Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Most of us are not at our best when we are under pressure. And when you put a bunch of highly pressurized people in a room together, they're all going to be giving out unhealthy, unhelpful behaviors, which, you know, in my mum's language, we rub each other up the wrong way. Just, you know. And I think what's happened over this last five to ten years with all the intensities and the insanities of our working world, is that that pressure has become so normalized that that we've almost forgotten how to behave in a way that is non pressurized. Everybody is so used to operating at high speed, fifth gear all the time that, you know, has meant that, quite frankly, poor behavior has become normalized in so many workplaces.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Hello, everyone, I'm Jess Chapman and this is Wired to Work, a podcast about how we work and how to make work better for everyone.
Today we're talking about something that shows up in every workplace but doesn't get talked about nearly enough, and that is relationships. More specifically, the one that can be trickiest, which is your relationship with your leader. The truth is, the quality of our work is often shaped by the quality of our relationships, especially with our leader. And yet most of us were never really taught how to handle those types of relationships well. They can be messy, emotional, it can feel scary. We gotta manage up. We've got to navigate conflict. And showing up with courage when your brain is telling you to back away is all very difficult. So that's why I'm excited to have Kate Franklin with me today. Kate is a brilliant leadership coach, a facilitator, and someone I've had the pleasure with working with in the past. She helps people build confidence. She helps leaders support inclusive performance. And she has this really good ability to cut through the noise, talk about things in practical terms in ways that we all can understand. So today we're going to talk about what's happening for leaders, how to build trust, how to build relationships, and how to feel the fear and do it anyway. So let's get into it. So, Kate, thrilled to have you here. Super. Thank you for joining me all the way from the UK too, because it is Friday evening for you. So very much appreciate that we're taking up your Friday night.
Tell us a little bit first about you. Like, why is it you do what
[00:02:16] Speaker A: you do well, It's a joy to be with you.
My daughters thought it was terribly glamorous that I'm on a Canadian podcast. So I'm like, I'm getting A whole load of kudos from my teenagers right now because I was like, everybody in the house, be silent.
I do what I do well. One, because it's the most satisfying job in the entire world. Like helping people fix workplace problems and make their work lives better is just the most fun thing I think I could imagine possibly doing.
And I came to it because I myself had this massive epiphany when I was only 31 about my engagement with my work because I was so fortunate to be sponsored by my employer to work with an exec coach. And it was such an eye opening kind of moment for me that, wow, I had so much more choice and option within the way I was working than I had told myself I had during my 20s.
And I was like, right, I've got to share this knowledge with the world.
And right after that I got an opportunity to move to the States with my husband's career, which, you know, was an amazing opportunity because I was going to get a green card because he's an American.
And I was like, you know, all this incredible opportunity to go be in the usa.
But it came with giving up the certainty that I had known and the, you know, the very happy career path I'd been on in insurance, where our paths first crossed many moons ago.
And that led me to like, I've got to find my place in this weird new world where I don't have any connections and I don't have any identity.
And I was determined not to just rush into a USA employment contract which would only give me 10 days holiday. Yep, at least I was. So I was like, well, what do I do then? How do I figure out what I am in this place? So I just signed up to all the training that I could find in Washington D.C. and one of those things happened to be business coaching.
And within the first three days of that training I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And I came home and said to my husband, I'm going to start a coaching practice. And he was like, great, what's that?
So that was the beginning and that was in 2005 and I have not looked back. It's been an absolute joyous process.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Well, I absolutely think you found your place.
It's an interesting point actually. At some point later in the series, I want to have a conversation about the role of work and belonging to, because you probably don't. Do you know who Zita Cobb is? If you're on the other side of the world, that might. Zeta is a fairly well Known entrepreneur here in. In Canada who built something called the Fogo Island Inn, which is off the coast of Newfoundland, which is a spectacular organization and it's a social enterprise.
Z this whole ethos is the importance of place and being rooted in place. And for me, that kind of. There's lots of nuances to the way she describes it. If she listened to this, she'd be like, yes, there's like other things you should have said. But for me, it comes back to the notion of community. And I have reflected a lot on similar experience to the one you had around moving. So I have moved. I realized I had moved 18 times in the first 30 years of my life.
And so, like, sometimes only to different places in a relatively close communities. But then you are no longer rooted in place. Right. You no longer have attachment to community in the same way. And I think that I then started to look at work as that's my community.
But I don't know that we really talk about work that way or think about work that way. But that's kind of what you're describing. How do I find my community in this place where I am now? And for a lot of people who are more globally mobile or for those of us that are changing career paths and moving around, we have lost our connection to community. I think we have started to try and find that same sense of belonging somewhere in our workplace. So that's probably a much bigger conversation for later on in the series, but I'd love to have your chat perspective on that at some point in the future because I think that speaks to the way the world is going. A lot of people don't feel connected to the local community, and then other things need to kind of fill in the gaps.
Yeah, yeah. But for today, I want to talk relationships.
So can't think of anything that affects the world of work more than the joy of relationships. And I think you and I spend a lot of our time having conversations with people because the relationships that they have are not the relationships that they would like to have. And since we spend a third of our lives at work, 8 hours of your 24 hours is spent in the workplace. Wouldn't it be nice if we had fantastic relationships with people? So, like, what's your take? Why is it so hard to have great relationships at work for people? We have friends, we have family. Why is it that work. We seem to hit a wall.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Brilliant question. And of course, there are many things, but there are two the things that really stand out for me most. One is most of us are not at our best when we are under pressure.
And when you put a bunch of highly pressurized people in a room together, they're all going to be giving out reasonably unhealthy, unhelpful behaviors. Which, you know, in my mum's language, I like to bring everything back to the way my mum or my nan would say it. We rub each other up the wrong way. Like it's just, you know, so, so, and, and I think what's happened over this last five to ten years with all the intensities and the, and the insanities of our working worlds is that that pressure has become so normalized that we've almost forgotten how to behave in a way that is non pressurized. Everybody is so used to operating at high speed, fifth gear all the time that that has meant that quite frankly, poor behavior has become normalized in so many workplaces.
So that's part of it. I do think like if you dissect, if I step back and look at all the relationships I've coached in the workplace, all the individuals I've coached on relationship problems, stress has been probably the primary factor in every single story.
It brings out the worst in us. Right. I know like what, how much worse a version of me, my family gets when I'm stressed out. So there's no doubt that stress is a huge, huge factor. Whether it's like hardcore kind of physiological ill stress or just kind of an irritable version on the way to that.
It's still not bringing out the best in us.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: The second thing is that I still think even though we have this wealth of information about positive team culture and positive employee engagement and how those things drive profitability and commercial success, we still haven't quite landed the message that relationships in the workplace are critically important.
Which is so fascinating to me because I feel like, you know, people are more ambitious than ever.
But there's still this feeling that like, well, my work is my work and relationships are something that I get to when I've got time.
I always tell a story about when I did my coach training. I was in Washington D.C. and that was why I began to develop a specialism in coaching lawyers. Because Everybody in Washington D.C. is a lawyer.
And I was in a restaurant one time waiting for a friend who was late for lunch. And so I was listening to the conversation of the two lawyers on the table next to me and one of them was absolutely livid because she'd just come out of a performance review and she was like, I've worked so hard the hours I've worked, the money I've created for this firm. And all they wanted to talk about was my personality and how I was like having a bad impact on the people around me and that's not my work. And I was like, oh, listening, like doing my best not to interfere in this conversation, but in for a second, let's have this conversation, honey. That is 90% of your work.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Like, if you are all your work.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
It doesn't matter how beautifully you are crafting those contracts or those legal documents. It doesn't matter how brilliant your technical expertise is. You could be the best litigator in the world. But if you cannot maintain positive relationship with your colleagues in order to get the best out of the people around you, in order to build trust and the kind of environment where everybody can do their best work, then forget it. It doesn't matter how brilliant you are technically. And I feel like that it just amazes me how many smart people have not got that memo they see.
Yes, sorry.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: No, I think that's totally valid. But don't you think it starts before that? Because if you think about school, what we focus on is technical skills. From the day you go in, maybe not kindergarten, maybe kindergarten. We do the don't poach each other thing, right? Like, it's not okay to punch each other, it's not okay to steal each other's toys. But after you get into school, from school onwards, there's no conversation about relational skills being a priority. It is learn your maths, your science, your English. Now, I'm not saying don't like I'm saying technical skills are fine. But when does, when is there ever a message that we need to learn relational skills? Like, I don't think there is one. So then we're expecting adults, which from my perspective are just very large children, to show up and have skills that we actually haven't taught anybody to have. Then we're surprised when, to your point, we put them under pressure and then they behave in ways that we all I want you doing that for. So I, I, I think that they're both really good points, but I put the technical one first, actually, because I think what stress does you think about? What stresses to the, you know, if you're sitting in a high cortisol place, what it basically does is make your brain less able to be flexible. Right? Your brain is like, I got no time to think about anything else. I'm in survival mode, people. So you're going to get me in whatever way you get me. And that's, that's all you're going to get. I'm not thinking about learning. I'm not thinking about habit generation. I'm not like neuroplasticity, not doing any of that. I'm in. I'm in kind of reactionary mode. But before you get to that point that you could still be stressed, if you've got high relational skills, you're probably still okay. But if you're highly stressed and you've prioritized technical skills your entire life, then you're going to show up in a really unhelpful way. So I think that's a really, really crucial point. So, I mean, the bigger question is how do we get people to prioritize relational skills? If you and I are sitting here going, this is the most important thing, which I am. I wouldn't. But it didn't if I didn't think it was super important.
How, like, have you seen places where they get it? Like, what has made them get it in the places where you've seen it?
[00:12:50] Speaker A: I mean, I think when it's role modeled.
And I heard you talking on one of your brilliant podcasts around the time of the pandemic, where people were asking you for advice on how do we create a positive culture now that we're all remote. And you said the answer is being intentional. And I'm like, yes, it's that, right?
If we as leaders can remember to be intentional and to role model great behavior, where we demonstrate that we are more than our job role, we are human beings who care about each other and show curiosity in each other's lives, then that generates an environment where everybody else feels okay to do it. But I think also just really simply, like so many things, just talking about it, right? Just talking about how hard it is to make time for anything beyond the transactional, talking about how important it is to laugh at work, to have conversations at work about, you know, what's going on for us outside the fact that it's, it's just more fun when you can start a meeting talking about something that's gone really well in your life. It's got nothing to do with work this week.
So, yeah, just having the conversation, I think is, Is a huge, huge part of it that we, we, we underestimate the power of just chat. Chatting about stuff.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. I mean, your, your story, I think, is brilliant because it underpins the differences in what happens in organizations, right? So you have a person who has, through whatever mechanism, been told, and that doesn't mean someone said it to her. But she's learned through whatever's happening in the organization that her job is to deliver on the technical aspects of her role and do good contracts, deliver the work quickly and get it out the door, only to sit down and be told that's not at all what she's being judged on. She's being judged on how effectively she works with the team. My guess is no one ever said that to her. No one ever sat down and said, this is what we value. Nor was there space created for the time to do that or the coaching, like with people like you, to help her learn to do that if it's not natural for her. So I think it's. If you don't do the role modeling and you don't create the space. And I'm not saying. I always say this, people. I'm not saying that any business owner or CEO does that on purpose. Like, I know as a business owner, you've been one too. There are times when you are running full tilt and trying to get the lights on and figuring out payroll and everything else, but when as soon as we forget that we are people, dealing with people, everything gets worse.
Everything is harder. If you can just help people create the space to remember. Before you have that difficult conversation, you are talking to another person who's probably just as uncomfortable in this conversation as you are. It shifts the lens on the conversation, I think.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah, yeah. And. And I mean, what you. I think what you're just speaking to is the. The criticality of setting out our expectations. Right. As leaders that so often in the intensity of our working lives, we forget to just set out the basics. Right. So, you know, a new. A new starter conversation can go along so many really interesting lines where we're all really energized. What are the key goals? What are the key priorities? What are the things we care most about? You've got to get in there somewhere. Whether it's in your initial advertising, your interview, or your early conversations with someone who's just joined you.
You know, these are the things that we also care about in this organization. Here are our values or here is what's, you know, what. How we want to show up together. Whatever your expression of that is, it doesn't really matter, Right. But some expression that says these are our expectations around how we will show up together and how decent and honest and caring we are going to be with each other. This is what matters.
And. Yeah. And then a nuance on that. And this is. I still think this is really important to your original question about relationships and why do that? Why can, why do they get so challenging in organizations?
My nuance is like, let's just really not fall into the assumption that you have to be either really performance orientated or really caring.
I think there's such an unhelpful misconception in business life and I've seen it in North America as well as in Europe of if we, if we, if we put too much emphasis on being good people and caring about each other and relationships, then everyone's just going to sit around talking about their kids all day and we're not actually going to get any work done. And I'm like, that's not true. Like every. If you've got the right people who care about results and outcomes and doing a great job and who are ambitious and driven, it's probably the opposite. You're probably going to have to persuade them to stop and take a breath and have a break and go for lunch sometimes know, so like you can and you can have both. It's not one or the other.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: No, I think that's really valid and kind of ties back to the, the exchange I had with you briefly on LinkedIn around some of the post piece. Right. Like this idea that there's only one results driven culture. Right. And that kind of head down thing. Like we, people still do not understand engagement. They still do not understand despite the fact that I think Gallup has done a fantastically good job of raising it and putting numbers to something that is not necessari, only a numbers game. Well done.
It's still, I think, a checkbox exercise in some places, but even when it's not what I described some of the day is, it's like we've just layered it on top.
So what we did was we said people need to be engaged at work because we'll get better results. So okay, leaders, you got to get better at engaging your team. So that's more for you to do on top of everything else we want you to do instead of saying no. Actually engagement is intrinsically about how we come to work, how we shape the work, how you feel about work, what you're doing, who you're doing it with, who you're talking to. And so yes, the quality of the exchanges is as much about the output as that person is going to deliver as the technical expertise they have or anything else. But I still don't feel like we have. I mean the whole reason that we created the rebranded the podcast is don't feel like Work works. Right. Like we've, we've created all these systems that are based on 19th century management models where people are units of production and we need to, if we orient people the right way and put them in a sterile cubicle so they can only look at their computer and do the.
Then magical things will happen. That's not real. That's not real life and it's not real people. So, yes, I love the idea of can we somehow create more space for the connection in what people do every day? And if you have the right people, as you just said, then the conversations and the caring goes hand in hand with the performance. I think that's brilliant.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: I think that's brilliant.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: One really simple habit that we got into as a company right at the beginning of the pandemic that we've passed on to loads of our client teams is just the habit of a numerical check in. So bearing in mind, you know, most of my clients are financial services people, so we love a number and, and this works really well just as a way of being super time efficient. You just ask everyone in the meeting to, to report on how you're doing today with a number out of 10, where 10 is like, I'm as ecstatic as I could possibly be and zero is there's a problem.
And usually that just gives you, just gives you a very, very rapid temperature check. Yeah.
And it also means that if there's somebody who's saying, oh, I'm not in a great place today, it's a four for me, then you can be like, okay, do you need anything from us before we get going? Usually they'll be like, no, not really. Just, just know that it's not you.
And that's. And that's so helpful.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: And then somebody checks in with that individual afterwards and says, anything you need. What? How's it going?
It just creates a basis for us all having a better awareness of what's going on. And critically, not it personally, if I've had a hideous morning or a really bad night's sleep and my head is thumping and I'm a little bit grumpy today, it's so important for me to let my colleagues know that that is not. I'm not grumpy with them.
And the more senior we become, the more important it is to get that message through. Right. Because if I'm giving off signals that I'm irritable with everyone, I've created a fear culture within 12 hours without even having any awareness. Is that, that's why?
Certainly no Intention.
So it's so important that, that we do that.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I, I love, I mean, we talk a lot in my world about intention versus impact. I mean, none of us get it. I, I firmly and vehemently believe the vast majority of people do not get out of bed in the morning intending to be. They may show up and do that, but that is not their intention. But we attribution error is real. Right. So when somebody does something that you don't like, your brain assumes automatically that that was a deliberate, malicious attempt to make your life difficult. And, and one of the places where I think remote has all kinds of benefits, but not when it comes to this type of thing because our exchanges become less obvious. You don't see the body language. I mean, a significant portion of what people kind of communicate to you is body language. And if you're doing everything on a Slack channel or a team's message, then you're only getting the words to try and discern. It's much easier to figure out, like, okay, that person's not happy today, but I can't tell why. And those, those little nuggets like you don't think about saying to people in a remote team, oh, I had a terrible drive into work this morning.
That's why I'm grumpy, but that's why I'm grumpy. But everybody who's working with remotely has no idea about that because I said that as I was coming in the door and hung up my coat. I didn't think to sit down and tell the people who are in a different time zone. Oh, by the way, I'm going today because I had a bad driving to work this morning. It's not you. But again, back to intentionality. We have to be much more intentional with those things and disclosing those things, even with the people who are in front of us.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And again, I think it's just that pulling out of our transactional immediate to do list and remembering that the, the vibe that we're creating, the atmosphere that we're creating is an important part of our work performance in any given day. So just having those conversations that raise awareness around that can be absolutely transformational for that stuff, Stuff so important.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: You and I had an exchange there. It was probably why we ended up chatting again. You posted something that I thought was absolutely. You posted lots of things on LinkedIn that I think are genius, but this was the one that made me go, we need, we need to have a conversation.
I am seeing more and more things on Social media, it's one of those banes of my life, social media. I feel like I have to be there, but at the same time I'm like people. We have such an opportunity to make social media a wonderful thing and look at what we do with some of it. But, but you posted about leadership, you were posting about leadership. And it resonated with me because I'm seeing a lot of posts that essentially equate this person is for me a bad leader, therefore that makes them a bad person. And I don't believe that that's accurate in 99.8% of the cases. And so actually probably more than that because I'm not sure bad person is even a thing. But like, so not on purpose, not aware of it, not knowing what I'm doing.
And so for me, I'm seeing more and more issues with.
We are asking leaders to carry a huge amount today. Like, I believe that we have a work system that doesn't really work, if it ever did, for how we want to live and what we need from the workplace. And instead of addressing how work works, what we're saying to leaders is you need to fill in the gaps. You need to be good with mental health, you need to be able to handle accommodations, you need to be able to talk to people out of stress, you need to be able to rol. Model how to do everything with the team. You need to be able to pivot in the moment. You need to be able to manage change. You need to be able to like the list is getting longer and longer and longer. And the chances that somebody is capable of doing all of those things well, I think is incredibly slim. But of course on the receiving end, we don't look at the system, we look at our leader and go, you're, you're failing me. You're not doing, you're not giving me what I need. So you are the pro problem. So how, like what's, you would obviously do a lot of work in the kind of leader employee. Like what do I do with my boss? How do I build a relationship with my boss? So, so first of all, how do you recognize what's your take on how. If I'm a leader, how do I recognize when maybe I'm not the best boss? I think I'm doing a bang up job, I'm coming to work, I've got my head down, I'm trying to pedal fast in the environment that you've just described. And I'm not really thinking about my impact on the team around me, how Can I get a better sense of how I'm coming across?
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Brilliant question.
Before I go there, can I go first to the thing you were just talking about such an amazing point, which is how quickly the world of social media condemns bad bosses as bad people. And I think we're in. Yes, I agree with you. We're seeing this massive rhetoric around my boss is toxic or how to deal with toxic bosses. And to a degree, I admit I'm falling into the kind of click baity world that we're all in in social media where I talk about my probably my book is going to be called the Bad Boss Guy.
And that is a great irony because in reality I don't really think there are bad bosses. There might be bosses who demonstrate less than optimum behaviors or even bad behaviors. Like, let's call it like there are, you know, there are terrible behaviors, but that doesn't mean it's a terrible person because like, so if our starting point is we are all deeply flawed human beings, we are all a work in progress, we have all got elements of our character. When under pressure, we're gonna, are gonna leak out and we're gonna be all over the place and have a series of impacts that we never intended.
And you know, there, then there are also a tiny minority of people who unfortunately are overrepresented in the upper echelons of large organizations who are very led by self interest and maybe who don't care about their impact. Yeah, yeah, they exist. I have become very cognizant of them over the last 10 years in my work and they are out there. And so there is a, there's definitely a chapter of my book that's about recognizing, recognizing when this is not a relationship that you can make work no matter what you do. I think that's a healthy thing to have back of mind. But most of the time when a client comes to me saying, oh, my relationship with my boss has broken down. I'm not sure if I can work with this person. This is like, you know, it's come to a head. I think this is like probably time I'm going to have to resign.
They are always amazed by how much more opportunity there is to rework that relationship and to figure it out. And it is, you know, the, the, the, the, the moments where we come to a conclusion that that person is completely hopeless and they, they do need to resign are actually very, very rare. In my 21 years of coaching, it doesn't happen very often.
So I think the first thing we can do when we're in that, that space of judging and being furious and disappointed and let down and feeling kind of our needs aren't being met by a boss is to just step back and remind ourselves that this too is a deeply flawed human being.
And they're not intending, as you say, not rolling out of bed in the morning thinking, right, how can I ruin her day? They are, they are, they are just waking up with the same pressures that we all have have and trying to figure it out as they go along and have probably having very little awareness.
Yes. So to your brilliant question of how do we know if we are the bad boss? Right?
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Because actually somebody's bad boss, chances are there's somebody in the world who's not going to like the way I lead things.
That's more about me knowing what's working and what's not working for that person. But I have to be aware and open to that.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think we only really understand the impact that we're having on people when we create the conditions for an honest conversation.
Right. So, like, I forget it all the time because I'm always very focused and driven on getting the, Getting the job done and what can we do next and what's the next priority? But when I remember, I will always say to anyone who's working with me, what's it like for you? You know, I know I've. I know I've got more power than you in this situation because I'm the one who's paying the bill. Tell me, me how well I'm using that power. Is there anything I could be doing that would, that would help us work better together?
And when you set that scene with a genuine openness to, I don't know what I'm going to get back, and it might not be comfortable, it completely changes the dynamic and it enables people around you to say, you know, that you do this thing that's actually quite. It's quite difficult.
And I think when I think back at my life when I was a, you know, traditional line manager in a traditional corporate setting, the people I learned most from by far was. No, it wasn't the expensive courses with, with, you know, the great big global providers. It was.
And it wasn't probably even so much the coaches, it was the, the direct reports who had the guts to say to me, when you did that, it made me feel terrible, like. And I was like, oh, sorry. Sorry, Rach. I can hear her saying it now.
Sorry, Rach, I didn't mean to. That was rubbish.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I love. I Mean, I love your language around. We're all deeply flawed human beings. I think that's. That's brilliant. I. I asked my team, what can I do to make you happier and. Or more productive at work? That's my.
Because they're not the same thing. They are connected, but they're not the same thing. And I want to know about both, like, what's getting in the way and what's not making you happy here. And as long as the answer is I can't think of anything, then we're good, Right? So. And if there is something, then I know about it and then I can do something about it. You may be. You maybe think about actually when I moved to Canada, back to conditions for feedback provision, because I inherited a team who were lovely, but they're. They've kind of been managed by somebody who's quite distant, both in terms of seniority and geography. I mean, Canada is a massive country, right? So time zones do get in the way of things in a way that being in England I never experienced until I came to Canada.
And so when I showed up, never really thought about it, but I was asking for feedback because there was, you know, one, I'm taking on a more senior position than I've been in before. Two, I'm in another country. Three, I'm in a different business, right? So I'm like, I figured this out now. Everything's peachy. I'm like, there's no way. Everything's peachy. There is no way I am not doing something that isn't irritating somebody, somewhere or culturally getting it wrong in some way, shape or form. No, no, no, no, no. Everything is good.
And so, like, I kept asking, I kept asking, I kept asking. And then one day I was in team meeting and I was like, okay, so is there anything like, I could be doing differently? And somebody piped up and I can't remember, it was. Somebody popped up and said, there is one thing. And I got really excited. And then they were like, we don't like the way the envelopes taste.
I was like, not quite what I was going for, but I was like, okay, okay, thanks very much, that's great.
And then I thought about it afterwards and I thought, well, you know what? Like, like feedback, so let's do something about it. So I spoke to the mail room people and we talked about envelopes or whatever and changed up what they do, and we actually ended up just getting them, like those little spongy things. Anyway, about. So we sorted all that. Everything was great. About two weeks after that happened, somebody came into my office and said, have you got a moment?
To which of course I said yes. And they said something you need to know. You use a lot of like language, like jargony language and acronyms. I'm not sure everyone in the team understands. And I was like, there is what I was looking for. But I think it took the envelopes. Right. So I didn't laugh about it, I didn't joke, I didn't be like, I'm not doing anything about that. That's a waste of time. Like envelopes are probably as low paying threshold as feedback as you get give somebody.
But I think I wonder sometimes if I hadn't responded that way on the envelopes, got the feedback about the acronyms. Right. And so it's hard, right? It's hard to give your boss feedback. It's hard to say to somebody like I don't know what you're doing. I don't love that. Doesn't land for me even recognizing I'm flawed and everything else. So I think that create the space. But continuing to ask and recognizing the difficulty that people do have giving feedback upwards is really important in that. So if your team saying to you they don't like your pins or your stationary.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Yeah. You lean in. Yeah. And, and I mean what you're speaking to there, I love that story.
So that's such a, such a great example of the, the tiny steps we have to take to build trust over time.
It's all a journey and it all takes time with, especially with a new team. And I'm always saying to leaders, never underestimate how long it's going to take you to reconstruct trust. If your predecessor created a fear culture or was or was inconsistent between the messaging that they gave out publicly, like I'm open to feedback and then actually punished people for delivering it, that's gonna take you probably 18 months, if not longer to overcome that legacy.
So it's not all about you. That's like, I think that's really important to remember. But the other thing is like feedback is a set of skills that not everybody has.
And if we don't talk about the skills needed and what good looks like, then it's very hard for people to do it well. And I think that, you know, British and Canadian culture both have this tendency to be very kind and nice.
And what that means for a lot of people is that the feedback doesn't come out until the level of frustration is up here and I'm about to explode. I'm so furious that it's all going to come out in a big emotional jumble and I'm actually going to create a little bit of damage in the way that I deliver it, because I've got. I'm now speaking from such a highly emotive place that I can no longer kind of manage myself.
So I think it's really important to just acknowledge that it's a set of skills and it is really, really hard. But equally, you know, when we're managing up, it's never ceases to fascinate me how many very senior people I coach have, can give me all kinds of evidence about how brilliant they are at giving feedback to the people they lead.
But when it comes to giving feedback up the hierarchy, suddenly all of those skills fall away. Because I think what happens is we forget that that senior leader is a human being, right? We put them on a pedestal, perhaps in a good way to begin with. Then we get really disappointed with them because they don't give us the praise and recognition or whatever it is that they don't.
And then we judge them really harshly and they end up becoming like a caricature in our mind, like a devil.
And we forget that they are, you know, a living, breathing person feeling pain. And so when we deliver feedback to them, we're so abrupt in our own sense of powerlessness, we end up causing so much harm. And I've done that. I did it last year with a client. And it's still agonizing to me that I fell into the same gap, same thing myself that I talk about. But I just to say, I completely get it. I understand how Power Dynamics massively get in the way of our ability to be compassionate with another person. But if we can just apply the same skills and techniques when we are seeking to offer developmental feedback up the chain as we do when we're offering it to someone who works, works with us, then we can be so much more effective.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, totally good. And I'd also say sideways too, because for whatever reason, so that that concept of first team, I think, really applies too. Right. So when people talk about their team, they're often talking about the people that report to them as being their priority. But your team is not just the people who report to you. Your team is the people you work alongside every day. It's the person you report to every day. There's quite a lot out there around, like the Power Dynamics piece in terms of.
Because we sit in a place of that person has power and control and we feel that powerlessness that you're talking about your threat states higher. Right. And so when your threat states higher, your brain can't handle complex anything. It goes as simplistic as possible. And so that's why we end up being less nuanced, less stable to manage our emotions, less control oriented. And that whole conversation about just take a moment to think about this person as a human being. Like they're not, not the VP of. They're Brian. Right. They're not, they're not the cfo. That's Susie. Like, let think about who they are as a human being and hopefully you've had the conversations about their kids and their cats and their dogs and their bad weekend and their bad drive to work and think about those things before you go in and have a conversation with them. Because that will tell your brain that you're talking to a person, not to the status. Because it's the status that triggers the, the, the power piece.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: And we have a thing that I talked about that a couple of clients have adopted, which I love on the not sitting on it. The more you stew on it, the bigger it gets in your head. Right? Like you've given all your attention to the topics, your brain goes, oh, it must be Bob. Bob's bod's bad behavior is really important. So now I'm going to focus on finding every instance that Bob has been badly behaved and I'm waiting for Bob to be badly behaved. And so we have a 15 minute rule, right? If you're stewing on something somebody said or did for more than 15 minutes, then you either have two options. You let it go or you go talk to them about it. You.
This is straightforward and letting it go does not mean you let it go. And then you wake up at 3am Thinking about it, mentally drafting emails, going around on how the conversation should go. If you're doing that, you can't let it go and you need to have a conversation about it. Not as in you did something wrong. But I. This is my takeaway from our exchange. Can you talk to me about that? Because if you leave it to your point, it gets bigger. And I do find like the nice, the niceness piece is fairly prevalent. Right? The, the I'm gonna be nice and let it go only works if you can actually let it go. If you can't, it's going to show up later and color the exchange in a bad way. So you're best off getting ahead of it now than sitting on it for another, you know, two months until you go pop. As you Described so.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, yeah. There's also, you know, the, the age old truth about feedback is if, if you, if you feel triggered or affected by something that somebody said, it's so much more helpful to have the conversation about it when that person can actually remember that, that, that interaction. Because if you come back to it in two weeks time. I know, I know my memory, I'm just looking at someone blankly going, I can't even remember what I was doing that day. Like what, what were we talking about? What happened? And it becomes then so much of a more big awkward thing because you're trying to fill in the gaps of memory so much better if you can just go back later on that day
[00:39:56] Speaker B: or they won't be able to change. I mean one of the things that's how the brains work is then this is a very simplistic, non, non technical description of it. But we need two separate neurons to fire at the same time. For the person to not do that again, they need to understand and then the, the impact of it needs to be felt. If I don't even remember what we did, my brain is not registering that that had a negative impact for me to know I need to do something next time. So then you're hoping that that person's brain at some point in the future when they're super stressed and running full tilt, that you gave them some feedback two weeks ago, something they don't like. That's not going to happen unless you give feedback. I mean there's a reason why when we do things, it becomes habitual. That's because as soon as you do it, you get an immediate feedback loop on it, right. Your brain immediately process it and goes, oh, that got me this, I should do that again. If you're talking to someone two weeks later, never mind at the end of year probation or period, end of year performance review, they are not going to have any of the information they need to actually learn to do anything differently with you. So yeah, for all the reasons we're saying, sitting on it, bad idea, don't sit on it.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, totally. That. The, the other tip I often offer people in this situation which can be really helpful is turn your complaint into a request.
So. And I think that can apply in so many different elements of organizational life and frustration. You know, it works if I'm, if I'm thinking about what, you know, how do I give this bad boss some feedback about, you know, the way they've impacted me or what, you know, something I'd like them to do differently. It's so much easier if I can go in there and say, please, can I make a couple of requests of you?
It's so much easier a conversation starter than I need to give you some feedback, which immediately, like, everybody's like, on the defense and feeling like under attack. So if you're leading a team and there's a lot of frustration and complaining in the team and sometimes, you know, we all inherit it.
Challenging setups where maybe you've got a team that's had lots and lots of difficulty before you arrived, and so they've kind of got into the habit of feeling powerless and moaning a lot, because that's what powerless people do. They're just getting into the habit of asking them, so what? So let's turn that, turn that complaint into a request. So if you reworded that as a request and like, you know, like everything with good leadership, you have to repeat your itself so many times till you are absolutely sick of saying it, because the first time you say it won't come naturally. But the more we set that up as the frame, the easier it is for people to adjust their language and approach the opportunity to change in a really positive way that doesn't feel like it's a critique of somebody else, but just like, very straightforward. I would love it if we could do more of this, which is just so much easier for everyone to hear here.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: That works on the other side too, right? So what's your ask?
They give the team? If somebody comes to me and is like, I actually had a situation this week where I had two individuals talking to me, the clients, actually. The sky was falling, everything was terrible. Nothing was ever going to work. We were catastrophizing around everything. And I said, okay, so what's your ask? And then they were like, oh, like I. I can ask. And I think sometimes it is that piece, right? Like back to the power piece. I think think we sometimes underestimate what we have in our control and particularly in organizations where there are hierarchies and decision making frameworks and races and all the rest of it.
Can I do that? Am I allowed to do that? Gets in the way of, if it's relationships, why not Watch your ass. So I love that. Encouraging people to make the ask. But if also you're the boss on the receiving end of all that negativity, maybe you should ask, what's the ask? And see if they give you anything, like, to act positive, to work with.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: Which brings us back very beautifully to the fantastic question you asked before, which I Didn't answer yet. Which was, how do we, as a leader, how do we know if maybe we're not having the desired impact and maybe are we the bad boss?
We've all been there where we've woken up in the middle of the night going, oh my God, it's me, isn't it?
I'm the problem here.
And if you haven't ever woken up in the middle of the night thinking that and you have been a leader for some time, then maybe you are the problem.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Maybe you should reflect a little bit more.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, I think the Gallup, the thing, the Gallup data point that I always come back to, I think is so sobering, is that 70% of the variance in a team's employee engagement data is about the leader. Yeah, right. Because I think bad leaders will have this whole litany of excuses for why the morale on, the energy on their team is low. It will be because, you know, their boss' expectations are unrealistic. It'll be because the system that we, we, we brought in is creating loads more complexity and work that, you know, nobody anticipated and it's not working for us. It's all about it. Or you know, it's because we can't, we can't pay them what we need to because we're, you know, as a company, we're not prepared to keep up with market pay. There's always this set of things that are kind of institutional that a team leader will have to blame. And yes, of course, there is always truth in those things. Right. That yes, they are fact.
Car parking is the other one. Right. The little things that are sometimes everywhere in the world. Car parking is one of the problem.
But when you take a step back from all of that, what Gallup have demonstrated over millions of data points and decades of research, is that the team leader, when they show up in the right way, they can bypass all of that because there's a, that is, that actually only counts for 30%. All of those company wide factors. If you've got a team leader who you trust, who empowers you, who is clear, who knows what they, what they, what's math, what matters to the organization and who shows you that they care about you as a person and they care about your career and your learning, then you can find a way to break down all of that stuff and get on and have a good week anyway.
So I think like when, if there is, if there is a team that is generally down in the dumps or there are problems in the way they're interacting with each other. I am always most curious about the leader and the impact of that leader. And I think that's a healthy place for us all to begin.
And that doesn't mean going back to what you said about, you know, Canadian workplace culture is so kind and nice and a little bit, sometimes a little bit too nice.
That doesn't mean that we all have to show up and make everybody happy.
You know, it's also about considering really clinically and objectively, are these actually the right people?
If I was starting this organization afresh next week as a completely new entity, which one of these people would I bring with me? Because if it is only 3 out of 10, then you need to have some really hard conversations with yourself, yourself and say, you know, like, maybe there's some bigger questions here.
And there are some people who are just, through no fault of their own, have become the wrong fit because the organization's changed beyond recognition around them or, you know, the role requirements have changed. Things move fast in our environment and that means that role requirements will move on. It doesn't mean anybody's bad or wrong. It might just mean we're no longer well cast anymore. So we need to think about recasting. And that is, is, you know, tough. But you can't.
My, my brilliant business partner Elise, says you can't set yourself on fire to create warmth for others like you can't. If you are a brilliant leader, you can't keep on, you know, you pouring in your own energy and commitment. If the, if it's missing on the team. So you gotta, you've gotta be really clear, are these the right people? If, if the atmosphere is, is consistently bad for a long time.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: I think that goes back to what you said earlier though, right? So there's that. If, if we are avoiding those conversations, if we are attempting to cross our fingers and hope that somehow, miraculously, Fred's going to get better and start doing the things he hasn't been doing for the last two years. And everybody knows he's not ever going to do, but you don't want to have the conversation with it. Well, guess what? Fred's going to start thinking that you're the bad boss. Because Fred's not getting what he wants either. Fred's not successful in that organization. He's not showing up to work every day getting accolades and Prai is getting people grumbly avoiding him and everything else. And then that's when you have a problem. The more I think that ties right back to not sitting on anything and also making sure to your earlier point that leaders have the skill set to do that. Because I do think it's hard to discern if somebody is a fit, you know, if it's a fit issue or if actually that person hasn't had coaching. Like, we still do not train people enough in coaching skills, like for my. Never mind, use enough executive coaching in the world. But leaders don't have enough training on how to coach and grow their people to know how to help those people, people catch up. And so I, I loved your tongue in cheek, but I think it's really valid question of, have you sat down and thought lately about whether it's you, like, do you have the skill set you need as a leader in today's world? It's complicated now. It is complicated to lead. There is a lot going on, but that doesn't mean you get a pat. You leave it alone and say, oh, well, I've been doing all right up until now. Like, that's not the answer. And yes, I love, love, Love, love the 70% point you made because it's so easy to go, well, you know, I can't, you know, I can't hire people because I can't.
You. How you show up as a leader goes an exceptionally long way, as you describe. But also, don't lose sight of your ability to influence the organization. I sometimes think if all of the team leads and middle managers I talk to who were unhappy about certain aspects of the organization actually got together and had an ask instead of a grumble and went to the senior leadership team and said, can we ask about this? Because this is happening and this is the impact and this is what we'd like to do. The senior leader would go, hell yeah. Like, I didn't know that was happening. As long as it doesn't cost us an arm and a leg, what would you like to do about it? But again, we somehow feel like we get powerless in that conversation. So, gosh, there's so much in that that I want to find a way to put on a billboard and tell the world, Kate. Really, really cool.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: Well, I think there's a theme in everything we've said which is we have more agency than we recognize, right.
Whether that was me in my 20s in, you know, growing up in the insurance industry and believing that the only way to succeed was by working excessive hours. And it turned out, out nobody wanted me to work excessive hours. And they were very supportive of me. Of, of me, reef, of me reconfiguring all of that and finding healthy ways of doing it, or whether it's those team leaders who assume that just because something's always been done, then that's. That means we're stuck with it. And we haven't even got together and told our director that this thing that we're spending 20, 20% of our time on is really frustrating and ineffective. And when we do find the courage to get together and tell her that, she goes, oh, we'll stop doing it then. And we're all, all like, oh, we've been doing it for a year and we didn't realize.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Or, or the. No one gave me the permission to do that, so I'm not going to. As opposed to do I actually need permission or can I just go ask the question?
Right. There's, there is so much wrapped up in feeling like we need to be given the okay in things instead of asking if we are okay to do things. I love, I love that phrase. You're an incredibly smart lady, Kate Franklin. If the people are not coaching with you now, they should be now. I'm going to end no more capacity.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Oh, it's such a joy to share it with you. And that's so brilliant to hear your take on it as well. It's, it's fascinating to me how long, long ago it was that we worked together and yet our thinking is so weirdly aligned, isn't it?
[00:52:09] Speaker B: We're both weird or we just need to infect the rest of the world to think the way we do about.
Or both.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Maybe both.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: I don't know. In all of those things, if you had one thing you would like to leave everybody with from today, what would be? Would it be
[00:52:25] Speaker A: don't underestimate your ability to change the thing that's driving you mad.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Love it. And no more needs to be said.
Thank you so much for coming on. You're an absolute joy. You have so much amazing insight to share with everybody. Love everything that you're doing. Folks, if you have not followed Kate on LinkedIn and other places, please do. She posts great stuff about workplace and relationships. Got a load of cool little videos myself too. Sometimes walking down the street looking very glamorous.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: I'm on Instagram I where I'm new and I desperately need new followers. Please coach coach Kate Franklin on Instagram. But I'm. And I'm Kate Franklin 1 on LinkedIn, which I'm very proud of the first.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: So thanks very much, Kate and I look forward to having you back on a future episode so we can continue the conversation.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: Thank you. It's been such a pleasure.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: So that's a wrap for today. Thank you very much for joining in. And if you liked our conversation today, please do like and subscribe. You can find us on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. You can also check out our websites E3CA and Neuroworks CA for more information about what we do in the wonderful world of work. So thanks again for joining in and I look forward to seeing you on a another episode.
