We too often prioritise work over our own needs. This is compounded if you have a disability that might take you away from work for a time, if a new baby has entered your life, or if you’re grieving. Serena Savini lives with a chronic illness and had an accident at work that shed light on this realisation.

Serena is an HR expert, coach, and podcaster who believes that those re-entering work need to be supported in every way possible. For her, the most important thing is to create a comfortable environment where everyone is respected and able to be open and honest about their experiences and needs.

Takeaways from Dan and Pia

• Changing over time requires conscious recognition of your identity. it's not just about build habits and ticking boxes.
• We don't always know how to deal with change, even when we're aware of it. This can lead to what Serena called a "strange and awkward silence”.
• Like the Chinese proverb says, we can't step in the same river twice. As we move on before coming back to a team, so the team itself has changed.
• When the legal system in Italy let Serena down, it was her team that was able to provide support, even as the company itself let her down.
• Although things have moved on, the price of the human we call an employee seems to be very low right now.

Links

• Connect with Serena on LinkedIn
• I’m Back! – Serena’s podcast
• Atomic Habits, by James Clear

Real transformation comes from more than just money. Jim Goddard believes that investing time, talent, and treasure into community movements is the key to success. His leadership style reflects this philosophy and encourages volunteers to take an active role in making a difference.

Jim Goddard has dedicated two decades to leading volunteers, transitioning from engineering to purposeful living. He advises leaders and organizations on purposeful, sustainable leadership, focusing on communication, collaboration, and accountability. He works to create a culture of shared mission and purpose, essential for successful volunteer teams.

Content warning: This episode contains a brief mention of suicide.

Takeaways from Pia and Dan

• Through stripping back ego and connecting with purpose, we can learn to lead teams of volunteers and do greater good.
• Jim clarified purpose and vision for his team, and connected it to each member, inspiring them to work together.
• People bring their own intrinsic reasons for wanting to volunteer, which may simply be about connecting with other humans.

Links

• Connect with Jim on LinkedIn
• The Three Peaks Yacht Race
• Leave us a voice message

When you don’t have a good work/life balance, you can begin to lose your identity outside of work. Joe Ryle discovered this during his work with the Labour Party, and it was partly this realisation that fuels his work today.

Joe Ryle is the Director of the 4 Day Week Campaign. He believes that a four-day working week provides positive benefits to society, wellbeing, and people’s mental health. And contrary to what many believe, it boosts productivity, rather than hindering it.

Takeaways from Dan and Pia

• There is a degree of privilege that should be acknowledged. Not everyone can afford to work a four-day week.
• We need to break the mould of “x number of hours = y amount of productivity”.
• The four-day week is a blunt instrument that can help us think less rigidly and more flexibly about how we use our time.

Links

• Connect with Joe on LinkedIn
• The 4 Day Week Campaign
• A third of businesses expect the four-day week to become a reality in the next ten years, new research shows – CIPD
• Leave us a voice message

Is the balance of power shifting from employee to employer? Is AI in danger of reducing our willingness to connect as humans, or could it give us more opportunities for expression?

Dan and Pia are joined by previous guests Amy Riley and Stephan Wiedner to share their predictions for 2023, and what we can all do to create spaces where people come together to get stuff done.

Predictions from 2023

• From Pia: The social fabric of humanity to affect change will become more important.
• From Amy: Employees are going to need and expect more flexibility in their environments. This will meet resistance but will shift to acceptance.
• From Stephan: Recent tech redundancies will shift the power from the individual back to organisations, who’ll require more in-office work and a reduction in salaries.
• From Dan: The shift from remote to in-office working will vary depending on sector, with different sectors having different needs and expectations of how people come together to work.

Tips for facing 2023

• From Amy:
  • Every person in an organisation needs to be a keeper of the culture.
  • We all need to leverage each-other’s strengths: what people are good at and what they’re interested in.
• From Stephan:
  • Psychological safety is how we make it easier to share, talk about, and learn from mistakes.
  • Become a bystander in team conversations so you can look at them from a distance and notice where the team is getting stuck.

Links

• Connect with Amy on LinkedIn
• Connect with Stephan on LinkedIn
• We Not Me episode 47: Creating a movement, with Nick Hudson
• We Not Me episode 48: The role of ‘place’, with Doug Shapiro
• We Not Me episode 42: Getting outside, with Bart Foster
• We Not Me episode 40: How to hybrid: tips from a long-distance team, with Juliet Hammond
• We Not Me episode 44: Team leadership at altitude, with Tania Noakes
• We Not Me episode 38: Building trust for when you really need it, with Adam Verducci
• We Not Me episode 39: Curiosity and the art of dialogue, with Andy Chevis
• Open AI’s ChatGPT
• We Not Me episode 43: The power of inclusion, with Marsha Ramroop
• Leave us a voice message

The workplace needs a rebrand. Design lead Doug Shapiro asked himself “If we didn’t feel like we had to drag ourselves to an office, would we feel differently about it?”

Just like those pieces of broccoli our parents made us eat as kids – that most of us later realise is not only good for us, but tasty – a work space can be prepared or presented badly

Takeaways from Pia and Dan

• A place can shape how we bring ourselves to work as individuals, and as members of a team.
• Work is in a state of flux around place, with the balance of power shifting between employers and employees.
• In order to flourish and get things done together, we need to look at our individual needs without becoming too individualistic in our thinking.

Links

• Connect with Doug on LinkedIn
• Imagine a Place – Doug’s podcast
• The Resilience Lab, with Rex Miller
• Leave us a voice note

Communities need a common goal to work towards. And even with that goal in place, how can we galvanise people together to help them achieve it? These are some of the questions this week’s guest, Nick Hudson has had to face while building the phenomenally successful Push-up Challenge.

After challenging some friends to workout regularly, former engineer Nick setup a simple app and website that would expand from a few hundred to over 150,000 participants across Australia. Together they’ve tracked their push-ups, kept in regular contact with each-other, and raised upwards of $26 million for mental health charities.

Takeaways from Pia and Dan

• Enrolment is the key focus for building a community.
• Nick added meaning to a personal challenge by weaving in mental health statistics.
• Starting from experiments – rather than a big hairy audacious goal – allowed Nick to follow the flow of what was working.

Links

• Connect with Nick on LinkedIn
• The Push-Up Challenge
• Leave us a voice note

When we’re buried in our todo lists, we can lack the courage to take bolder choices. Amy Riley discovered this first-hand through her work helping leaders become more courageous.

Amy is an international best-selling author and keynote speaker who helps leaders fully step into their purpose. Her framework for courageous leaders is based on four pillars:

• The courage to be authentically you
• The courage to say what needs to be said
• The courage to trust your leadership legacy
• The courage to be bold and create the extraordinary

Takeaways from Dan and Pia

• Pressure and stress can drive us to isolate, when what we need to do is come together.
• Burnout can lead us to find ways to distract ourselves from the fact we’re burned out.
• Connecting and asking for help is difficult, so we tend to revert to more task-orientated work.
• Team leaders need to use more active collaboration tools.

Links

• Connect with Amy on LinkedIn
• The Courage of a Leader: How to Inspire, Engage and Get Extraordinary Results – Amy’s book
• Amy’s podcast
• Atomic Habits, by James Clear
• Leave us a voice note

When Dr Beki Hooper began to study rhesus macaques, she found less-than-flattering similarities between monkey behaviour and human team structure.

In this fascinating discussion, Dr Beki takes us into the habitat of the rhesus macaque, giving us a first-hand glimpse into a hierarchy based on gender and tenure.

Takeaways from Pia and Dan

• Many of us have experience in organisations that feel like they were governed in the same way as groups of macaques.
• As humans, we should be able to break through these patriarchal, seniority-based structures.
• Humans have behaviour equivalent to monkey grooming and preening.
• Some of our relationships are built on who can advance us within our social structure.
• Additionally, the bonds we build through grooming allow us to gain more information which we can use to advance our social standing, and to keep us safe.

Links

• Follow Beki on Google Scholar
• Follow @bekihooper on Twitter
• Melissa Pavez-Fox on Google Scholar
• Social learning in great tits - Lucy Aplin’s research
• Leave us a voice message

For mountain guide Tania Noakes, leadership isn’t about giving commands, but is about collaborating.

Tania is an adventurer and climber who works with teams to help them tackle some of nature’s biggest challenges. As a group guide, Tania has had to be something of a chameleon, adapting herself to what the team dynamic needs to reach their goal safely.

Takeaways from Dan and Pia

• A good leader adapts to the team, rather than expecting the team to adapt to them.
• Tough times call for clear communication.
• If you’re doing something, explain what you’re doing to your team.
• Respect of fellow human beings is non-negotiable.

Links

• Classic Climbs – Tania’s website
• Leave us a voice note

We all believe diversity, equity and inclusion to be important, but bridging the gap between the intent and the positive outcomes it brings is no easy task. For Marsha Ramroop, that bridge is cultural intelligence, and she joins Pia and Dan to pose vital questions about inclusion that have surprising answers.

After a career in broadcasting spanning 30 years, Marsha discovered the notion of cultural intelligence, and founded a consultancy and worked as Head of Inclusion at RIBA, so she could influence the creation of inclusive spaces.

Takeaways from Dan and Pia

• “When all you've known is privilege, equality can look like oppression,”
• Being in an out group can feel like a constant battle to change the majority mindset, but it’s the majority that needs to make the effort.
• Exclusion isn’t only about skin colour, sexuality, or physical disability – it can be about finding differences in the way we think.

Links

• Connect with Marsha on LinkedIn
• Unheard Voice Consultancy
• Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, by Timothy Wilson
• School Culture Rewired: How to Define, Assess, and Transform it, by Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker
• Cultural Intelligence Center
• Leave us a voice message