside themselves. This is why meditation as a practice is so effective, and why you’re seeing, more and more now, the practice of meditation being recommended for people. It’s not a thing that’s only in vogue. It’s not just for people who are spiritual. It’s not just for people who are artistic. A meditative practice can be something that serves people in technical fields.

Even, like, an attorney, a doctor, a surgeon. That inner, fertile darkness of the inside of your own being is so important to be connected to. And yet, as you point out, that can also be a very lonely and isolated place. Part of the work I’m doing now as a life coach is helping people get that internal longing and knowing and artistry and magic - get that inner magic out of themselves, because I do feel that you're 100% correct. If you're only ever in the space of your internal self, (a.) you stagnate, and (b.) I think there’s a feeling of frustration because you’re never actually seeing your inner life embodied in the outer world around you, and it can be very lonely and isolating. 

All that attention on the individual, and that space that they inhabit, the internal experience they’re having, somehow still comes back to creating a sense of “we’re all in this together.” That community. I remember being in some massive classes, because when we were still studying that particular form of yoga, I’d go to workshops. I mean, 400 people spread out under a massive tent all moving together. Being in that kula, in that community - there is something magical about all these people following this direction, doing this together, very much in their own ways. That vibe of “we’re all doing this together” is magical.

I really think that’s what kept me doing yoga for 20 years, for as long as I did. Teaching yoga. All these individual people coming together and creating something new - it’s magic. It feels divine. And I think that feeling of merging with a crowd is a profoundly human experience. It’s part of what makes us who we are as a species, right? Obviously the wildebeests and the animals that move in herds, I'm sure that they have some kind of an experience like that as well. The thing that I think is interesting, as well, is how the sort of magic of being part of a crowd is something that can be used for good or for ill. When we’re talking about it in the context of a yoga class, especially a big one like that, oh, it’s almost ecstatic. It is ecstatic.

The joy of moving your body, of breathing together, it's almost beyond words how meaningful that is. One of my hobbies is that I sing in a choir. There’s all this research that’s been done that shows the positive impact on mental health of singing in a group. And you don’t have to be singing in any particularly skillful way or any particular song; it’s like, if you sing in a group, your mental health improves almost right away. Those are positive things, right?

But then, as you know, there’s also this incredibly dark side, or shadow side, of how human beings in crowds can get together, be sort of carried away by that same momentum, and really do atrocities. So, one of my lessons from 20 years in the yoga business was learning how that synergy of groups of human beings can be harnessed for good or for ill. And that I see my values on this earth, my goal for myself in this life is to make whatever contributions I can to make the organizations I’m involved with, the people I’m associated with - to move the energy of myself and the people around me as much as I can towards things that are beneficial, healing, benevolent, growthful - good, in a word. 

It took me a while to get my head around the fact that, in those early years when I was first studying and teaching, that it was a cult. 

I’ll summarize it for your listeners, using general and vague terms. Carlos and I were loosely associated with a style of yoga that had a very charismatic leader. This style of yoga had been around for decades. There were people all over the world who practiced this style of yoga, and we all looked to this one charismatic leader. 

It was brilliant as a style, as an approach to yoga. It was so accessible, so affirming. It was a lovely, lovely thing to be a part of. 

I always joke, “nobody gets into a cult because they think it’s a cult,” right? 

They discover a cool style of yoga or what have you. So then, what happened in 2021 was that this particular leader was discovered to have been up to no good in a number of different ways, and the community really splintered about it. When that rupture happened, when the veil was parted and we realized that this leader that we had looked up to so much had actually been up to all kinds of no-good, I called my friend and we were both like, “Oh my god, it is a cult.” Outsiders had been sort of telling us for years, “there’s something about the community that’s cultish,” and we were like “What are you talking about?!” 

In organizations of all types, we still tend to get drawn to the charismatic leaders, and groups form around them, and it does get a little cultish sometimes. I think my wish for those listening to this podcast who lead teams, or want to lead teams, is that your approach is much more in line with, “how can we help people feel seen and attended to?” Let the culture of your team or the climate of your team arise out of those good actions. The focus on the individual is so important because everybody is different. It’s not this undifferentiated blob of people; that’s not what a team is, right? It’s highly differentiated and needs your attention. And it doesn’t have to be braggadocious, it doesn’t have to be in front of a room with a microphone. It can be intimate, in all the healthy, positive ways. 

One of your guests on your podcasts: a gentleman who had worked with the Navy SEALs.

That was Robert Ginnett. 

He was talking about how, in his mind, the ideal team is single-digits. There’s a threshold of a number of people over which it’s hard to effectively have a team, and I think that’s a truism that people work with all the time in corporations, in any business. I think the issue there is that when it gets over a certain number of people, it gets harder and harder to see people as individuals instead of as an undifferentiated mass.

Yes, and I think it is a skill. One of the magical aspects of being in any good yoga teacher’s class is that you always feel like they’re just paying attention to you. There may be 20 other people in the room, or 30, but you always have the sense - “that comment was for me. That pose, she put that in there because I needed to work that. I needed that hip opener, I needed that hamstring stretch.” Somehow, the best leader/teacher has a way of cultivating that sense of personalness. 

Willy Nelson, the singer - and apparently, Bill Clinton are very much the same way with people - you could be in an audience of 2,000, 3,000, 30,000 people, and you felt like Willy Nelson was singing right to you. When people would greet Bill Clinton in a line, it was like there was no one else there. When he walked up to you and shook your hand, it was like, “this is all about me.” And it is a skill.

I love that you’re saying that is a skill, because it 100% is a skill, and I can say that because I wasn’t that good at it when I started my career. And, like, I had to fake it. When I first started teaching - and I don’t feel any shame about this or regret about this. This is how we learn, right? You have to inhabit the space of not-knowing in order to move into the space of knowing. When I was a younger teacher, especially when I was teaching within this yoga community that was more authoritarian and cult-like, I faked it a lot. I made all the gestures, I modulated my voice in the way that I had seen my teacher do it. I was following instructions. There was a little bit of a sort of robot or automaton thing that happened. 

And then as I got older and wiser and more experienced as a teacher, I was even making some of the same gestures, but the impetus behind it changed. More and more, what happened was that my vision for what I wanted for my students became clearer and clearer. More and more shit got moved out of the way. My anxiety about doing it wrong got moved out of the way. My, I don’t know, worries about my personal appearance got moved out of the way. My adherence to this particular yoga style got moved out of the way. All of these things got moved away, and instead what shone forth was the vision that I had - and I prefer to think of “vision” as being something that doesn’t necessarily come from me as an individual. The way I conceptualize my vision for my yoga students and my life coaching clients, and indeed for my life as a whole, is that it’s informed by my relationship with Spirit, by the presence of my ancestors (either in a spiritual sense or even just presence in my genes). All of these big-picture forces, even the essence of nature itself, came through me as a vision for what I wanted for my students. And what I wanted for my students was for them to love and respect themselves, to cherish their beautiful, miraculous bodies for just an hour in the middle of their crazy weeks. 

That was the vision I had for them, and the more all this other stuff got moved out of the way, the clearer that vision got. So a lot of these gestures that I had been kind of just making because my teacher told me it was a smart thing to do - instead, those gestures became mine, because they were an embodiment of my value system. And I feel that that’s when my yoga teaching became really powerful. 

I remember early on, when I finished my teacher training - it was 200 hours compressed into one summer - I came out feeling a lack. And that lack was kind of what you’re describing. I learned good words to say, and good places to position myself, and how to show people how to line their mats up so I could see everybody. But I didn't have what I would later dub my “yoga eyes.” I was too busy worrying about what to say and the sequence I had devised; I wasn’t really seeing what people were doing. It took me years, actually, to get to the point where I could unburden myself of all the stuff I had learned. 

So well said. 

You built a team of teachers at your studio. I attended classes with a few different ones. But it all felt like Emma’s studio. 

You’ve talked about how you approach students. How did you approach building a team of teachers? And…the word “brand” keeps coming into mind but it doesn’t do it justice: the way your teachers showed up. 

The word “brand,” all these words we use in business, always point to - at least gesture toward - more universal truths, so I’m comfortable with the word “brand.” 

To tell the truth, Carlos, I wish I could tell you that I really had some kind of a formula that helped me nail whatever it was that made my teachers carry through the vibe that I had established. As the owner of the studio and as a teacher myself, that was the part I struggled with the most as a person that owned a business - and that business was around for 15 years, it was mid six-figures business, it was very successful for a yoga studio - that was the part that I struggled with the most. I have two thoughts for your listeners about it. 

With what I was doing as a teacher, I trained my students how to interact with each other based on the respectful way that I treated them, then they brought that energy into the other classes. In a certain way, they ended up teaching the teachers, because I didn’t do a whole lot of training of my staff. I didn't take them away for a weekend and have a values meeting, I didn’t have long training sessions with them, but I will tell you that toward the end of my time there, there were a few things that I did do that I feel really helped engender the vibe that I wanted to create. And this goes back to something that you were saying in the beginning about how gesture and intention create culture. 

One of the most effective ways that I trained my team of teachers is that I stopped telling them so much about what the culture was. I wrote it down and I would read it to them during our initial training session or whatever, but one of the main things I worked on with them was gesture. How they positioned themselves in the room before and after their classes. And I found that a lot of teachers, just like me, didn’t know that.  They would come in one minute before their class started, they would keep their head down, walk over to the cubby, dump their bag, and then go into the room and start teaching. The thing that I found was most effective in training my staff in terms of creating the vibe - the intentional thing, right, beyond just me teaching my class - was showing them, physically, with my body, how I wanted them to position their bodies. That I was present in the space fifteen minutes before class started; I was not holding my phone, or looking at a magazine or a pamphlet; that I was sitting up, visible to my students as they entered the studio; that as they came in, I made eye contact or I waved, I asked them about themselves; and all this stuff around the gestures that I was making. And the thing is, they understood that gesture is powerful because they were yoga teachers! Really what I was teaching them was, “these are the yoga poses that a teacher does before class to foster a connection with their students.” And of all the things I did, I feel that was the most effective in transmitting the culture.

Even teams that don’t have external customers have customers inside. You want to think about - how is the experience of our team landing on those stakeholders within this organization that rely on us, that are looking to us for stuff and our time or our ideas? It’s really interesting to think about - what are the gestures that communicate who we want to be to them? I also love the other idea of infusing it in your students and letting your students sort of infect your teachers with it the other way around. Very powerful. 

Yeah. 

Emma Magenta, this has been fascinating. Thank you for the original thinking, and the depth of your thought about how you do what you do. For your reflections on yourself, and your values, and your behaviors, and the congruity of all that. 

Thank you for making it so comfortable. I was pretty nervous before we started, but you really make a very comfortable environment for your guests. It has been such a pleasure to be associated with you in so many different roles over these 20 years. 

Check out Emma’s website, HangWithEmma.com

Leave a comment! I do read them!

Sylvia Burberry, a New Zealander, has worked at Mars for more than 28 years. She is currently President, Emerging and Seed Markets for Royal Canin.  At the time of our discussion, she was leading Royal Canin in Asia Pacific. Previous to that role, Sylvia had held leadership roles in Sales and HR.  Royal Canin, a part of Mars’s global portfolio of pet care portfolio, “improves the lives of dogs and cats through nutrition.”

Sylvia, what’s the one thing you wish you’d learned in your education? 

I wish I’d been taught how to take myself less seriously. you get on this academic treadmill and it’s all about achieving, achieving, achieving, about the human doing, not the human being. 

Can you reflect back on the first team you ever lead?

It’s embarrassing to think back that far! I was 23, just had my first child and I’d just been promoted to sales supervisor. I was a baby. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I was managing these people who were way older than me, several were men who’d never worked for a woman and weren’t very happy. I was a bit school-marmish to be honest. I look back, and I did some things right. I genuinely cared about people. I got out and spent time in the field and got to know them. That was right. But when we got together and had meetings, I’d say, “Shhh! Don’t be talking…Get here on time.” I’d throw tests at people. It’s all I knew. I’m terribly embarrassed when I look back on it now. It was a long time ago and hopefully I’ve improved since then.

Was there any one lesson that stands out?

I think probably the power of relationship, of getting to know people. I had one guy in particular who was really resistant. And you know I can remember spending time, just sitting in the car, talking with him and getting to know him as a person. Eventually I think I wore him down. When you start to get to know people as people, they stop thinking of you as their boss. It closes the distance, reduces their resentment. It builds a relationship where you can actually have a meaningful interaction, and support, develop and grow somebody. 

You mentioned being a woman and leader. How important a factor do you feel that was, and why?

In one instance, I was working with older men who were by then very weary, and being managed by a young person and a woman at that, back 30 years ago, was really uncomfortable. I was conscious of it, they were conscious of it. 

Now I’m much more conscious of my innate style. There were times that I felt that I needed to conform more my style. Business has largely been a men’s domain. It’s not as much today, it’s changing a lot, but for a long time it was. I can remember being told I needed to be more assertive and bang my fist on the table. I didn’t feel that was necessarily me or was going to make a difference, but at that time it was sort of needed. So there were times when I was the only woman in the room, particularly early in my career. Over the years I’ve become much more comfortable leading in a style that’s very me: tapping into more of my female energy. Now I’m a bit more nurturing, a bit more empathetic.  

I hate when you start talking gender because you start generalizing, and I don’t like to generalize because at the end of the day we’re all different.  I believe those things are really strengths. I know I’m a really good listener. That is a trait that has set me up really well as a leader but it took a long time for me to feel really comfortable and fully accepted for leading in a style that’s completely authentic, without feeling I needed to moderate a little to fit. As the world has become more accepting, I’ve become more accepting of myself. 

Can you think back to a time where things weren’t squaring up very well with your team leader?

As I said, I’ve worked for Mars, Inc. for a long time, I’ve worked with some amazing people, and in an amazing culture. That doesn’t mean you always connect well with everybody. I can remember one particular boss that I had who I was really struggling to trust. With the benefit of hindsight and years, just on a values basis, I tend to not be very ego-driven: it’s more about the team. Sometimes when I work with people who have more ego, I don’t trust immediately. This guy had a very different style, a lot more ego, and I was struggling to trust. I remember this pivotal moment – again, I was still young and in my 20x.  I still can’t tell you where I got the courage to do this, but I remember saying, “You know, I don’t trust you.” And I ask myself, “How on earth did I ever get the courage to say that?”

The thing that I’ve learned is once you’ve named something, it loses all its power. If you don’t trust someone enough to tell them you don’t trust them…that builds trust right away. Unless they do something crazy. Because mostly it opened this conversation and I learned so much about speaking what I’m feeling, speaking about the tension that I am feeling. And when I put it out there, it creates an opportunity to have a conversation. 

When I was working for you I had a similar conversation with a person I was supposed to be supporting who didn’t trust me.  I’m interested in the courage that it takes to “go there”. Are you familiar with Brené Brown? I’m interested in what it takes to cultivate that kind of psychological safety within yourself. How can we cultivate that in others?

I’ve often thought about how I had the gumption to say that in that moment. I think I sort of blurted it out. I don’t remember planning to have the conversation. But what I know it did is create in me a sense of psychological safety to say things that might be really uncomfortable.  Becoming comfortable with discomfort. My best advice is to create your own safety for yourself you have to try it. 

I talk to people about this all the time when I talk about vulnerability. When you first open up and become vulnerable, it feels incredibly risky.

But as soon as you’ve done it, you realize it’s not risky. It actually gives you more power in a situation when you name what you’re feeling. The advice I give to people who are about to do a presentation is to start by telling people you feel nervous because what you do is you engage them, you enroll them in supporting you. If you listen to somebody present and they say, “I’m really nervous”, the first thing you’re going to do is say to yourself, “Oh, I better really support them and encourage them and make sure they feel comfortable. So they’re feeling really vulnerable by feeling that they’re taking a great risk, but what they’re actually doing is enrolling the audience to support them. 

I remind myself that whenever I go into a conversation feeling a little bit uncomfortable. I’ve had some incredible coaches, not formal coaches but mentors, peers, leaders, even people who’ve support me, Carlos, who’ve given me great support, advice and encouragement. I’ve gleaned so much wisdom from people along the way.

What’s one piece of advice about working with a team that has stuck with you? 

When building high performance teams, you hear over and over that when you have a new member, you have to start from the beginning again. We don’t want to do it. We have this great team and we think we can just carry on. But taking the time to onboard someone, not to the business or to the “what” we do, but to HOW we do things, how the relationships work, what’s expected of the team, that at least speeds up the process. It doesn’t stop from going back to the beginning, but if you take the time to onboard them well, I think it speeds up the process. 

In the team I’m leading at the moment, we’re going through a lot of changes. Somebody the other day said, “We’re having another team meeting and another person to onboard. Can we just not onboard them and keep-“

I said, “No.” 

Of course, I’m simplifying the conversation. And there are ways to avoid doing the same thing over and over again, but I think that on-boarding process is really critical. 

What lessons has the pandemic taught you about teams?

The first thing I discovered really early on was that people were in a different place. I lead the China and Korea markets, some of the first markets to be hit. I work in a global team that’s based in Europe. When we were in the middle of things in Asia-Pac, they weren’t in it at all. Then Europe was hit, and Asia-Pac wasn’t in it so much, and I realized we needed to meet people where they’re at. That’s been my mantra through the whole pandemic. When we’re virtual, really connecting to understand where people are at, and giving time and space to connect to people and really understand where they’re at. 

We’ve always, as a team, had these check-ins when we meet. When we meet as a team, we allow more time for the check-in, to talk about their personal lives with their families and about their business lives. What I’ve discovered is when you create that space to check-in at the beginning of the meeting, it brings a presence and a sense of connectedness, even over long distances, that I think has sustained us.

There was an instance recently in a team that I don’t lead where we didn’t check-in at the beginning of the meeting, and there was a lot of emotion and tension that was raised through the meeting that, had we checked in at the beginning of the meeting, would have been a very different discussion. That was a very important lesson we learned when we all checked in at the next meeting. It gives space for people to unload or decompress at the beginning of the meeting so that they can be fully present for the rest of the meeting.

When did you learn the importance of checking in at the beginning of a meeting?

I think I intuited early on the need to meet people where they’re at. And do that in a genuine way. I had an ah-ha moment when I was having a particularly bad moment. My son had a bike accident. He was in Singapore, I was in New Zealand. He was in the hospital and I couldn’t get back to him. I was working ridiculous hours. And then my daughter got stuck in Europe and was having a really difficult time. I was having all these conversations with people and I realized at the end of the week that I hadn’t shared with anybody how I was feeling. And the reason I hadn’t shared it with anybody is because nobody had asked. And I always ask. And I realized, I’d just had an ah-ha Moment about my own leadership. What I assumed is perfectly normal, checking in with everybody and making space, isn’t something that everybody normally does. 

I work with fantastic, lovely, caring people and I don’t think it was an intentional miss, but I realized that nobody had asked, in this particular week, how I was. I’d asked loads of people how they were. It was an interesting reflection on the things that I perhaps take for granted in myself.

What was a peak moment for you as a leader?

Every team I work with I think, “This is the best team I’ve ever worked with.” There are moments, however, where you really get the flow. I remember that transition team we worked with. It was a difficult environment we were in. We were managing a pretty big change. I have a vivid memory of the after-action review where the truth the team pulled together, the reflection on what the team did well and the ability on what we could have done differently, on what the business could have done differently. I remember the energy. I think we had a 2-day offsite session. The energy we created on the reflection and generation on this huge piece of work we’d done and where we’d got to. I think on how proud we were and what we’d achieved. I could think of numerous instances where the team just flows.

Was there a time where you were faced with a tough situation in the team and you were somehow able to get them through it?

I was running the New Zealand business when they had a massive turnaround. We finally got to a decent profit shape. We were doing the operating plan for the following year, and we realized that the exchange rate had shifted and it was going to eat all our profit that we had turned around the year before and take us back to square one. I looked around the room and nobody believed we could get through and improve our performance. We didn’t know how to do it, and I had no idea what to do. Completely outside our control.

I remember getting the team together and saying, “I’m confident that with the brain power we have in this room, we can figure this out. Let’s brainstorm.” We engaged a few extra people further in the organization, we brainstormed it out, sharpened our ideas, broke into small groups and put together a plan. We ended up completely reviewing the portfolio. We ended up with a plan to grow less but make more money and in the end we actually exceeded the plan and delivered a phenomenal result, bringing the power of the collective intelligence, just building confidence. 

I remember your questions: “If you did know what would the answer be?” You have to use that question carefully, but have the confidence that we can find a way when we harness the collective. And pizza always works. Stick a bunch of people in a room with pizza and the collective intelligence will prevail.

Finally, what advice would you give to a new line manager?

Simply, I’d advise them to treat people like people, like whole people. Respect them for who they are and they’ll bring their absolute best to whatever they’re doing.  Too often we get focused on the task, or on the people at work. My passion is about creating a space where people can bring their whole self to work. Where I can be my whole self. I know that I’m at my best when other people are able to bring their whole selves and be their whole selves at work. They can be at their best collectively, and I think we sometimes forget that we are people. We’re not workers, or whatever the job is. I believe when you treat people like people and you respect their whole person, they will bring their absolute best.

Thank you, Sylvia Burberry, for bringing your whole self to this conversation. 

Meet Hamish Thomson, author of IT'S NOT ALWAYS RIGHT TO BE RIGHT. Hamish is a Kiwi living and working in Australia. His roles, which have taken him around the globe, include former Regional President and Global brand leader for Mars Incorporated., senior marketing leader at Reebok International and, once-upon-a-time, a fresh faced account executive in the London advertising scene.

I'm in Sidney at the moment. Just remember, I'm a New Zealander, or commonly referred to as a Kiwi, slightly different from that Aussie twang. 

Unapologetically I'm a typical corporate player. I've been doing this for about 30 years. I started out life in London as an advertising copywriter. I was a very poor copywriter and I was quickly moved to the field of account management, looking after clients as a liaison. I loved that environment - very fast paced, creative, and really was about relationship-building. Then I moved on to the sports and fitness industry with Reebok in Europe looking after the marketing and communications for Europe which I loved, as you can expect. Great fun, a lot of energy, excitement, really about emotional connections. I particularly loved the dynamism in the industry. Then I probably grew up a little bit and spent the last twenty years in FMCG, or CPG (consumer packaged goods) for Mars, Inc. I absolutely thrived and loved the global brand role. I did the CEO and regional president gig for 3 large markets and the regions within the world.

Then I made a decision which my wife thinks is crazy as does my former boss: I resigned and wanted to do something completely different. I've been within different start-ups, a few board positions, non-profits. And I wrote my first leadership book, IT'S NOT ALWAYS RIGHT TO BE RIGHT. A varied career but enjoyable to date.

It’s a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. At the end of each chapter you’ve invited a contrarian or a critical point of view from someone you know and respect. 

In some ways it could be a little bit lazy so I don't have to write all within the book. I’ve got an insatiable thirst or curiosity. I love perspective, I love difference, challenge in thought leadership. I say I love humility within leadership, but I've also got a bit of an ego. With an ego comes a very firm set of beliefs and ideas. I do lay those ideas out in each of those chapters. But equally I've invited some key global leaders and heads of corporations, advocates of diplomacy or government-related external consultants, lawyers, etc. and I've asked them to directly challenge my concepts and my ideas. Some build on them, others have told me I'm a little bit off in this direction. But I love their perspective, and the beauty of this is in a few years, my views and positions will probably change as I get exposed to new experiences. That's the rationale behind it. So far, I’ve had very good feedback on that and I'm very appreciative to those individuals for contributing. 

Somehow it adds a bit of tension or suspense because you just can’t wait to read what the comeback or the build will be, so I appreciated it. 

I always ask my guests if they remember an early boss experience. We always like to hear a bit about what goes wrong, don’t we? So tell us a bit about why bad bosses are gifts.

Like it or not, we all go through different stages in our careers. I've had exceptional bosses: those who provide very clear direction, inspirational vision, clarity, develop and stretch you and genuinely show compassion and empathy for you. But at the same time we've probably all had one or two of those bosses who went against us in our values, our way of working, were unsupportive and showed behaviors that we're not exactly in awe of. 

From my side the beauty is, when you've had those bosses, the first thought is, "How do I get out of this situation?" As we're all aware people generally leave organizations or businesses not because of the business, but because of the boss. There have probably been 2 or 3 examples in my career where I've had less than ideal bosses. Every time you learn something incredibly valuable, an insight from them, and often it's "what will I NOT do?" versus "what should I do?". 

When you get in a leadership position yourself, you look at those behaviors of your boss and you ingrain them to memory as, "When I get the chance to lead others, including leading myself, I won't ingrain those behaviors.” Often those bad bosses, there are characteristics within them that are exceptional. They are brilliant; they may have a stakeholder management or political agility. You need to look at those and seek them out. I document each of those within a file about our "Bad, Bad Bosses." There's a gift within all of them even though it's painful. 

Do you remember your first bad boss experience?

Yes, I do. Within the London advertising experience there was an indirect boss I had. I was young, a graduate position, going to exciting industry events. I thought I'd discovered a new insight within the world of advertising. In those days we were just moving away from print and TV directly into digital. I rushed back, put all this information into files, put one on each of the directors' desks, thinking I'd discovered something. I view it like a black Labrador: I was proud, happy and waited for the praise to come in. One indirect boss who was the head of the media department tore me to shreds. I won't go into full detail, but essentially my opinion wasn't valued, my thought processes and observations hadn't warranted consideration from those above. Essentially, they said get back in your box very quickly. I think the odd Kiwi reference from Down Under was thrown in there at the same time, if you know what I mean. 

The learning from that was, and it goes back to the Mars egalitarian element that every opinion counts, which I've drilled into my psyche of leadership: whoever you are in the organization, your opinion counts. My values of trust, dignity and respect for that go even higher now because of those experiences. The context behind this was that individual was under enormous pressure for revenue and billings, so there's a reason and a rationale behind their actions. Fortunately I survived, they didn’t send me home to New Zealand, and I lived another day. 

How can a leader take in all these opinions and say no to those that have to be said no to in a way that maintains that associate or employee’s sense of dignity or engagement?

There are probably two areas. The first one is a caveat I introduce called the 98% rule: when you get feedback from a boss or others - and let's face it there's a load of feedback in organizations: 360s, constant daily conversations, etc. - you listen to it, you consider it, but there's probably only 2% that you really take in and that resonates. As a result of that, you should refine your behaviors but don't fundamentally change who you are. That is incredibly important because if you do follow the majority of the feedback and change your position, your values, your stance, your way of working, we will not have the diversity of thought and ways of working - the differences that are required within business. It's a really hard thing to do at a young age. There's the intimidation factor and also copying the role model factor. You can very easily change and move away from who you are. 

It’s a really hard one. At a more junior level, how you have a crucial conversation with a leader or a boss, how you challenge the perspective or directive that's put across. My view is:

1. You need to have that conversation. If you don't it will gnaw away at your psyche and you'll regret not having it. 

2. You need to be very respectful in the way you have this conversation. Do it on a one-on-one basis. Do not make it personal. Qualify why you are feeling like this and how it sits within your values. Once you've raised it, be open to consider the other person's point of view. 

When I was younger I used to take on senior leaders. I think I had that small-man syndrome and always wanted to push back, but I would do it within wider groups. It was almost manipulative and point-scoring. As a former sales and marketing person, I did it quite well, but it wasn't respectful. Please, do this respectfully and hopefully a good boss will respond well to it.

Something you bring up in your book is the value of being respected, and liked as a boss. 

A lot of people challenge me on that, and I’m not saying I’m right or wrong. When we talk about being respected and liked, immediately when people hear "liked" they think you're going to be a soft leader, it means you won't face into crucial conversations. You won't make difficult decisions. Within a leadership position, you have to make plenty of difficult decisions over the years - factory redundancies, org structures, moving out of adjacencies, market conditions, market closures, etc. My general belief is respect is a given. It's a point of entry. There's no debate - if you don't have respect you cannot win the game. I've yet to be convinced there's any other way. 

However, I have begun to question in those moments when I've stepped up, went over and beyond my job description, beyond my paygrade, and provided more of me in a project, an assignment, an objective, than I've ever done before. Every single time I did that it was for a leader I've respected, and I also liked. A genuine like, a warmth, knowing that they had my back, they had compassion and empathy. It was consistent when I looked over the years. I've been fortunate to have amazing, wonderful bosses. One recent one was a classic example of that. She was very demanding, challenging, developmentally stretching me but always had my back: consideration, care, compassion. I walk over coals for people like that. 

Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, always had the view that respect was first and foremost and you did not necessarily need to be liked. 

I'm slightly different on that, but that’s how I’ve modeled my leadership style. So just the caveat again, respect is first and foremost.

I think it’s a fabulous provocation. And it’s very much about how you’ve put it. When you’ve reflected on who you went the extra mile for, it was always for someone that you liked. I’d love all my listeners to reflect on that. Think about those bosses you’ve done the extra for and then conversely, think about the bosses you really struggled with. How often did you make the extra effort for them?

Maybe it’s about how the word, “liked” is used. It doesn’t mean you like going out and having a beer with them or playing football with them. You used the word, “warmth.” I like that. There’s something about their humanness that you’ve warmed to.

Many years ago, Carlos, you instilled within me and members of the European team as part of your HPC framework: when you have a genuine connection with another based on full mutual trust, compassion, support, knowing they have your back, you can have the most crucial conversations. When I look back at the feedback over the years, even though at the time I didn't like the conversation or sometimes the content, the context and the way it was expressed to me I did take it to heart because I knew those people genuinely had a warmth and a compassion for me. Previously, if I didn't have that like and I thought it was their agenda, I probably would have dismissed that content entirely - maybe naively. 

Most of us have gone through many a year with different surveys, generally around satisfaction, engagement, leadership qualities. I've always taken those surveys very seriously. Obviously wanting to be liked as a leader, along with respect is critically important for me. I always wanted the great scores, that connection, and I wanted the team to love me directly. Then, it was pointed out to me, if you're a leader, it's very easy to get your team to genuinely like being engaged with you because if they don't, and they don't have a positive relationship with you, it's not so much the leader who gets hurt. Sure, they won't get the best out of people, but the subordinate is generally the one who gets hurt. They won't get developed, they won't get the autonomy and freedom, they won't have the motivating, inspirational assignments or relationships passed with them. So generally they will do everything in their power to have a great relationship with their leader. That's great, but the real insight is the best team relationship, and this goes back to your HPC framework, is not so much the leaders themselves, it's more around how the team, those peers, interact, connect with each other, support each other, treat their team as their first team, putting the business first and your function second. 

When I first became a senior director, my predecessor said to me, "Hamish, it is now more important to get on with your peers than to get along with the team you lead." That's where I just love this concept of business first, function second, from board downwards. It changed my way of looking at things, particularly measuring team performance. 

What are the behaviors or practices that a team leader might consider to foster that kind of relationship among team members that report into them? Is it really about going out and playing golf together?

In my case, it's not about getting on the golf course, I think I’d embarrass them all. As a leader, you shouldn’t be providing your team with the answers. A number of leaders are very charismatic, they take the lead and the responsibility, and take the share of voice ahead of anyone else. But the quiet achiever, the humble leader, sits back and lets the team have their opinions and their say without rebuttal, even if it's slightly off on a different tangent. The leader always has the top of the hierarchy in decision making. But the more times they follow their own direction, and believe that their view and position is more valued than the team’s below them, then they won't get their team working in harmony.

The other one is, provide and create shared purpose objectives for the team that are collectively owned. Sales director, sales team, sales VP, marketing VP, supply VP all have separate projects they're working on. Give them a shared agenda and a collective objective to go forth, and give them the freedom to go after it, and it will create a shared bond, a shared purpose together. When you have that, the group will come to you as a leader collectively with issues. So, a supply chain manufacturing lead will come to you with a sales or a marketing issue, and that HR person will come to you with a financial perspective, and then you know you've got a team. They may be ganging up on you but definitely working in unison. 

The real danger is if you don't do it, you immediately stop other people from stepping up. There's dormant potential in every single person. As a leader if you've always got the right answers, if your way is better than others, you don't need people around you. That is what managers do. A leader will unlock potential and let others take the lead and direction, even if it's different from their own. 

There is one last bit I want to follow up on that stuck with me. “Results are nice but awards matter.”

Like any good copywriting, hopefully it gets people to come questioning immediately, thinking, "Surely you can't mean that." This came directly from my early advertising days after a boozy lunch with an incredibly inspirational creative leader in the agency who turned around and said, "Yeah, results are nice but awards matter." I thought he was having a bit of fun, but he was very serious. 

The entire message was, if you can create an internal hype and excitement and inspiration at a motivational level - I’ve termed it “euphoria ” -  within a business, extraordinary and exceptional things can happen. The power of meaningful rewards, not ones you can buy, matter more than you think.   A majority of people who get a sustainability award or a Great Place to Work award or an individual award for associate or individual of the year, those awards you can take back to your family. At the barbeque, you talk about those awards and walk taller. Often as a leader you get more serious, you get more tangible lagging indicators of results, you take your eye off of those less tangible factors that make people step up and do extraordinary things. They're not mutually exclusive, but if you get the right focus on rewards which is generally a customer service mindset or an external factor first, they do lead to results.  

In reading your book and knowing you a bit, given your accomplishments, you’re really a very humble guy. It’s clear, even in the way you structured your book chapters, you want to keep learning. I find that so motivating.  In your lifelong learning journey, what lesson have you found you’ve had to learn more than once?

Thank you for that commentary and feedback, Carlos. We are consistently learning. As long as you can evolve it's key. Every leader I've spoken to in the latter stages of their careers and asked, “What would you do differently?” has said, "I wish I'd been bolder and faster." I hope I will continue to take calculated risks, always look at new opportunities. I've got constant dissatisfaction, born with a frown on my forehead according to my mother.  I'm always looking for my next thing. My biggest struggle, at the heart of my leadership and my personal values, is something that Grant Reid, the head of Mars, Inc said, "Performance without purpose is meaningless, and purpose without performance is impossible." 

Recently I've taken on a couple of different board roles, and one is with one of Australia's largest suicide prevention agencies, Ozhelp. It has solidified that I am a very driven individual, I’m results oriented,  very performance oriented, but purpose has to be at the heart of everything I do. One of those purpose elements is unlocking the potential of others.

 But equally, I realize that this purposeful nature to help others with their mental health, with making a difference to the planet, or many of the visions or missions within amazing companies around the world, including Mars and Reebok, etc; unless you are performance driven, you cannot make a difference through purpose. 

Hamish, thank you so much for this conversation and for your insightful book. 

You can find Hamish's book, IT'S NOT ALWAYS RIGHT TO BE RIGHT wherever you prefer to purchase books.