May 13, 2023 • 42 mins
At a time where change is happening at an incredible pace, we discuss with Paul Salmon, Principal Consultant from Springfox, why resilience in leadership and across organisations is so critical, and how the potential return on investment is so valuable. From performance and productivity, to engagement, communication and health and wellbeing, there’s something for all leaders.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Vocus Inspire, the podcast full of brilliant ideas
for business.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, I'm Luke Coleman, head of government and corporate affairs
at Vocus, Australia's leading specialist fibre and network solutions provider.
Before we get things underway, we want to acknowledge and
pay our respects to the traditional custodians of the land
from wherever you're listening. In this podcast, we dive headfirst
into what's on the minds of Australian business and government
(00:30):
leaders to help inspire you and your organisation to go forward,
go further, and go faster. So let's go.
In this episode, we're shifting gears a little to explore
the topic of resilience, why it's come into sharper focus
in the workplace and what personal and organisational value greater
(00:51):
resilience brings to leaders and their teams. Joining us to
discuss this and more is Paul Salmon, principal consultant at
the specialist resilience consultancy Spring Fox.
With a background in mathematics, theology, and psychology, Paul has
a distinguished career in executive, professional, and team development. Growing
(01:13):
up in an army family, Paul frequently faced the challenge
of change, attending 9 schools, moving home more than 30 times,
and living through the loss of two siblings.
He believes it's these thrive or flounder experiences that have
fostered his own resilience. Welcome, Paul, to the Vocus Inspire podcast.
(01:35):
It is great to have you with us. And it's
a real pleasure to be here, Luke. Um, makes me
sound like I've done a lot of things, doesn't it?
It's a, it's an extraordinary history, and I can't wait
to hear a bit more about it from you, so.
Paul, tell me, in an unpredictable world where change is
happening at a fast pace, can you elaborate on why
(01:55):
there's a greater need to focus on resilience in business today? Well,
big question. Um, the first reason is simple. organisations, they
can have all the technology in the world, and in fact,
we do, and, um, talking to a group like yours,
you know that.
But they have staff, they still have people. And, um,
more than ever, if you think about what we've been through,
(02:17):
moving from working, uh, in offices where we say hello
every day to this brave new world of hybrid working,
we're still people working with people, as well as technology.
And if you lose connection with people, we're in strife.
So at that simplest level, resilience is critical. We know
it's become harder than ever at the moment to find
(02:39):
good staff.
So if you use just that as a starting point, um,
you want to have things that you're offering that keep
your staff, that leave people feeling like they're glad to
be working for you.
Um,
You could go with a 3rd road, and that is,
you could look at the research around this, uh, if
you take in Australia, the Mental Healthy Workplace Alliance.
(03:02):
A number of years ago they did a study into
why or why not resilience.
They basically came up with uh an outcome that for
every $1 a company would spend on resilience, they would
recoup as much as $2.30 and well, how, how do
you measure that? Uh, it was measured by stronger employee engagement.
(03:26):
Improve levels of communication, people would be talking more about things,
they would be collaborating more in teamwork. Reduce sick leave,
reduce presenteeism that's where people are turning up, but they're
not actually getting much done.
Improved retention, they're more likely to feel like, hey, you
value me.
Uh, they're more efficient and effective in their performance once
(03:48):
they understand, hang on, there's skills here.
Uh, I look at my own story. When I didn't
understand how important it was to take a lunch break.
I would work myself silly. Uh, in fact, I lost
a staff member once over that.
And I, I've learned, you know, if you give people
permission to set boundaries, then, of course, they're more efficient
(04:10):
and they get more done more quickly. They have lower
levels of stress, they have a reduced risk of burnout.
They make less errors, they have less injury, you know, generally,
improved focus and stamina. You get a more differentiated leadership culture. Now,
those are pretty good reasons for resilience.
And I suppose I'll give you one last one, Spring fox, we,
(04:33):
we have a diagnostic tool that we use um.
Been using for a very long time, something like uh
20,000 people, we follow their results every 2 years, so we,
we track what we learn.
And we track people that do a resilient score before
an intervention, and then take them 1314 weeks later, and
we look at what, what do we see. If you
(04:55):
compare those scores, if you take just the field of construction,
so if you go in the Australian context, construction's a
dangerous place to work at times.
Has a very high suicide rate. If you look at
the results of a group of construction employees, you take
their pre-scores and their post scores, you can get up
to a 40% improvement in their resilience scores. That, I
(05:19):
would suggest, is just one of all of these compelling
reasons for why you would invest in resilience training.
Does that help? Absolutely, and I think a lot of
the listeners on this podcast are people leaders in their
own organisations, so tell me what different ways can people
(05:40):
leaders demonstrate resilience? Well, at the number one level, I'd go,
they need to be seen to continually be going back
to basics.
You know, if you see a leader who's stopping for breaks,
who's locking in their exercise.
Who has, uh, good practises around their sleep. I mean,
that shows up. You can tell when your boss is tired, uh,
(06:03):
or when they're not, you know, when they're continually unavailable
because they're running on edge. When they don't get back
to your emails on time, um, when there's they never
have a lunch break. You know, one of the biggest giveaways, uh,
those bosses that have never had time to sit and say,
So how was your weekend?
Oh, they don't take leave, they don't seem to switch off,
(06:24):
you know, by putting those practises in place, um, people
will watch what you do. And the other thing about that,
you know, good leaders who put these things into practise.
They make time, like I said, to ask staff, how
are you? What's going well for you? They celebrate your birthdays.
(06:45):
I'll never forget, um, one of the earliest bosses I
ever had. He, he had a staff team working for
him of, uh, 250 plus. Somehow, I to this day,
I don't know how he did it, but somehow, I'm
a first year out graduate, and a birthday card turns
up on my desk. And not only the birthday card,
he'd noted something that I'd done.
(07:07):
You know, I probably had had two conversations with him
in the corridor in my entire time there, yet he remembered, he,
he knew my birthday.
You know, that's the kind of thing that demonstrates resilience,
it's also,
You can see a leader who's all over this topic.
They focus on what they can do, not on what
(07:28):
they can't. In fact, that's a quote from Tria Pitt.
You know, you look at what's happened to her. She
could easily get caught up, you know, in all the
things that can't be done, yet she says, Focus on
what I can do, and I avoid focusing on that
that I can't. You know, this links with, it's OK
to say no.
And particularly, I would add for leaders to say, do
(07:50):
you know what? I don't know the answer to that,
but I'll find out and I'll get back to you.
And I'd probably sum it up. When you practise these things,
You give your permission to, you know, you give permission
to your staff to do the same thing.
Uh, I think that's a critical lesson. Uh, if I
(08:10):
can see that in a leader, then I will want
to follow them. Mm.
Now, you have worked in this field for more than
20 years. What would you say that you've learned about
human nature and growth in resilience through that time? I,
I think, uh, it's a, that's a potentially challenging question
because I would say for a long part of that time,
(08:32):
I knew the theory, but I didn't do it.
Um, in fact, I, uh, I ended up in burnout.
Some of you who may be listening to that know
that story. I ended up burnout because the theory was there,
but the practise wasn't. I hadn't reached a point or
hadn't really had a hard enough hitting, um, experience that
I would put it into practise. And I would say
(08:55):
that is my biggest lesson. Even though it was true
of me, uh, I actually assumed that of our own accord,
most people I work with would want to look at change.
Um, we all know there's things that hold us back.
We know that there's areas where we could improve, but
it often requires something hard hitting to get our attention
(09:17):
and help us to face up to the need for growth. I'll,
I'll give you an example, another one. I've had two
unfortunate phone calls in the last week where I've had
friends ring to say, Do you know that person X, um,
has passed away? And these are people who are, you know,
under 55.
And there were things that they could have done, uh,
(09:39):
that would have changed that. In fact, I've twice, been
involved with watching colleagues work too hard, and we would
all look at them and go,
Um, if they don't do something about this, you know,
it's not gonna end well, and sure enough, it didn't.
And this has surprised me because in many ways, like
I said, I thought growth was a given.
(10:00):
Um, there can be lots of reasons why people, uh,
don't want to look at growth, maybe we think we
can't do it. Uh, we might lack the conviction, we
might lack the motivation, we might need support.
In short, it's not usually a lack of knowledge.
That I see as the problem so much as a
lack of action.
(10:20):
You know, when I'm running seminars, I will say to people,
you probably know a lot of what we're talking about here.
The questions really are, well, do you know it? But secondly,
really important one, do you do it?
And with that, and this is relevant for leaders, do
you support other people to do it?
(10:42):
And I think that's what I've learned. I've learned that
most of us need help, uh, to continue to take
action consistently.
Now I'm sure I'm not alone in the feeling that
over the last few years in particular, it feels like
the world is just constantly changing and so quickly, whether
it's in business or in politics, in global events. So
(11:04):
in a situation where things are constantly changing, what advice
would you give to people who are leading teams? Change,
you know, it's such a trendy word, we love it.
But actually, the human brain doesn't like it and and
that would be the first referral I'd make.
Uh, the second thing I'd say, uh, you know, COVID
(11:25):
and other things have shown us that we don't actually
have control of this world. We don't have everything, uh,
under our fingertips. It can be a mistake that we
think we've advanced so far, that we can control life. Well,
we can't. So in the midst of that, I might
not be able to change the circumstances that are going
on around me. In fact, I love to quote Viktor Frankl, um,
(11:48):
when he talks about the fact
One of the last of the human freedoms that no
one can take away from you is the freedom of
choice about your attitude. And I like to extend that
I always have choice, what am I going to do here?
So I, you know, here I'd say, what can I do?
I can take control of my own commitment to myself,
(12:11):
my own commitment to my team, my commitment to my organisation,
and my commitment to my leadership.
So act on me first. That bit I have some
control of.
And, you know, what, what would I be doing? Your
question was, what advice would you give? I would say,
staff need to feel like they're valued and appreciated.
(12:34):
Uh, just yesterday, there was an article in The Australian
about KPMG and they titled the argument.
How KPMG found new purpose.
And they put a subline under that, we've got to
be more than just 9000 people that come to work
every day.
You know, people matter and people want to know that
(12:55):
they matter.
So it's not just about the gifts or the perks,
you know, so often I've seen people think, well, let's
give everybody a box of chocolates, or let's put on
a great end of year Christmas luncheon, you know, the
big debate, what will the Christmas party be this year?
Those are wonderful things.
But they're secondary, you, you look at the, the research
(13:18):
around the science of happiness in the workplace, it's far
more about people feeling like you, they are known.
And that they, you know, that the people that are
looking after them who are supervising them have some idea
of what they're dealing with, that there's compassionate work, that
their bosses are and their organisations are concerned for their welfare.
(13:40):
And that includes, you know, there's really some interesting research here,
people would far work far prefer to work for an
organisation that's gonna promote the growth.
That's gonna present them with a challenge, and the skills
to live out that challenge.
They'll go for that over the company that's gonna have
(14:01):
a staff swimming pool and a staff exercise gym.
You know, they're lovely things, but they're not gonna get
you across the long haul.
I think that going with that, people won't stay in
a role. If you go to the, you know, the
topics that are in the media around the difficulty of
getting and holding staff. People will not stay in a role,
(14:23):
or certainly they won't stay high performing in a role,
they won't give their best if they don't feel valued, respected,
and supported.
So it's critical that people feel like the herd.
If I put some quick money on this, I'd go,
make connection a priority.
People wanna know they matter.
(14:44):
People want to know that they're not alone. I'm not
the only one dealing with what I'm dealing with. And
if you've got those things in place, then you can
challenge them to grow, and I, I'll give you an anecdote.
Um, lots of people have been struggling with the issue
of coming back to the office, or moving, you know,
to the, the hybrid way of working. And I was
(15:06):
with an organisation recently where someone put their hand up
and went, but I've loved working at home. I get
so much done, you know, it works better for my personality.
Why would I want to change? And I went, Well, and,
and remember, I didn't know a thing about this, this person.
I went, well, that would be lovely for you. Um,
(15:27):
as long as you're not leading anybody, it might even
be tenable. But if you were leading anybody or had
any requirement of interconnecting with other people, that might present
some real challenges.
Then I got to morning tea and found out in
fact this guy was leading a large team and that
team at the moment had the the prized um record
of being the most discontented team in the organisation.
(15:51):
And I'll give you one last example, I also ran
5 sessions recently for year 9 students.
And that was a bit of a shock, it was
a bit of an eye opener for me. These young
people had had 2 years where in Melbourne where they
were largely stuck at home.
And when we put them in a room together.
They were so far behind on the ability to communicate
(16:14):
about what they were feeling. In fact, it was very
confronting for them because now they were face to face
with people. You couldn't hit the mute button, or you
couldn't disappear. So I think no matter how much technology
and other things we have,
It's coming back to this point of, you're working with people,
you're leading people, you need to be connected to them.
(16:37):
You've given a few examples of what happens when people
aren't resilient or when they're not putting into place the
kind of practises that make them resilient. So tell me,
from your two decades' worth of experience here, what examples
would you give of where organisations or individuals have taken
the lessons of these programmes on board effectively?
(17:00):
Yeah, that's a really, really, a really good question. I
wish I got asked that more. Um, why? I think
the first one, it's textbook stuff, but it's a, it's
a really profound basic. Get everyone from the top down
over language. So if you take the model that Spring
Fox uses, we use a resilient spiral.
(17:21):
And it's an incredibly good way of help, a very
effective way of helping people understand my journey, whether it
be in a day, a week, a month, I'm gonna
go up and down the spiral. And the, the skill
of resilience is when you go down, get back up.
But if you don't get everybody from the top down
over that language, if you still just 2 or 3
people in that, they're still in isolation. So the first
(17:43):
thing I would say, those who do this effectively embark
on an organization-wide approach to language. Cause language is power.
You're equipping everyone with the ability to communicate with each
other about what's going on.
The second is recognising that people are different.
(18:03):
And have different needs, so allowing, allowing those with a
hunger or a need for more depth to access it.
Give people options. For some, this podcast would be a
good example of all they want or need at the moment, um,
about thinking about the topic of resilience.
(18:25):
But meanwhile, there may be others in an organisation who
are really doing it tough, and they could do with
the opportunity for a really deep dive.
And there might be a smaller group still who could
benefit from the opportunity of not only doing a deep dive,
but having some coaching afterwards.
In fact, uh, people who get involved with coaching can
(18:46):
shift their outcomes from moderate change to very, very significant change.
So, you know, that one piece of advice and encouragement
would be to say to people, look at the individual's needs.
And I suppose the first part, I repeat, it's about
getting everyone across language, that's a structural key. Beyond that,
(19:08):
it's about maximising the gain around individual's needs.
I, I give another, um, point here. I, I love
what I see at Vocus.
Um, the focus on Vocus Day, I've had the privilege
of being at 4 of them, I think it is.
That's a very, very clear priority being made by a
(19:28):
company to say we want you all to feel valued.
And it's actually prioritising well-being and saying, Hang on, you know, I,
we want you to work hard, of course. We want, uh,
measurable productivity. We want to see lots of things happening,
but we also want you to love who you work with,
where you work, and to know that we value you.
(19:50):
And I suppose my last comment here.
A very common mistake is people go, oh we've done
the resilience thing.
And I go, no, actually it's like um my exercise.
I can't say, you know, I've done my exercise this week,
that'll do for the year. Resilience is the journey of life.
(20:12):
It's a case of we continually need to go back
to the content. It's like your annual first aid. Um,
some of you listening might know that I'm, uh, a
secondary school teacher by background. A requirement for teachers is
that every year they redo the first aid, because they
need to be over the latest and greatest. In fact,
(20:32):
they need to be practising what they might need to use.
I think it's very important to say it's the same
with resilience, you need to go back to this periodically
to ensure that you're on task.
And that leads to how I'd close off this question. I,
I've seen three very powerful examples that I never lose
(20:53):
sight of.
Sometimes opening doors for people mean someone will turn up
with something that'll go like this, do you know what,
I've decided I'm gonna quit.
I've realised this isn't for me. This is um this
is not in line with, you know, what really matters
to me.
But then I've had the other experience I've had someone
shoot me an email after a programme and say, you
(21:16):
know what, that programme saved my life today. And you think, oh,
this'll be interesting.
And the email goes on to say, do you know what,
I've not been feeling good for weeks. I went to
the doctor, lo and behold, I have cancer.
But we've got to it in time, they think they're
gonna be able to, you know, I'm gonna be OK.
And the third one, you know, another email where someone said, Oh,
(21:37):
I'm so glad I did that course. It really, really helped.
And they went, you know what? I've put off applying
for a promotion for years. I've never believed in myself enough.
And I walked out of that programme and I went,
you know what? I'm gonna give it a go. And
so next year, I just wanted you to know I'm
gonna be in a leadership position for the first time.
They're concrete outcomes, and they're all outcomes that are good
(22:02):
for an organisation.
Someone leaving when they're not motivated and when they're dragging
others down possibly is a really good move. Someone else going, hey,
I've got talent, I'm gonna step up, that's a great outcome.
And of course someone realising that they haven't been prioritising
their health, that's critical.
(22:23):
Now something you just mentioned in that uh last answer,
I'm conscious that some people listening to this conversation might
not have heard of Vocus Day and what Vocus days are.
As part of our hybrid ways of working at Vocus, uh,
every Wednesday, everybody comes into the office. It's a great
opportunity to get together and on Vocus days once a month, um,
each of our, our major offices around the country will
(22:45):
have lunch, we will get a guest speaker in, we'll
go off site to hear some inspirational messages.
Um, to hear from the company executives about what's happening
in the organisation, and it's really like a, a glue
that brings everybody together, and I think it's a really
important part of building resilience as well when you get
everyone in the organisation on the same page, um, it's, yeah, it's,
(23:08):
it's been a really effective thing for us, particularly after
two years of everybody working from home, uh, having some
human contact has been a really, really important thing. Now
that leads me to my next question, which is,
Now what are the most common things that you see
that do not reflect the resilience principles being lived? There's
gotta be some effective strategies or practises that you know
(23:30):
help build resilience, and yet you see leaders avoiding doing them.
Yeah, now that's a hard one. That taps into, I'm
gonna rely a little bit on data here.
When you look at the data around what we get
back from people, one of the most common things is
people are often operating with a very high level of self-criticism.
They're very hard on themselves.
(23:52):
And so often I find my job is in saying
to people, hang on, hang on, you know, you need
to get some feedback. You're probably doing really well, you're
probably actually doing fine in in getting people to unpack,
why are you being that self-critical?
And actually, why are you being that self-critical of yourself,
and what would the rub off be on your team?
(24:14):
So asking people to stop and ask yourself, hang on,
are you being realistic about your view of yourself?
And I don't see enough of that happen. People tend
to get spiralling, um, one of the most common um
signs of this is people lie awake.
Lie awake at night when there's no one around, giving
themselves a really hard time, and it's not healthy, uh.
(24:38):
The second, obviously I've touched on is the lack of connection.
Not not understanding how important it's not all about me.
It's about me being a human being in a world
that needs me to connect to other people and particularly
You know, those classic questions, how often could you have
called somebody?
(24:59):
And solve the problem quickly. You know, pointing that out
to people, whereas I watch people come into sessions and
they all put their hand up. They've all had a
situation where they've had 20 emails exchanged for something that
could have been solved quite quickly in one phone call. Um,
so they could've cut out the frustration levels, they could've
(25:20):
cut out the time lag, and they could've cut out
the time required by connecting with people. So I'm not
just talking about feel good stuff.
I'm talking about
Connecting in a way that gets productivity happening much more quickly.
What else do I see? Three of the most notoriously
(25:42):
consistent are people's failure to address my diet, my exercise,
and my sleep. And a word about that sleep.
It's the failure to turn off the emails at night,
taking the phone to my bedroom and scrolling at the
last moment before I turn off the lights. You don't,
(26:03):
you don't take your kids outside.
And get them to play on the slippery dip and,
and the gym 5 minutes before you want to put
them to sleep. We know why you wouldn't do that
if you have kids or you have friends with kids,
you don't do that. You want to slow them down.
Um, whereas we do it of ourselves. We think we're
gonna have good sleep.
(26:24):
When we're, um, ignoring all these basics, we don't eat well,
we don't sleep well, we don't exercise. And there are
3 non-negotiables really.
At a more complex level, I'd say.
People not making those hard decisions that need to be
made about priorities, about boundaries.
(26:46):
Particularly when there's external drivers, when there's a budget to
be met, or there's a demand for, you know, opening
new horizons.
I watch organisation after organisation, pushing the people to the extreme.
And yet they'll say, come in and run a resilience session.
Love to have you talk to our people. Yeah, I
wanna have that. But they don't change the expectations on
(27:07):
the staff. I've watched whole departments struggling with this, and
yet it doesn't seem to get the conversation it requires.
Whereas when organisations do set those boundaries, they don't lose people,
they don't burn people out, you know, why, why are
we now seeing in Australia,
A rapidly increasing conversation around burnout.
(27:33):
You know, that's got to, that's got to have some
reasons behind it. And one of it is just this,
that we aren't setting boundaries. And it backfires. It backfires
in projects fall over, or you lose new business, or
your name becomes unreliable, and someone goes to someone else.
So I suppose, uh, I commonly would sum it up,
(27:55):
people don't seem to know when to say enough is enough.
This is a reasonable boundary, and at its extreme, that
results in people getting stuck in habits of overload and
excessive workload, to the point where they think that's now
the norm.
When you suggest to people that 1112 hour days might
(28:19):
not be a good idea.
And they can't see it. They're so ingrained in that
way of working. Uh, I, one of my most, um,
favourite examples around this was,
Uh, working with a firm where the person at the
top of the tree in a session, prided themselves on
(28:39):
the fact that they were the first into the office
every day, and they were the last to leave.
And uh couldn't see until I posed a question, um.
I pose the question, and what do you think that
says to everyone below you about what you expect of them?
And actually then did some practical activities to an anonymously
(29:04):
enable people to give feedback on that. And it was
quite a shock for this person to realise that no
matter how often they would say, I don't expect you
to do the same, everybody else intrinsically thought that was
what was expected.
So it's the failure to live what you want. That
(29:24):
would be, uh, my summary on this.
Those are some great examples of what not to do.
I'd love to hear from you, if you could pick
three pieces of advice to give leaders about building sustainable, high-performing,
resilient staff, what would you urge leaders to do? Wow,
(29:44):
open slather. I love this opportunity.
I think the first one is to question your assumptions.
Uh it's sad to say that so often I've heard
people say, look, we don't need that around here.
And often uh it will be talking to someone who,
(30:05):
Has a perspective that says no all our people are fine.
I, it still surprises me how often I will work
with people who go, we don't have staff with depression,
it's not a real problem, um, those things, you know, they, they,
it's almost like they don't believe such things exist.
So I would go, just because you're OK and you're
(30:26):
doing fine, doesn't mean everyone else does.
In fact, it's often very, very confronting for leaders at
the top when you get an organisation to do a
resilience diagnostic. And you point out to them that the
leaders at the top are often running with quite high scores.
They have a lot of control, they have a lot
of say about what happens in the day, um, they
(30:50):
can make choices.
And then you look at those who were at the
bottom of the, of the ladder, with the least say, accountable,
you know, to almost everyone else up the line, and
they often have the lowest resilience scores. And saying, you know,
just because you're OK, doesn't mean everyone else is. And I'm,
I'm not painting a picture that everyone's in trouble, but
(31:10):
this is, this is real stuff that I see all
the time.
So I suppose, I repeat, question your own assumptions.
If, you know, do you know where your staff are at?
Very simple answer there, go and do something that gives
you some data on that, and then test your assumptions,
(31:31):
and then act accordingly.
The second one, I wish people had a much more
serious budget.
For coaching.
For processes of accountability, and I don't mean accountability in
that we want to tell you off, but accountability for
helping them get on top of their own goals for change.
(31:53):
There's so much to back this up. There's so much
evidence that says, when someone is talking to someone else
about the goals they want to achieve, when they know
that they're gonna come back and talk with them again
about how they're going with those goals, it's a motivator.
Whereas it's like those New Year's Eve resolutions, you know,
we've all made them, we all sit there and idealistically say,
(32:17):
I'm gonna do this this year and I'm gonna do
that this year, and so on.
But it's a different, uh, a different kettle of fish.
It's a different, um, picture if I know that someone's
gonna periodically ask me, how are you going with that?
I can't uh remember the exact quote, but I, I
love the gist of this. If I have a dream,
(32:40):
an idea, and I write it down, now it's a vision.
If I take that vision and I put some steps
to it, now it's a project with a plan. And
a project with a plan is how you make visions
come about.
Because I can measure the outcomes. And so I would
say my second random is, plan for success. Let people
(33:05):
have some opportunity for accountability and growth. And of course,
the third one I've really touched on already. You can
say all you like, people will model themselves on what
they see you do. People are watching you.
They model their expectations more on what you do than
on what you say. So always remember that, what do
(33:28):
your practises tell your staff? And what does that tell
them about what you expect from them?
I often like to put it this way. Are you
living a way that they are inspired by? Are you
living a way that they would like to model? And
I go further, are they living in a way that
if your, if your own kids, if you had them.
(33:50):
Or, or take the, the, the young person most impressionable
and valuable to you. Are you living and working in
a way that you would want for them? If you are,
people will follow you.
Three great pieces of advice. And now we're gonna move
to a, a question that we ask all of our
guests on the podcast, which is, if you had one
(34:13):
wish for all business and government leaders, what would that
one wish be and why? Oh, that's not enough, only one.
One wish, uh, I'm gonna cheat on this. I would
have said, stop setting unrealistic goals. Don't push people too hard,
but I think that's shallow, in a sense. It's easy.
(34:36):
Not shallow, it's easy. I'd go, the bigger one is,
ask yourself periodically, stay in touch with the question, Am
I living the dream? Have I got structures in place, um,
that enable me to stop periodically?
And take, take stock of how I'm living. Do the
goals and the dreams that I'm putting into place, following
(35:01):
through with my workplace and my personal life, are they
actually happening day by day?
Are they the things that I aspired to when I
took on the job? Are they the things that I took,
you know, took to heart when I founded the company? Uh,
am I on track with the founding vision, and you'll
see that, we all talk about mission.
(35:23):
It's a, you know, it's a big word at the
moment that, you know, I suppose, is, is the life
that I'm living reflecting the mission that motivates me? And
if not, what do I need to do to tweak that? Paul,
we heard in the introduction a bit about your personal
history and some family tragedies that you've had. Can you
tell us about that and how it shaped you and
(35:46):
it shaped your approach to resilience?
Wow, that's the, um, that's the question of the day.
In fact, it's easy to answer. I, I would say
it's simple as this.
I try to remind myself all the time, I've only
got one life. And let's be factual about it. I've
hit 57, you know, it's ticking over fast. I've only
(36:07):
got one life, and, and therefore, I go back to
the following lesson. And I've said this so many times, and,
and it's a cliche, but, but that it's not. You know,
you heard in my story that I've lived through the
loss of two brothers.
Um, many of you have heard the story of, of
my mother's closing words to me, um, diagnosed with cancer
and gone, gone 25 days later with very little warning.
(36:31):
In fact, phone call to say, um, mum's gonna be
gone tonight, get on the plane.
And yet to sit there with someone in that place
of life who said don't feel sad, I've done everything.
You know, like, there's nothing we need to say, we've
said it all, you know that, and only one thing, uh,
she said, I want you to promise me, don't work
so hard.
(36:52):
Um, be kinder to you and ask yourself every time
there's a difficult decision, what would mom want me to do?
And I've never forgotten that. In fact, I share that
story every week because it's really helps me these days, and,
and I've known Burnout. And God forbid, I think I've
even burnt many other people, and I regret that enormously.
(37:14):
So I would go these days.
What, what's, what's the right path to walk here? Which
way should I go, this way or that way? What's
the path of life to the full?
Alright, now we come into a rapid fire segment of
the podcast. I'm going to throw a, a series of
quick questions at you, give me the first things that
(37:37):
comes into your mind, an immediate and quick response. So,
you ready? OK, OK, let's go. What's your favourite piece
of technology?
The ice cube maker on the fridge.
Um, I was just thinking about this last night. Um,
it's that one thing that makes my life so much easier,
and hot summer days, I go through ice like it's
(37:58):
going out of fashion. I just go to the fridge
and I push a button, and there it is. I'm
never gonna buy a fridge again that isn't plumbed in
and doesn't have an ice cube maker. How do you disconnect?
Oh, that's easy. Um, it's two things. I either get
out the tools and I start constructing. It's like the
topic of flow, time flies. And the other one is,
(38:18):
I go walking. Uh, if I can find a mountain
to hike, if I can find, um, something to walk
or dream about walking that I haven't, um, then I
get out and I do that, it takes me right
out of my world and lets me switch off. What's
the most important thing you do for your wellbeing?
Make myself accountable. Yeah, definitely. Uh, without a doubt. Having
(38:41):
those people in my life that I talk through the
dreams with, uh, I'm, I'm known for that. Talking through
the dreams and then having those, giving people permission to
keep me accountable, keeping me on track, um, so that
I tick them off.
What's the one thing that would surprise people about you? Ah, yeah,
that's another one, that's easy. Um, I've built 52 houses.
(39:02):
One of my life passions is design. We've been building
Legos since I was born. So the joke at my
50th was, um, have you had Paul to dinner and
it's cost you over 1000. And nearly everyone in the
room put their hand up. It was quite a shock
for me. Um, so yeah, I'm on to house 52
at the moment.
(39:22):
What's the one personal trait most important to success? Yeah, OK.
I'm gonna go with integrity.
Um, the sense of integrity and integrated integrity, the feeling
that my life at nearly every level reflects who I am.
There's not a disparity between me at work and me
at home, that as much as possible, that I am
(39:46):
who I say I am and that I follow through
with what matters. If I do that,
Then if I have a dream or a vision or
a project, people will come with me, um, whereas I
I'm often heard to say,
People spot a fake a mile off, so integrity, I'd
have to go with integrity. What's the one thing there
needs to be more of in business today? Well, I've
(40:09):
already said it, look, a commitment to connection.
Um, there'll be no escaping the need to upgrade our
ways of doing things, there'll be no escaping the need
for new technology, in fact, great gifts coming our way
all the time.
Yet, you know, I was reflecting the other day, when
you go to websites, you go to every website at
the moment that's got money behind it, they write something
(40:31):
about the mission statement, the classic statement, what's different about us.
And you can read all these wonderful things they promised
to be. But, you know, people want to know what's real.
And to do that, they want connection. So I'd sum
sum it up this way.
If you've got someone who's interested in you and is
communicating with you and connecting with you, then you keep
(40:53):
giving them business. Whereas if someone promises you everything on
the website, but the real life doesn't matter, doesn't match up, um,
you'll move on.
Paul, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I'm so
grateful you joined us, so thank you so much for
being with us on the Vocus Inspire podcast. My privilege,
and you have my gratitude, Luke. It's been fun to, uh,
(41:15):
to share these thoughts with you and, uh, wish you
all the best in the ongoing journey.
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this
episode of Focus Inspire, and we look forward to bringing
you more inspiration in coming episodes. If you've enjoyed this conversation,
we've got so much more to share with you. We've
just released a detailed report called Connectivity for.
(41:37):
0, the new business imperative, featuring trends and insights from
industry leaders and experts and importantly, practical steps to help
you lead your organisation through change. Head to our website
at ocus.com.au to download the full report.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
And don't forget, if you want more inspiration and more episodes,
head to Vocus.com.au/podcast. You can follow us on LinkedIn and
Twitter to stay up to date with all things Vocus.
Listen out for the next episode of the Vocus Inspire podcast.
Welcome to Vocus Inspire, the podcast full of brilliant ideas
for business.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, I'm Luke Coleman, head of government and corporate affairs
at Vocus, Australia's leading specialist fibre and network solutions provider.
Before we get things underway, we want to acknowledge and
pay our respects to the traditional custodians of the land
from wherever you're listening. In this podcast, we dive headfirst
into what's on the minds of Australian business and government
(00:30):
leaders to help inspire you and your organisation to go forward,
go further, and go faster. So let's go.
In this episode, we're shifting gears a little to explore
the topic of resilience, why it's come into sharper focus
in the workplace and what personal and organisational value greater
(00:51):
resilience brings to leaders and their teams. Joining us to
discuss this and more is Paul Salmon, principal consultant at
the specialist resilience consultancy Spring Fox.
With a background in mathematics, theology, and psychology, Paul has
a distinguished career in executive, professional, and team development. Growing
(01:13):
up in an army family, Paul frequently faced the challenge
of change, attending 9 schools, moving home more than 30 times,
and living through the loss of two siblings.
He believes it's these thrive or flounder experiences that have
fostered his own resilience. Welcome, Paul, to the Vocus Inspire podcast.
(01:35):
It is great to have you with us. And it's
a real pleasure to be here, Luke. Um, makes me
sound like I've done a lot of things, doesn't it?
It's a, it's an extraordinary history, and I can't wait
to hear a bit more about it from you, so.
Paul, tell me, in an unpredictable world where change is
happening at a fast pace, can you elaborate on why
(01:55):
there's a greater need to focus on resilience in business today? Well,
big question. Um, the first reason is simple. organisations, they
can have all the technology in the world, and in fact,
we do, and, um, talking to a group like yours,
you know that.
But they have staff, they still have people. And, um,
more than ever, if you think about what we've been through,
(02:17):
moving from working, uh, in offices where we say hello
every day to this brave new world of hybrid working,
we're still people working with people, as well as technology.
And if you lose connection with people, we're in strife.
So at that simplest level, resilience is critical. We know
it's become harder than ever at the moment to find
(02:39):
good staff.
So if you use just that as a starting point, um,
you want to have things that you're offering that keep
your staff, that leave people feeling like they're glad to
be working for you.
Um,
You could go with a 3rd road, and that is,
you could look at the research around this, uh, if
you take in Australia, the Mental Healthy Workplace Alliance.
(03:02):
A number of years ago they did a study into
why or why not resilience.
They basically came up with uh an outcome that for
every $1 a company would spend on resilience, they would
recoup as much as $2.30 and well, how, how do
you measure that? Uh, it was measured by stronger employee engagement.
(03:26):
Improve levels of communication, people would be talking more about things,
they would be collaborating more in teamwork. Reduce sick leave,
reduce presenteeism that's where people are turning up, but they're
not actually getting much done.
Improved retention, they're more likely to feel like, hey, you
value me.
Uh, they're more efficient and effective in their performance once
(03:48):
they understand, hang on, there's skills here.
Uh, I look at my own story. When I didn't
understand how important it was to take a lunch break.
I would work myself silly. Uh, in fact, I lost
a staff member once over that.
And I, I've learned, you know, if you give people
permission to set boundaries, then, of course, they're more efficient
(04:10):
and they get more done more quickly. They have lower
levels of stress, they have a reduced risk of burnout.
They make less errors, they have less injury, you know, generally,
improved focus and stamina. You get a more differentiated leadership culture. Now,
those are pretty good reasons for resilience.
And I suppose I'll give you one last one, Spring fox, we,
(04:33):
we have a diagnostic tool that we use um.
Been using for a very long time, something like uh
20,000 people, we follow their results every 2 years, so we,
we track what we learn.
And we track people that do a resilient score before
an intervention, and then take them 1314 weeks later, and
we look at what, what do we see. If you
(04:55):
compare those scores, if you take just the field of construction,
so if you go in the Australian context, construction's a
dangerous place to work at times.
Has a very high suicide rate. If you look at
the results of a group of construction employees, you take
their pre-scores and their post scores, you can get up
to a 40% improvement in their resilience scores. That, I
(05:19):
would suggest, is just one of all of these compelling
reasons for why you would invest in resilience training.
Does that help? Absolutely, and I think a lot of
the listeners on this podcast are people leaders in their
own organisations, so tell me what different ways can people
(05:40):
leaders demonstrate resilience? Well, at the number one level, I'd go,
they need to be seen to continually be going back
to basics.
You know, if you see a leader who's stopping for breaks,
who's locking in their exercise.
Who has, uh, good practises around their sleep. I mean,
that shows up. You can tell when your boss is tired, uh,
(06:03):
or when they're not, you know, when they're continually unavailable
because they're running on edge. When they don't get back
to your emails on time, um, when there's they never
have a lunch break. You know, one of the biggest giveaways, uh,
those bosses that have never had time to sit and say,
So how was your weekend?
Oh, they don't take leave, they don't seem to switch off,
(06:24):
you know, by putting those practises in place, um, people
will watch what you do. And the other thing about that,
you know, good leaders who put these things into practise.
They make time, like I said, to ask staff, how
are you? What's going well for you? They celebrate your birthdays.
(06:45):
I'll never forget, um, one of the earliest bosses I
ever had. He, he had a staff team working for
him of, uh, 250 plus. Somehow, I to this day,
I don't know how he did it, but somehow, I'm
a first year out graduate, and a birthday card turns
up on my desk. And not only the birthday card,
he'd noted something that I'd done.
(07:07):
You know, I probably had had two conversations with him
in the corridor in my entire time there, yet he remembered, he,
he knew my birthday.
You know, that's the kind of thing that demonstrates resilience,
it's also,
You can see a leader who's all over this topic.
They focus on what they can do, not on what
(07:28):
they can't. In fact, that's a quote from Tria Pitt.
You know, you look at what's happened to her. She
could easily get caught up, you know, in all the
things that can't be done, yet she says, Focus on
what I can do, and I avoid focusing on that
that I can't. You know, this links with, it's OK
to say no.
And particularly, I would add for leaders to say, do
(07:50):
you know what? I don't know the answer to that,
but I'll find out and I'll get back to you.
And I'd probably sum it up. When you practise these things,
You give your permission to, you know, you give permission
to your staff to do the same thing.
Uh, I think that's a critical lesson. Uh, if I
(08:10):
can see that in a leader, then I will want
to follow them. Mm.
Now, you have worked in this field for more than
20 years. What would you say that you've learned about
human nature and growth in resilience through that time? I,
I think, uh, it's a, that's a potentially challenging question
because I would say for a long part of that time,
(08:32):
I knew the theory, but I didn't do it.
Um, in fact, I, uh, I ended up in burnout.
Some of you who may be listening to that know
that story. I ended up burnout because the theory was there,
but the practise wasn't. I hadn't reached a point or
hadn't really had a hard enough hitting, um, experience that
I would put it into practise. And I would say
(08:55):
that is my biggest lesson. Even though it was true
of me, uh, I actually assumed that of our own accord,
most people I work with would want to look at change.
Um, we all know there's things that hold us back.
We know that there's areas where we could improve, but
it often requires something hard hitting to get our attention
(09:17):
and help us to face up to the need for growth. I'll,
I'll give you an example, another one. I've had two
unfortunate phone calls in the last week where I've had
friends ring to say, Do you know that person X, um,
has passed away? And these are people who are, you know,
under 55.
And there were things that they could have done, uh,
(09:39):
that would have changed that. In fact, I've twice, been
involved with watching colleagues work too hard, and we would
all look at them and go,
Um, if they don't do something about this, you know,
it's not gonna end well, and sure enough, it didn't.
And this has surprised me because in many ways, like
I said, I thought growth was a given.
(10:00):
Um, there can be lots of reasons why people, uh,
don't want to look at growth, maybe we think we
can't do it. Uh, we might lack the conviction, we
might lack the motivation, we might need support.
In short, it's not usually a lack of knowledge.
That I see as the problem so much as a
lack of action.
(10:20):
You know, when I'm running seminars, I will say to people,
you probably know a lot of what we're talking about here.
The questions really are, well, do you know it? But secondly,
really important one, do you do it?
And with that, and this is relevant for leaders, do
you support other people to do it?
(10:42):
And I think that's what I've learned. I've learned that
most of us need help, uh, to continue to take
action consistently.
Now I'm sure I'm not alone in the feeling that
over the last few years in particular, it feels like
the world is just constantly changing and so quickly, whether
it's in business or in politics, in global events. So
(11:04):
in a situation where things are constantly changing, what advice
would you give to people who are leading teams? Change,
you know, it's such a trendy word, we love it.
But actually, the human brain doesn't like it and and
that would be the first referral I'd make.
Uh, the second thing I'd say, uh, you know, COVID
(11:25):
and other things have shown us that we don't actually
have control of this world. We don't have everything, uh,
under our fingertips. It can be a mistake that we
think we've advanced so far, that we can control life. Well,
we can't. So in the midst of that, I might
not be able to change the circumstances that are going
on around me. In fact, I love to quote Viktor Frankl, um,
(11:48):
when he talks about the fact
One of the last of the human freedoms that no
one can take away from you is the freedom of
choice about your attitude. And I like to extend that
I always have choice, what am I going to do here?
So I, you know, here I'd say, what can I do?
I can take control of my own commitment to myself,
(12:11):
my own commitment to my team, my commitment to my organisation,
and my commitment to my leadership.
So act on me first. That bit I have some
control of.
And, you know, what, what would I be doing? Your
question was, what advice would you give? I would say,
staff need to feel like they're valued and appreciated.
(12:34):
Uh, just yesterday, there was an article in The Australian
about KPMG and they titled the argument.
How KPMG found new purpose.
And they put a subline under that, we've got to
be more than just 9000 people that come to work
every day.
You know, people matter and people want to know that
(12:55):
they matter.
So it's not just about the gifts or the perks,
you know, so often I've seen people think, well, let's
give everybody a box of chocolates, or let's put on
a great end of year Christmas luncheon, you know, the
big debate, what will the Christmas party be this year?
Those are wonderful things.
But they're secondary, you, you look at the, the research
(13:18):
around the science of happiness in the workplace, it's far
more about people feeling like you, they are known.
And that they, you know, that the people that are
looking after them who are supervising them have some idea
of what they're dealing with, that there's compassionate work, that
their bosses are and their organisations are concerned for their welfare.
(13:40):
And that includes, you know, there's really some interesting research here,
people would far work far prefer to work for an
organisation that's gonna promote the growth.
That's gonna present them with a challenge, and the skills
to live out that challenge.
They'll go for that over the company that's gonna have
(14:01):
a staff swimming pool and a staff exercise gym.
You know, they're lovely things, but they're not gonna get
you across the long haul.
I think that going with that, people won't stay in
a role. If you go to the, you know, the
topics that are in the media around the difficulty of
getting and holding staff. People will not stay in a role,
(14:23):
or certainly they won't stay high performing in a role,
they won't give their best if they don't feel valued, respected,
and supported.
So it's critical that people feel like the herd.
If I put some quick money on this, I'd go,
make connection a priority.
People wanna know they matter.
(14:44):
People want to know that they're not alone. I'm not
the only one dealing with what I'm dealing with. And
if you've got those things in place, then you can
challenge them to grow, and I, I'll give you an anecdote.
Um, lots of people have been struggling with the issue
of coming back to the office, or moving, you know,
to the, the hybrid way of working. And I was
(15:06):
with an organisation recently where someone put their hand up
and went, but I've loved working at home. I get
so much done, you know, it works better for my personality.
Why would I want to change? And I went, Well, and,
and remember, I didn't know a thing about this, this person.
I went, well, that would be lovely for you. Um,
(15:27):
as long as you're not leading anybody, it might even
be tenable. But if you were leading anybody or had
any requirement of interconnecting with other people, that might present
some real challenges.
Then I got to morning tea and found out in
fact this guy was leading a large team and that
team at the moment had the the prized um record
of being the most discontented team in the organisation.
(15:51):
And I'll give you one last example, I also ran
5 sessions recently for year 9 students.
And that was a bit of a shock, it was
a bit of an eye opener for me. These young
people had had 2 years where in Melbourne where they
were largely stuck at home.
And when we put them in a room together.
They were so far behind on the ability to communicate
(16:14):
about what they were feeling. In fact, it was very
confronting for them because now they were face to face
with people. You couldn't hit the mute button, or you
couldn't disappear. So I think no matter how much technology
and other things we have,
It's coming back to this point of, you're working with people,
you're leading people, you need to be connected to them.
(16:37):
You've given a few examples of what happens when people
aren't resilient or when they're not putting into place the
kind of practises that make them resilient. So tell me,
from your two decades' worth of experience here, what examples
would you give of where organisations or individuals have taken
the lessons of these programmes on board effectively?
(17:00):
Yeah, that's a really, really, a really good question. I
wish I got asked that more. Um, why? I think
the first one, it's textbook stuff, but it's a, it's
a really profound basic. Get everyone from the top down
over language. So if you take the model that Spring
Fox uses, we use a resilient spiral.
(17:21):
And it's an incredibly good way of help, a very
effective way of helping people understand my journey, whether it
be in a day, a week, a month, I'm gonna
go up and down the spiral. And the, the skill
of resilience is when you go down, get back up.
But if you don't get everybody from the top down
over that language, if you still just 2 or 3
people in that, they're still in isolation. So the first
(17:43):
thing I would say, those who do this effectively embark
on an organization-wide approach to language. Cause language is power.
You're equipping everyone with the ability to communicate with each
other about what's going on.
The second is recognising that people are different.
(18:03):
And have different needs, so allowing, allowing those with a
hunger or a need for more depth to access it.
Give people options. For some, this podcast would be a
good example of all they want or need at the moment, um,
about thinking about the topic of resilience.
(18:25):
But meanwhile, there may be others in an organisation who
are really doing it tough, and they could do with
the opportunity for a really deep dive.
And there might be a smaller group still who could
benefit from the opportunity of not only doing a deep dive,
but having some coaching afterwards.
In fact, uh, people who get involved with coaching can
(18:46):
shift their outcomes from moderate change to very, very significant change.
So, you know, that one piece of advice and encouragement
would be to say to people, look at the individual's needs.
And I suppose the first part, I repeat, it's about
getting everyone across language, that's a structural key. Beyond that,
(19:08):
it's about maximising the gain around individual's needs.
I, I give another, um, point here. I, I love
what I see at Vocus.
Um, the focus on Vocus Day, I've had the privilege
of being at 4 of them, I think it is.
That's a very, very clear priority being made by a
(19:28):
company to say we want you all to feel valued.
And it's actually prioritising well-being and saying, Hang on, you know, I,
we want you to work hard, of course. We want, uh,
measurable productivity. We want to see lots of things happening,
but we also want you to love who you work with,
where you work, and to know that we value you.
(19:50):
And I suppose my last comment here.
A very common mistake is people go, oh we've done
the resilience thing.
And I go, no, actually it's like um my exercise.
I can't say, you know, I've done my exercise this week,
that'll do for the year. Resilience is the journey of life.
(20:12):
It's a case of we continually need to go back
to the content. It's like your annual first aid. Um,
some of you listening might know that I'm, uh, a
secondary school teacher by background. A requirement for teachers is
that every year they redo the first aid, because they
need to be over the latest and greatest. In fact,
(20:32):
they need to be practising what they might need to use.
I think it's very important to say it's the same
with resilience, you need to go back to this periodically
to ensure that you're on task.
And that leads to how I'd close off this question. I,
I've seen three very powerful examples that I never lose
(20:53):
sight of.
Sometimes opening doors for people mean someone will turn up
with something that'll go like this, do you know what,
I've decided I'm gonna quit.
I've realised this isn't for me. This is um this
is not in line with, you know, what really matters
to me.
But then I've had the other experience I've had someone
shoot me an email after a programme and say, you
(21:16):
know what, that programme saved my life today. And you think, oh,
this'll be interesting.
And the email goes on to say, do you know what,
I've not been feeling good for weeks. I went to
the doctor, lo and behold, I have cancer.
But we've got to it in time, they think they're
gonna be able to, you know, I'm gonna be OK.
And the third one, you know, another email where someone said, Oh,
(21:37):
I'm so glad I did that course. It really, really helped.
And they went, you know what? I've put off applying
for a promotion for years. I've never believed in myself enough.
And I walked out of that programme and I went,
you know what? I'm gonna give it a go. And
so next year, I just wanted you to know I'm
gonna be in a leadership position for the first time.
They're concrete outcomes, and they're all outcomes that are good
(22:02):
for an organisation.
Someone leaving when they're not motivated and when they're dragging
others down possibly is a really good move. Someone else going, hey,
I've got talent, I'm gonna step up, that's a great outcome.
And of course someone realising that they haven't been prioritising
their health, that's critical.
(22:23):
Now something you just mentioned in that uh last answer,
I'm conscious that some people listening to this conversation might
not have heard of Vocus Day and what Vocus days are.
As part of our hybrid ways of working at Vocus, uh,
every Wednesday, everybody comes into the office. It's a great
opportunity to get together and on Vocus days once a month, um,
each of our, our major offices around the country will
(22:45):
have lunch, we will get a guest speaker in, we'll
go off site to hear some inspirational messages.
Um, to hear from the company executives about what's happening
in the organisation, and it's really like a, a glue
that brings everybody together, and I think it's a really
important part of building resilience as well when you get
everyone in the organisation on the same page, um, it's, yeah, it's,
(23:08):
it's been a really effective thing for us, particularly after
two years of everybody working from home, uh, having some
human contact has been a really, really important thing. Now
that leads me to my next question, which is,
Now what are the most common things that you see
that do not reflect the resilience principles being lived? There's
gotta be some effective strategies or practises that you know
(23:30):
help build resilience, and yet you see leaders avoiding doing them.
Yeah, now that's a hard one. That taps into, I'm
gonna rely a little bit on data here.
When you look at the data around what we get
back from people, one of the most common things is
people are often operating with a very high level of self-criticism.
They're very hard on themselves.
(23:52):
And so often I find my job is in saying
to people, hang on, hang on, you know, you need
to get some feedback. You're probably doing really well, you're
probably actually doing fine in in getting people to unpack,
why are you being that self-critical?
And actually, why are you being that self-critical of yourself,
and what would the rub off be on your team?
(24:14):
So asking people to stop and ask yourself, hang on,
are you being realistic about your view of yourself?
And I don't see enough of that happen. People tend
to get spiralling, um, one of the most common um
signs of this is people lie awake.
Lie awake at night when there's no one around, giving
themselves a really hard time, and it's not healthy, uh.
(24:38):
The second, obviously I've touched on is the lack of connection.
Not not understanding how important it's not all about me.
It's about me being a human being in a world
that needs me to connect to other people and particularly
You know, those classic questions, how often could you have
called somebody?
(24:59):
And solve the problem quickly. You know, pointing that out
to people, whereas I watch people come into sessions and
they all put their hand up. They've all had a
situation where they've had 20 emails exchanged for something that
could have been solved quite quickly in one phone call. Um,
so they could've cut out the frustration levels, they could've
(25:20):
cut out the time lag, and they could've cut out
the time required by connecting with people. So I'm not
just talking about feel good stuff.
I'm talking about
Connecting in a way that gets productivity happening much more quickly.
What else do I see? Three of the most notoriously
(25:42):
consistent are people's failure to address my diet, my exercise,
and my sleep. And a word about that sleep.
It's the failure to turn off the emails at night,
taking the phone to my bedroom and scrolling at the
last moment before I turn off the lights. You don't,
(26:03):
you don't take your kids outside.
And get them to play on the slippery dip and,
and the gym 5 minutes before you want to put
them to sleep. We know why you wouldn't do that
if you have kids or you have friends with kids,
you don't do that. You want to slow them down.
Um, whereas we do it of ourselves. We think we're
gonna have good sleep.
(26:24):
When we're, um, ignoring all these basics, we don't eat well,
we don't sleep well, we don't exercise. And there are
3 non-negotiables really.
At a more complex level, I'd say.
People not making those hard decisions that need to be
made about priorities, about boundaries.
(26:46):
Particularly when there's external drivers, when there's a budget to
be met, or there's a demand for, you know, opening
new horizons.
I watch organisation after organisation, pushing the people to the extreme.
And yet they'll say, come in and run a resilience session.
Love to have you talk to our people. Yeah, I
wanna have that. But they don't change the expectations on
(27:07):
the staff. I've watched whole departments struggling with this, and
yet it doesn't seem to get the conversation it requires.
Whereas when organisations do set those boundaries, they don't lose people,
they don't burn people out, you know, why, why are
we now seeing in Australia,
A rapidly increasing conversation around burnout.
(27:33):
You know, that's got to, that's got to have some
reasons behind it. And one of it is just this,
that we aren't setting boundaries. And it backfires. It backfires
in projects fall over, or you lose new business, or
your name becomes unreliable, and someone goes to someone else.
So I suppose, uh, I commonly would sum it up,
(27:55):
people don't seem to know when to say enough is enough.
This is a reasonable boundary, and at its extreme, that
results in people getting stuck in habits of overload and
excessive workload, to the point where they think that's now
the norm.
When you suggest to people that 1112 hour days might
(28:19):
not be a good idea.
And they can't see it. They're so ingrained in that
way of working. Uh, I, one of my most, um,
favourite examples around this was,
Uh, working with a firm where the person at the
top of the tree in a session, prided themselves on
(28:39):
the fact that they were the first into the office
every day, and they were the last to leave.
And uh couldn't see until I posed a question, um.
I pose the question, and what do you think that
says to everyone below you about what you expect of them?
And actually then did some practical activities to an anonymously
(29:04):
enable people to give feedback on that. And it was
quite a shock for this person to realise that no
matter how often they would say, I don't expect you
to do the same, everybody else intrinsically thought that was
what was expected.
So it's the failure to live what you want. That
(29:24):
would be, uh, my summary on this.
Those are some great examples of what not to do.
I'd love to hear from you, if you could pick
three pieces of advice to give leaders about building sustainable, high-performing,
resilient staff, what would you urge leaders to do? Wow,
(29:44):
open slather. I love this opportunity.
I think the first one is to question your assumptions.
Uh it's sad to say that so often I've heard
people say, look, we don't need that around here.
And often uh it will be talking to someone who,
(30:05):
Has a perspective that says no all our people are fine.
I, it still surprises me how often I will work
with people who go, we don't have staff with depression,
it's not a real problem, um, those things, you know, they, they,
it's almost like they don't believe such things exist.
So I would go, just because you're OK and you're
(30:26):
doing fine, doesn't mean everyone else does.
In fact, it's often very, very confronting for leaders at
the top when you get an organisation to do a
resilience diagnostic. And you point out to them that the
leaders at the top are often running with quite high scores.
They have a lot of control, they have a lot
of say about what happens in the day, um, they
(30:50):
can make choices.
And then you look at those who were at the
bottom of the, of the ladder, with the least say, accountable,
you know, to almost everyone else up the line, and
they often have the lowest resilience scores. And saying, you know,
just because you're OK, doesn't mean everyone else is. And I'm,
I'm not painting a picture that everyone's in trouble, but
(31:10):
this is, this is real stuff that I see all
the time.
So I suppose, I repeat, question your own assumptions.
If, you know, do you know where your staff are at?
Very simple answer there, go and do something that gives
you some data on that, and then test your assumptions,
(31:31):
and then act accordingly.
The second one, I wish people had a much more
serious budget.
For coaching.
For processes of accountability, and I don't mean accountability in
that we want to tell you off, but accountability for
helping them get on top of their own goals for change.
(31:53):
There's so much to back this up. There's so much
evidence that says, when someone is talking to someone else
about the goals they want to achieve, when they know
that they're gonna come back and talk with them again
about how they're going with those goals, it's a motivator.
Whereas it's like those New Year's Eve resolutions, you know,
we've all made them, we all sit there and idealistically say,
(32:17):
I'm gonna do this this year and I'm gonna do
that this year, and so on.
But it's a different, uh, a different kettle of fish.
It's a different, um, picture if I know that someone's
gonna periodically ask me, how are you going with that?
I can't uh remember the exact quote, but I, I
love the gist of this. If I have a dream,
(32:40):
an idea, and I write it down, now it's a vision.
If I take that vision and I put some steps
to it, now it's a project with a plan. And
a project with a plan is how you make visions
come about.
Because I can measure the outcomes. And so I would
say my second random is, plan for success. Let people
(33:05):
have some opportunity for accountability and growth. And of course,
the third one I've really touched on already. You can
say all you like, people will model themselves on what
they see you do. People are watching you.
They model their expectations more on what you do than
on what you say. So always remember that, what do
(33:28):
your practises tell your staff? And what does that tell
them about what you expect from them?
I often like to put it this way. Are you
living a way that they are inspired by? Are you
living a way that they would like to model? And
I go further, are they living in a way that
if your, if your own kids, if you had them.
(33:50):
Or, or take the, the, the young person most impressionable
and valuable to you. Are you living and working in
a way that you would want for them? If you are,
people will follow you.
Three great pieces of advice. And now we're gonna move
to a, a question that we ask all of our
guests on the podcast, which is, if you had one
(34:13):
wish for all business and government leaders, what would that
one wish be and why? Oh, that's not enough, only one.
One wish, uh, I'm gonna cheat on this. I would
have said, stop setting unrealistic goals. Don't push people too hard,
but I think that's shallow, in a sense. It's easy.
(34:36):
Not shallow, it's easy. I'd go, the bigger one is,
ask yourself periodically, stay in touch with the question, Am
I living the dream? Have I got structures in place, um,
that enable me to stop periodically?
And take, take stock of how I'm living. Do the
goals and the dreams that I'm putting into place, following
(35:01):
through with my workplace and my personal life, are they
actually happening day by day?
Are they the things that I aspired to when I
took on the job? Are they the things that I took,
you know, took to heart when I founded the company? Uh,
am I on track with the founding vision, and you'll
see that, we all talk about mission.
(35:23):
It's a, you know, it's a big word at the
moment that, you know, I suppose, is, is the life
that I'm living reflecting the mission that motivates me? And
if not, what do I need to do to tweak that? Paul,
we heard in the introduction a bit about your personal
history and some family tragedies that you've had. Can you
tell us about that and how it shaped you and
(35:46):
it shaped your approach to resilience?
Wow, that's the, um, that's the question of the day.
In fact, it's easy to answer. I, I would say
it's simple as this.
I try to remind myself all the time, I've only
got one life. And let's be factual about it. I've
hit 57, you know, it's ticking over fast. I've only
(36:07):
got one life, and, and therefore, I go back to
the following lesson. And I've said this so many times, and,
and it's a cliche, but, but that it's not. You know,
you heard in my story that I've lived through the
loss of two brothers.
Um, many of you have heard the story of, of
my mother's closing words to me, um, diagnosed with cancer
and gone, gone 25 days later with very little warning.
(36:31):
In fact, phone call to say, um, mum's gonna be
gone tonight, get on the plane.
And yet to sit there with someone in that place
of life who said don't feel sad, I've done everything.
You know, like, there's nothing we need to say, we've
said it all, you know that, and only one thing, uh,
she said, I want you to promise me, don't work
so hard.
(36:52):
Um, be kinder to you and ask yourself every time
there's a difficult decision, what would mom want me to do?
And I've never forgotten that. In fact, I share that
story every week because it's really helps me these days, and,
and I've known Burnout. And God forbid, I think I've
even burnt many other people, and I regret that enormously.
(37:14):
So I would go these days.
What, what's, what's the right path to walk here? Which
way should I go, this way or that way? What's
the path of life to the full?
Alright, now we come into a rapid fire segment of
the podcast. I'm going to throw a, a series of
quick questions at you, give me the first things that
(37:37):
comes into your mind, an immediate and quick response. So,
you ready? OK, OK, let's go. What's your favourite piece
of technology?
The ice cube maker on the fridge.
Um, I was just thinking about this last night. Um,
it's that one thing that makes my life so much easier,
and hot summer days, I go through ice like it's
(37:58):
going out of fashion. I just go to the fridge
and I push a button, and there it is. I'm
never gonna buy a fridge again that isn't plumbed in
and doesn't have an ice cube maker. How do you disconnect?
Oh, that's easy. Um, it's two things. I either get
out the tools and I start constructing. It's like the
topic of flow, time flies. And the other one is,
(38:18):
I go walking. Uh, if I can find a mountain
to hike, if I can find, um, something to walk
or dream about walking that I haven't, um, then I
get out and I do that, it takes me right
out of my world and lets me switch off. What's
the most important thing you do for your wellbeing?
Make myself accountable. Yeah, definitely. Uh, without a doubt. Having
(38:41):
those people in my life that I talk through the
dreams with, uh, I'm, I'm known for that. Talking through
the dreams and then having those, giving people permission to
keep me accountable, keeping me on track, um, so that
I tick them off.
What's the one thing that would surprise people about you? Ah, yeah,
that's another one, that's easy. Um, I've built 52 houses.
(39:02):
One of my life passions is design. We've been building
Legos since I was born. So the joke at my
50th was, um, have you had Paul to dinner and
it's cost you over 1000. And nearly everyone in the
room put their hand up. It was quite a shock
for me. Um, so yeah, I'm on to house 52
at the moment.
(39:22):
What's the one personal trait most important to success? Yeah, OK.
I'm gonna go with integrity.
Um, the sense of integrity and integrated integrity, the feeling
that my life at nearly every level reflects who I am.
There's not a disparity between me at work and me
at home, that as much as possible, that I am
(39:46):
who I say I am and that I follow through
with what matters. If I do that,
Then if I have a dream or a vision or
a project, people will come with me, um, whereas I
I'm often heard to say,
People spot a fake a mile off, so integrity, I'd
have to go with integrity. What's the one thing there
needs to be more of in business today? Well, I've
(40:09):
already said it, look, a commitment to connection.
Um, there'll be no escaping the need to upgrade our
ways of doing things, there'll be no escaping the need
for new technology, in fact, great gifts coming our way
all the time.
Yet, you know, I was reflecting the other day, when
you go to websites, you go to every website at
the moment that's got money behind it, they write something
(40:31):
about the mission statement, the classic statement, what's different about us.
And you can read all these wonderful things they promised
to be. But, you know, people want to know what's real.
And to do that, they want connection. So I'd sum
sum it up this way.
If you've got someone who's interested in you and is
communicating with you and connecting with you, then you keep
(40:53):
giving them business. Whereas if someone promises you everything on
the website, but the real life doesn't matter, doesn't match up, um,
you'll move on.
Paul, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I'm so
grateful you joined us, so thank you so much for
being with us on the Vocus Inspire podcast. My privilege,
and you have my gratitude, Luke. It's been fun to, uh,
(41:15):
to share these thoughts with you and, uh, wish you
all the best in the ongoing journey.
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this
episode of Focus Inspire, and we look forward to bringing
you more inspiration in coming episodes. If you've enjoyed this conversation,
we've got so much more to share with you. We've
just released a detailed report called Connectivity for.
(41:37):
0, the new business imperative, featuring trends and insights from
industry leaders and experts and importantly, practical steps to help
you lead your organisation through change. Head to our website
at ocus.com.au to download the full report.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
And don't forget, if you want more inspiration and more episodes,
head to Vocus.com.au/podcast. You can follow us on LinkedIn and
Twitter to stay up to date with all things Vocus.
Listen out for the next episode of the Vocus Inspire podcast.
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