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Secrets From a Coach - Debbie Green & Laura Thomson's Podcast
Secrets From a Coach - Debbie Green & Laura Thomson's Podcast
173 Creating an Exceptional Hybrid Culture
In this final episode in our 4-part focus on Maximising Hybrid Working we are thrilled to be joined by the amazing HR expert Kate Maddison-Greenwell. She shares her research from over 700 leaders about the realities of hybrid working : the blockers and enablers and in particular how to make meetings and communication engaging and productive.
Her research suggests 76% of managers do not feel equipped with the skills for hybrid working and takes us through practical tips for bringing a facilitative approach to conversations. Balancing flexibility with need to align and organise a team, Kate shares the 8 PE Framework that sums up the best practices that enable hybrid success.
Useful listen for managers wanting to benchmark their hybrid working, or for those who want to have a conversation to explore options.
Kate is the CEO of HR consultancy People Efficient. You can download the research here: https://linktr.ee/people_efficient -
Connect with Kate via LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/katemg She always posts useful articles and insights in the ever-evolving world of hybrid work and is a good go-to person if you want clarity or support on the HR aspects.
Curious? Take a deeper dive with our relevant episodes:
Ep. 159 Creating the Right Culture for Inclusion (for more of Kate!)
Ep. 90 Manage Expectations to Prevent a Blame Culture
Ep. 94 Everyday Coaching Skills
Ep. 152 Managing Performance Fairly During Change
Secrets from a coach Thrive and maximise your potential in the evolving workplace. Your weekly podcast with Debbie Green of Wishfish and Laura Thompson-Staveley of phenomenal training. Debs Law, you all right, yeah, but I am blown away by a stat that I just heard. Go on share. Well, I know we're going to find out more with our guest, who you'll tee up in a moment, but 76% of managers apparently don't feel equipped with the skills to manage a hybrid workplace.
Speaker 2:I know, mad, isn't it Based on Kate's research? I just went what so?
Speaker 1:yeah, incredible stat, really incredible stat. So hence our final focus in our four-part series looking at maximising hybrid working, the great big experiment of our time. We have no elders that we can ask how did you do it back in the day, because we are the day that is kind of being created. So, whether that is managing time well, whether that is maximising remote teamwork, whether it's making the in-person moments as productive as possible, we're now going to join it all up and just look at a review of how do you create an exceptional hybrid culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're going to. Obviously, we had the luxury of talking to Kate Madison-Greenwell again from People Efficient, and it was just fascinating to hear what she had to say. So, yeah, let's listen into what she had to say. Hi everyone, I am joined by Kate, who has been on our previous pods, and I'll get her to do a proper intro in a moment.
Speaker 2:But the reason I wanted to have an interview with her and Laura and I were passionate to get her on this this time is we've been talking about remote and hybrid working this month and how important it is. What do we need to consider? What gets in the way and Kate has been working on lots of stuff around this which we are going to in a lot more detail as we have this conversation around here. But what prompted me to sort of reach out to Kate was something she put on LinkedIn which was all about tense, and I will get her to tell us all about it. But first of all, kate, do you want to do an intro to our listeners as to who you are, what you do and what got you into this?
Speaker 3:one in particular. Yeah, I'm always a bit stumped when that's the first one, the first question. You'd think I'd be good at this by now, but I've been in HR for all of my working life, so 25 plus years and I specialise in agile HR change, transformation, digital transformation, things like that. And just recently, in the last six months, I've really niched down into supporting and helping businesses to make remote and hybrid working work, and that's because it's a challenge that a lot of businesses are facing and I knew that really by connecting the practices and methodologies and frameworks of agile, that that really lends itself well to leadership teams and transforms them into well from leaders that are used to being front and centre and very visible to being empowering leaders that are able to work with their teams and make sure that they are well connected. So that's what I'm doing at the moment I'm making that link between agile HR and remote and hybrid, because I feel that that is the future of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's not going anywhere anytime soon, isn't it for sure? And for those of our listeners that may not understand what agile is or what does it mean, can you give us a brief summary about what is agile? Hr?
Speaker 3:So agile HR has been born out of agile methodologies that IT had been using for 20 or 30 years now, and it's really about it's a mindset, attached to some methodologies and frameworks that you might be familiar with, like Scrum and Kanban, but ultimately, it's about iterative improvements and it's about people-centred improvement as well, so you're only problem solving or improving products or services that will directly impact the end user, which, for agile HR, is employees. So it's about constant feedback, constant improvement, experimenting, failing fast, being people-centric and transparent working, which is why it lends itself well to remote and hybrid working too.
Speaker 2:So I'm just going to start Kate, if that's all right, because obviously you put that graphic out on LinkedIn, so make sure you have Kate's details. If you want to find it, you can. And it was that one where you said if you're having to buy tents and booths on mass, you've got your return to work, you're returned to the office strategy wrong. That just blew me away. So tell us a little bit around what prompted that post. For you.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll pick up on something, because you made a little slip there, I noticed I'm not one usually to pick up on people's flipped part. It's something that people are doing quite a lot and I'm quite passionate about. People are calling it return to work rather than return to office, I feel like saying it's not a return to work. We've always been working. Such a good catch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a return to office and I'm saying this, being very mindful that not everybody is going to have the opportunity to decide where they work. There are nurses, there are doctors, there are people out in the field, warehouse workers and what have you. So I am very mindful of that, but we are focusing on those people where their job can be done remotely. And I was talking I was doing a networking event with CEOs and there was somebody that was really getting on their high horse about returning to the office and they were talking about the amount of investment they'd had to make to buy all of these booths in their open plan office. And I was, and he was really disgruntled about it.
Speaker 3:But I started looking into it and I thought is that a thing? Is that something that's happening? And I found this article where people were literally creating tents around desks and computers and phones to give people privacy and to help people with the transition between the quietness of home and the noisiness of the office. And I just thought, right, okay, so people are. You're forcing people to come back to work. You're getting them to pay additional childcare for sort of wraparound, childcare for the hour or whatever commute. You're forcing people to pay for petrol or public transport. Have you to come and sit in a tent and cut themselves off from everybody else's round there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm thinking you know a lot of the people that are advocating for returning to the office are saying things like you know we're losing out on collaboration, we're losing out on water cooler moments. That seems to be the buzzword at the moment and I thought, well, how are they going to get that if they're in a tent? I'm visiting the tent right up. I wouldn't want to see it to anyone.
Speaker 2:No, exactly, and it just. It just made me smile when you put that because I thought that does not make any sense whatsoever. And I know you've been doing lots of research around this as well and you've been looking at, especially with HR leaders. So what are you finding that's coming out of that?
Speaker 3:I did the research, thinking I'll speak to a few leaders and I'll just sort of get a sense of what's going on, and ended up speaking to over 700 HR leaders Absolutely crazy. And I did that through lots of different ways through a survey, but also lots of one-to-one interviews. Then I gathered together some of the themes and then I hosted some remote roundtables where I got the HR leaders together to really delve into why these findings are happening and really to give some reassurance to everybody that they're all experiencing the same challenges.
Speaker 2:Yes, we need to hear that sometimes.
Speaker 3:Yes, not just you. It's not just you, no, but yes, we found there's lots of insights really to perceive lack of productivity as the most common frustration. We found that 84 percent of HR leaders felt that developing strong collaboration skills is the key to unlocking peak teamwork 77 percent. Now I was quite surprised at how high this was. 77 percent of respondents agreed that their leaders simply don't have the tools in their toolbox to lead effectively in a remote or hybrid environment, and the reason I was surprised at that is because I wasn't surprised that that was an issue, but three, nearly four years after the pandemic, you would think that that would have been a lower percentage because there would have been a recognition that leadership needs to change in a remote and hybrid environment, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Speaker 3:There is still a lot of cultures where leaders are still trying to make leadership that fitted in person, replicated online, and that doesn't work. You can't be a leader that's front and centre when you're in a remote or a hybrid kind of environment. Instead, you need to be the kind of leader that is all about creating spaces, and some of that might be in person. You know I'm not anti in person. Magical things happen when people get together.
Speaker 2:Magical things do happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I say you know as a general sort of day to day business as usual. You know, getting work done, it doesn't have to always be in person. So, you know, leadership has changed and evolved and great leaders nowadays are sort of servant leaders. They're empowering leaders. They're leaders that create spaces, virtually and in person, for people to collaborate, for people to communicate, for people to innovate and for people to challenge as well, and that requires a different skill set. It requires leaders that are able to you know, read and see nuances, you know what are people not saying? People that can facilitate sessions where people can be really honest. It's leaders that can create a rhythm and a cadence for people's working days and working weeks, which all leads back to the general business mission and can keep people well informed. All of those are leadership styles that people need to embrace and we're quite significantly lacking. Yes, 77%.
Speaker 2:That's. That is quite shocking, and because it's not just like, you took that from like 10 people you interviewed out of 700. That is, that is a phenomenal amount of people that either haven't got the skills or struggling or trying to, as you said, replicate there the way it used to be in trying to do that online. And it just is madness, isn't it?
Speaker 3:And I keep thinking about those poor leaders because, you know, we can often be a bit dismissive, we can often be a bit like. You know, leadership's the problem. You know poor leaders, people don't leave a company, they leave a bad leader.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah.
Speaker 3:But I'm just thinking about these leaders, just thinking, my goodness, no wonder Bernal is so prevalent for leaders and for their teams the stress and pressure on your brain to try and keep things together when people aren't there. I'm not surprised that leaders are just like oh, let's just go back to how it was before, because it was easier. It was only easier for them. I think we can be a bit rose-tinted glasses when we think about pre-pandemic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right yeah.
Speaker 3:Was collaboration that good when it was in person? Because if it's not done purposefully, then it's not that good anyway. And that's one of the good things about kind of hybrid working. If it's done well, if you can have a cadence and a rhythm to your team, where you regularly have in-person moments that matter. So whether that's to do with planning or collaboration or to do with problem solving, something that gets people together and gets people fired up is brilliant, but that should be purposeful, it should be planned in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, planned in. It should be inclusive. Yes, you know all of those kinds of things, but it doesn't have to be every day, and that's the shift, isn't it?
Speaker 2:That I suppose we're. So it takes us a little while to evolve right, as humans. Sometimes, when we're used to the old way if you like the old way, inverted commas it's nine to five working in the office. You know, turn off my laptop and things have shifted. So it takes us, as humans, a little while to sort of catch up with that. So, thinking about, you know your experience and what you're helping and supporting people with. What are some of the things that leaders can maybe be mindful of? You've mentioned quite a lot, but you know other things that they can up their skills and recognize. I love the rhythm I think you're right the planning. I was working with a team yesterday that have come worldwide, come together, and they do that every six months, but that's part of their rhythm now. It never used to be, and I think that in person has so much more power. I'm really with you, but it's not the only way, right. So what else can leaders do?
Speaker 3:Well, there's lots of things. I think the first thing is the businesses and leadership team should do a bit of self reflection. It's sort of think you know what is working for us as a business and what isn't working for us as a business, and how can we make that balance where we're keeping, you know, our skilled employees with us and making them happy so that they can be more productive. So I think they need to be some self reflection.
Speaker 3:And then looking at leadership styles, and one of the sort of human truths that came out of the research for me is that and I'll give you a bit of a quote here and the more the world feels out of control, the more we try to control the things in it that we can, and I think that's what's happening with a lot of leaders. That's why micromanagement seems to be on the rise again, because leaders are just struggling to control everything with, you know, a distributed workforce. But what can happen with those people that are being controlled? They feel a loss of autonomy and empowerment and that then stifles collaboration, creativity and productivity. So you know what comes first? Is there a lack of productivity which is driving leaders to be micromanaging, or is the micromanagement causing the lack of?
Speaker 2:Driving. Yeah, yeah, so you know that's a big question, right? Have you got the answer to that one yet, Kate?
Speaker 3:No, not quite, because every business is different.
Speaker 2:So I think, there needs to be that kind of self reflection.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, because I'm all about sort of empowering leadership and which I think is the kind of the secret source to being able to make remote working and hybrid working successful, you know, to be an empowering leader and to unlock that sort of remote excellence, I think there's sort of eight things that need to happen. And as with all of these things, you know, the order can change depending on the maturity of the business and all of that kind of thing. But really it boils down to building trust, you know, which is very hard when you're not seeing people all the time. It's about that empowering autonomy. And I'm not, you know, I would like to say that I'm very compassionate, but I'm not kind of a bleeding heart. I'm very much about, you know, holding people to account and making sure that they are being productive and they are high performing. But in order to do that, you need to give people the autonomy to do it the way that suits them well, and also to get their agreement about their capacity and what they can do and give them all of the support so that you can then, you know, make them accountable. And that's not that rhythm, it's making sure that you've got the touch points in place to be able to ensure that that accountability happens.
Speaker 3:And it's about collaborative connection. So, whether that's online or in person, but if it is online, I use things like Trello or Jira or Microsoft Planner, you know, to be really transparent about progress and what people are working on and when it's going to be achieved. And I also use Miro, which is a whiteboard. Other ones in the available teams has one. There's Mural to visualize things. So to get that collaborative connection, to be able to visualize things and work on something together and make those challenges. And you know that really helps with people that are introverted as well to be able to, you know, go onto a whiteboard and have a considered approach. So, thinking about that, and then the thing that I think is almost the most important, because all roads start from here, is pursuing clarity. So it's being really clear about what the mission is what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know why are we here? Why are we doing this? Yeah, exactly, I know we had this come up yesterday around you know you have all the great stuff around you and make sure that you're aiming in the same direction, but if there is no clarity on people don't get it.
Speaker 3:They don't. It's so easy to not get something you know, I'm 25 years into business and I still, you know, we'll pick up the phone and say when you said this, this is what I thought you meant, and the other person goes no, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you're listening. I haven't heard that so long, yeah, but it happens though, right.
Speaker 3:It does. It does because people zone in and they zone out. You know and I think about the amount of meetings in person that I've gone to where I've nearly fallen asleep, you know. So you know people do zone out. So, pursuing clarity and doing things like you know, painting the picture, but also what's the definition of done? How will we know when we've achieved this? What will that look like? And also, the thing that I think is really important is what does good look like? I think we need to really, as leaders, paint that picture. To say good means people use that product or that service that we've built for them. Good means that our engagement scores will go up. Good means that more people will fill in our engagement survey, for example. Good means less people will leave. Good means better glass door reviews. Whatever we need to be, you know, helping people to be able to know when they've achieved something. Otherwise, you know, how will they ever?
Speaker 2:you know, be able to continue feeling well motivated. Yeah, exactly, okay.
Speaker 3:So we've got people sent to design. So that's what you know agile HR is about. You know, designing services or products or whatever it is that we want to do, with people at the heart of it. So, asking people what they need to ensure that they're successful, and that might be remote and hybrid working. It might well be Absolutely yeah, you know. Or it might be that they need a better platform to make remote and hybrid working work. Well, you know, for example, what if Zoom isn't working for them? You know, should we be using Teams? You know, should we be using Google or whatever? And then the last three are leading with impact and value. So I'm a big believer in this, especially for remote and hybrid.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you can get, if you haven't got that clarity, you can get bogged down in busy work, and people can sometimes choose to pick the low hanging fruit or whatever the buzzword is of the day, instead of, you know, thinking well, you know, is this getting me closer to where we need to be? And that's where empowering leadership needs to step in. It needs to be. You know this. You know I need to communicate. I need to communicate with my team and make sure they've always got that eye on the prize Is this taking us a step closer to our objective, and that again keeps the team together, keeps the team collaborating, even virtually, because they want to achieve, you know, that impact and have that value. We can't shy away from delivering results, you know. We do need to keep that eye on that.
Speaker 3:And then the last bit, which is another favorite of mine, is that forward thinking reflection, and that's something that I find really powerful for the remote teams that I work with, having regular retrospectives where we say, okay, what worked really well for us, fantastic, what didn't. And you know, in the beginning stages, you know, especially with a new team that's distributed, you know being able to say, look, our communication wasn't great, you know, I found I missed being in office because that wouldn't have happened in office, for example. And then we can brainstorm okay, what's the alternative then? Do we need to come back to the office a bit more? Do we need to, you know? Do we need to replicate that same environment?
Speaker 3:But online do we need to do more hangouts, or what have you so?
Speaker 2:that's really powerful. I love those. Yeah, and I think that just sort of links back in that actually some of these skills, right, leaders already have. They just might need to adapt and flex to a different way of bringing them into the mix, right, that's maybe what it looks like. We can do it. Yeah, it's just having to be able to think differently around. How do I do it? Yeah, which is you can help?
Speaker 3:And asking the team. You know, leaders don't always have to be the ones that come up with the solution. I think leaders just need to acknowledge there's a problem and then be humble enough to say to the team what do you need? Why is this a problem for us?
Speaker 2:Yes, what's going on? All those lovely coaching questions right to get under the skin, or what's really going on, yeah.
Speaker 3:I've always been a big fan of the 5Y approach. You know, really, really getting into. But you know, but why, but why, but why, and then you get to the truth.
Speaker 3:And then you can do something with that, right, of course, of course. But it does take, you know, for leaders to be facilitating that. And I think you know, and I think about 20 years ago when I first became a leader, I was very much a come on, guys, follow me, do what I do. I must be doing it the best because I'm the leader. So so do what I do and it'll be fine. Now I look back, obviously, in cringe, because that's not leadership. You know, leadership is saying you know better than I do because you're a specialist and I can identify there's a problem, who's the best person to help us fix that? You know, that's what leadership's about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I love that.
Speaker 2:The empowering leader, I think, is where we need to go to and creating that space where I can understand what my team need as well as what do they need from me and vice versa.
Speaker 2:So it is a true collaborative connection, which I think is you know, and collective accountability, I suppose comes into that as well to some extent. So I love that and I think, just thinking on that, if we were to take it to a bit more of a practical approach, because obviously people have feel like, certainly when I'm sort of out and about, look, talking to people, they are back to back to back to back to back to back in meetings and then there might be lack of engagement or we go well, as you said, well, maybe people aren't being as productive as they can be. So I suppose how or what advice would you do? Or how do you think leaders, managers, team leaders, whatever can create the space when they're on a meeting? It is engaging and more productive, whatever that might mean for them, so that there is this ability to cross over two things. What would you say about?
Speaker 3:that. That's a really good example of when I was telling you about, you know, people trying to replicate what they were doing in person meetings is a really good example of that. So that is something that happens a lot. So with the teams that I go in and support, that's the common complaint. You know, we're meeting so much that we don't have enough time to actually do the do, as it were, and there are two things that I would say to that. The first one is something that I've started doing recently is called meeting killer.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that. What's that all about?
Speaker 3:Well, I've robbed it off a chap called Chris Stone. I'd love to say that I invented it. I did it sadly, but it's where you get the team together and it can be asynchronously it doesn't all have to be at the same time and you all input the meetings that you have and then you start to look at them and score them on the impact that they have. And then you start to look at some meetings and say, right, can these two meetings be merged? Are the right people in this meeting, which basically it's with an outlook of what meetings can we get rid of and are there alternatives to it? So that's the first thing that I would say Play meeting killer. It's a great thing, oh my.
Speaker 2:God, I love that. Okay, it's been like traitors on the BBC.
Speaker 3:right you get like that yeah, yeah, yeah. What meetings can you kill? Yeah, and or banish, or banish, yeah. And the second thing that I would say is think about some asynchronous methods instead of meetings. So when meetings are really powerful are things like when you're planning, when you're brainstorming and when you're reflecting. So those are really powerful and it's powerful to change that up and do that in person every so often, but those are ones that I would never kind of get rid of. I think those are really impactful meetings. And then, from those meetings, if you then need to have one-to-ones with people to give them the support or to unblock anything that's perhaps stopping them from being successful, those are all so important, but the other ones tend to be less important. I think Things that are updates or things that are, you know, to communicate, you know things I would say, you know.
Speaker 3:Can they be something that can be? You know a recorder video. You know the CEO wants to do an all hands meeting. You know, record a video and let people know. Could it be an email? I hate emails, but could it be an email. Could it be on a Teams channel, you know, could it be, you know, via your WhatsApp groups. Could it be by your leader tagging it onto the daily stand up or whatever.
Speaker 3:You know, are there other ways of doing it and use things like whiteboards, where you can perhaps pose a problem and ask people to spend 10 minutes of their time during the week putting their input into it at a time that suits them, when they're feeling inspired, and then you know, then you've gathered all of that together that would be, and then you can decide what to do with that. You know, do you have a meeting? Do you have an update? Do you make the changes? You know whatever. So I can't sort of say to you specifically this is what you need to do, because every business is different, but I would definitely say that you know you can usually reduce meetings by at least half just by asking the question as to whether they're needed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as you say, meeting killer, you do really need them. I love that. I'm gonna hold on to that. Yeah, because I do hear that and people are like burn out, as you said, overwhelmed, haven't got time to do their work. They're then finishing work and then they're continuing to work into the night, which is impacting on their wellbeing and their mind, health and everything else that goes with it.
Speaker 3:So it's my business that I worked with sorry to interrupt, but I was just telling this you know that there are mad people out there, Go on then when they would have a meeting with the executive team every month. And for that meeting what would need to happen would be each head of department would ask their number twos or their teams to input into a report. That would be two or three days minimum for those team members to input into a report. Then the head of department would then put that report into like a board report. Then there would be a two day meeting at the end of every month where each head of department would have to talk about that report to the rest of the teams. There was no interaction, it was just listening, and I'd be sat there sort of like yeah, yeah, Knowing how many men out there would be put into that report, and I'd be like, well, if you're gonna do a report, why don't we just read the report?
Speaker 3:And then when I challenged it, it was because the CEO didn't have time to read the report and also it was quite overwhelming because you'd have like 12 reports that were like five to 10 pages long. So he'd called the meeting so that he could get really into the detail of it, so that he could then report that to the board and I'm like, well, I kind of okay, I get that, I understand that it's important, but all of these man hours we're going into suit one person's particular style and I just thought you know that really needs to be challenged, because and he had no idea just how much work was going into it when I told him he was like, oh, that is productive, then there is no productivity going on because they're busy doing the report, which was one of his complaints why does nothing get done?
Speaker 3:All right, got you Too busy telling you what's not being done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so did you change his mind around how he could do it better? I did.
Speaker 3:Gordon, how did you do it? It took me three months Did it.
Speaker 2:Well done for doing it, though Credit to you.
Speaker 3:He found some big finger tapping during the meetings. So the way that I did it was I built a business case for him, so I looked at how many man hours were being done and how much that was costing the business. Then I spoke to all of the people and asked them what they got out of doing the report. The answer was nothing, and then I gave him some alternatives. So I started to structure the meetings so that instead of it being the report so they were still doing the report. So I made it so that people made a commitment that they would read the reports before they went into the meeting. Then each person would just highlight two achievements and one problem that they were going to solve and then it would be handed over to the rest of the leadership team to have their input into how to solve that problem.
Speaker 2:Nice yeah.
Speaker 3:Rather than just the sort of mutual pass and pass Pages of pages. Yeah, exactly, gordon. Wow, then after that, I then looked at reducing the reports, but I needed to speak to the board to ask them exactly what they wanted to say. And do you know what the board would just like? We only want to see, we only want to know how much we're making, what's working, what's not working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what you're doing about it? Yeah, simple, really Can't have a breath before it's either, yeah, and then you think the waste of man hours, oh my God, that's. But you hear that so much, don't you? So I suppose, if we're really going to make this, you know, working well, returning to the office well, what would you? What's your one takeaway that you would leave people with?
Speaker 3:I would say, to be really clear about what it is that your employees want and what they, in the business, stand to benefit from having a remote or hybrid environment. So be really clear on that and be really clear about what needs to happen to facilitate that too, because I think it's really obvious that employees want to have that autonomy and they want to have that flexibility to remain engaged. It drives the right talent. It means that they're going to be more productive because they're happier. So be really mindful of what the gains are for that and then employ the practical side of your brain. Okay, so if we're going to be committed to remote and hybrid, how can we make that work in a way that is commercial, high productivity, high performing? We're going to get our return on investment from that and then start to apply that.
Speaker 3:And you don't have to apply changes all at once. You don't have to create the perfect environment for people straight away. Just think about, okay, what things can we change or improve to make things better for people? And let's do it one at a time, get some feedback and then go again. I would definitely think about that framework that I was talking about with the eight perspectives and maybe think about use that as a way to think about what you're doing to build trust, what you're doing to power autonomy, what you're doing to collaborate and connect all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:And obviously I'm always available, yeah and also look at the research that you did, because I'm sure there's loads more that sit within it. So how do people find you? Kate, remind us. I mean, we're obviously let people know, but just for people listening, how can they find you?
Speaker 3:So they can find me on LinkedIn. It's where I hang out the most. So Kate Madison Greenwell or People Efficient on LinkedIn. They can email me KMG at peopleefficientcouk. There's also a link tree on my LinkedIn where you can find my latest free webinars that I do each month. You can download that research and you can subscribe as well. So just find me on LinkedIn and then find you there. Have a nosy.
Speaker 2:Have a nosy. That's where I found the picture of the tent I went oh my God, I've got to ask her about that one. That was from there, but also your article. I think you did an article back in October I think it was around that A leader's role in managing exceptional remote teams, which is worth a read if anybody wants to find you super quick. So we'll make a link to that as well. As always, kate, it's a pleasure to talk to you and I think the research you've done around this has just been incredible to start to unpick some of that. So again, a massive thank you for your time, kate. You're welcome. I love talking to you. Take care of you. See you later. So, laura, what did you?
Speaker 1:reckon I could listen to Kate for hours. She is so easy to understand. I think the level and depth of research that she was sharing was a bit of an eye opener really, so I was fascinated by it. I bet you had a great conversation before and after as well, Devs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did. I think she based that on 700 people's responses to her survey, so it wasn't like we said, it wasn't just seven people, it was 700 different thoughts that came in and it was just so wow, mind-blowing to hear what she's done. And if anybody is wanting to explore that, then definitely check her out, because her report it goes into so much detail and her research is based on real life, which is what's going on for us at the moment, and I think what I loved was her eight key things that we should be considering as well, and exploring all of those in a team can make a huge difference, right, if we're really clear on what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again, just breaking it even to real, everyday practice, that's quality conversations, and my ears were really pricked up when she was talking about facilitating conversations and rather than just telling people what to do, which doesn't fly so much these days anyway. But if in a hybrid workplace there's maybe even more risk of things being misconstrued or the tone not carrying quite as easily as it might do in a real world environment. So those facilitation skills, coaching, questions, listening, these are things that we've been doing since the dawn of time. But if your life's busy then these are some of the things that can go out of the window. But actually those moments, the human centric moments, as she calls them, are the magic bits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and I love the fact that she was talking about having to up our ability to facilitate conversations. And, as a leader, manager, you know, somebody leading on a project even the ability to be the one not talking all the time, I think will be your gift. And if you can facilitate the diversity of thought that may be around the table talking about something, then I think that's what's going to make the biggest difference. So, you know, really revving up your facilitation skills and recognizing that you can do that just by great questions, listening, reflecting back, you know, being able to summarize and paraphrase all of those things that, as you said, we know how to do, but actually really putting a focus on them, I think can only help if we're, you know, if we're creating this exceptional place of working when we're in work, and I think that's what's going to make the difference.
Speaker 1:So that, I suppose, would be my call to action, law is brush up on those communication skills Love it, and whenever I sort of run facilitation skills type sessions, I would link it back to facilitation comes on the French word facile to make life easier, simpler, and so for certain things in those conversations is just to make it simple and easier.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, if people have to sort of fathom things out for themselves and you're in a hybrid environment, then that's where some disconnects can have.
Speaker 1:So I guess my share of the secret would be is, if you are a manager listening in on this and you feel like one of those 76% who aren't feeling particularly equipped with the skills of this, you're not alone. There are hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of people out there who are thinking well, this all feels a bit kind of different. So catch up with another colleague who is maybe a people manager as well and think actually, what do we think about this? What's going to be our way that we think it's going to really work for us and the teams. And if you aren't a formal manager, then have the conversation with your manager and actually, by just looking at some of these things that are out there that Kate and her team have then researched, these are real tangible things. It's not just you that might be feeling this. So what might that mean in terms of facilitating a conversation with your manager, to then just get a bit of transparency, to then be able to do something about it?
Speaker 2:I love that, oh my God, I've loved this series Law. It's been fascinating to explore, hasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really has, because it's so new and it's evolving and if we don't make it work, then what legacy does that leave then for future generations of work? So I think this kind of mid-decade time is a really. But if we're too busy to spot the moments, then that's potentially where we might just regret a few things of oh, we really should have cracked our in-team communication, because now the office has been totally sold and we can never meet.
Speaker 2:So use it or lose it. Those kind of skills, yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not just for the benefit of work and, as we are and all of our team are so passionate about, wellness is the performance enabler and you tend to find the happier and the more vibrant a work culture is full of all sorts of different types of people. The more well people are within that, the more they enjoy it. They deliver their best work, and what we're seeing is you might not always have to be side by side to enable those relationships, but it might take a bit of kind of thought. So we hope you found this four-part focus a useful one and, of course, we're going to be starting our new mini series next time, dev.
Speaker 2:Looking forward to this as well. I just love the topics Law. It's just like we can really get our teeth into them and pull those topics apart with some good conversations. Love it, yeah.
Speaker 1:So hold on to your hats, because our next four-part focus is going to be all about managing continuous workload. How do you keep the buzz going when there's never a box that actually is ticked and done?
Speaker 2:That's a challenge. Yeah, looking forward to that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, looking forward to that. Yeah, it's a 70-part series. No, no, it's a four-part series. So there's that artificial sense of done tick, looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking forward to that as well, law. Oh, it's been really cool talking about this, and we can carry on talking about it forever, so maybe we'll do a repeat of some of these things once we've gone six months down, further down the line, and seen what's happening. So have a good one, you too Dye. Love you, bye.
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