July 30, 2025 • 31 mins
I got leadership wrong in 2024. That’s how I started a newsletter earlier this year that scared the hell out of me to publish. In this episode, I share what happened - and the high cost of indecision, fear, and people-pleasing.
Today, I’m turning the mic on myself. I’m joined by psychologist and friend Sabina Read to unpack the personal and professional fallout of the hardest year I’ve had as a leader.
From delaying redundancies to clinging to hope, to letting fear and likability steer my decisions - I share the choices I regret, what I learned from them, and how I’m showing up differently in 2025.
Sabina and I discuss:
- Why I refused to consider redundancies (and what it cost)
- How fear, not strategy, drove my biggest decisions
- The freeze response I didn’t realise I was stuck in
- What my therapist told me that sent me into a spiral
- How psychological safety broke down on my team - and what we do now to protect it
- The cultural check-in we do every 6–8 weeks to catch small issues before they explode
- Why listening deeply matters more than making the “right” decision
- How I started letting go of the need to be liked
Key Quotes
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I got leadership wrong in twenty twenty four. That's how
I started a newsletter I wrote earlier this year that
quite frankly, scared the.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hell out of me to write.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
In this episode, I turn the mic on myself, to
share the mistakes I made, the fear that paralyzed me,
and what it cost not just me, but my team
and my culture at Inventium, And to help me unpack
it all. I am joined by my incredible friends, Sabina Reid.
Sabina is a clinical psychologist, weekly expert on threeaw and
(00:35):
host of the popular podcast human Cox. If you've ever
felt frozen by indecision or driven by the need to
be liked, this conversation is for you, because sometimes the
best leadership lessons come from owning what we got wrong.
(00:59):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
For optimizing your date.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'm your host, Doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Amantha, you have worked with so many leaders, so many organizations,
but recently in your newsletter you dropped a few truth
bombs and you turned the mirror on yourself. What made
you do that, particularly around the context of leadership.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I think I.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Always like to look at what's missing, Like, what are
the things that I'm not seeing, the conversations that I'm
not seeing in the public domain, And quite frankly, I
don't see a lot of leaders reflecting on what they've
done poorly. I see a lot of humble brags on LinkedIn.
I see a lot of successes, awards and all those
(01:47):
sorts of things that, quite frankly, do we need more
of that in our feed Probably not, although I'm sure
I've been guilty of doing the same thing. But I
don't see a lot of leaders asking themselves what I'd
be doing better and sharing those lessons publicly.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That's all humble and noble, but it's not easy to do.
And you kicked off the article by saying I got
leadership wrong in twenty twenty four at Packs of Punch
as an opening line. So what was the moment that
you thought you needed to write this? What was the
exact moment that you thought now is time to share It.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Was interesting back in January this year, twenty twenty five,
I had an off site with my team, or we
went away for a couple of days, and we're talking
about all sorts of things, and you know, one of
the things that came up is twenty twenty four had
been a really hard year at Inventium, and you know,
(02:41):
I'd had to fire some people, I'd had to retrench
some people, and some people left off their own accord,
and that brought a lot of change. And you know
these days, when people leave a company or start a
new role, it's often very public. It's on LinkedIn and
some of the team it had just random people go
what's happening with Inventium? Like there, why is everyone leaving?
(03:03):
And you know, we're meant to be this amazing workplace
and I think in twenty twenty four we were not
an amazing workplace. Yet that's the image we continued to project,
and we talked about it as a team, and I thought,
I really want to share a bit more about what happened. Obviously,
(03:23):
you know, there's lots of confidential things that I can't
go into, but I thought I can at least turn
the table on myself and I can talk about my
experience and the lessons that I learned. And I thought
that was important because I felt for some people that
had followed Inventium there was perhaps a disconnect in terms
(03:44):
of what was going on and I wanted to share
more honestly about some of the things that I'd experienced
and what had happened.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And you did exactly that. So let's dive into some
of your insights and some of the summaries that you
shared in the news of it. The first one was
that hope is not a strategy, and you wrote that
you were really overwhelmed by a sense of fear, but
you didn't recognize it as fear at the time. So
what do you think, in hindsight now you are most afraid.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Of I remember doing a lot of catastrophizing and it
was a hard time in the business, but at a
bigger level, it was a really hard time for consultancies.
You know, towards the end of twenty twenty three, in
the beginning of twenty twenty four, the economy was not
looking good. A lot of our clients were cutting budgets.
I didn't know too many consultancies that hadn't made quite
(04:35):
significant retrenchments, and at that time it was something that
I just didn't see as an option for me for Inventium,
which meant that it put a lot of pressure on
the business, on the team to perform financially in what
was a really really hard environment, and you know, you
(04:55):
never know what's around the corner, like in business and
in consulting, like you never know when that big sale
is just around the corner and can really turn things
around when you're behind in your financial goals. And I
just kept hoping that things would change, and sort of
like some of the you know, the unrest in the team,
I just kept hoping that things would get better. And
at the time, I was quite actively recruiting for a
(05:18):
new CEO, even though I temporarily stepped into that role,
and I hoped, maybe I'll find someone that will really
help me turn things around. And so I just kept
hoping and hoping and hoping.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And you said that a redundancy wasn't an option. What's
the barrier that you had to redundancies?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
It's a good question.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
I think the only time we had to retrench people
in eighteen years of being in business was at the
start of COVID, and everyone had to do it then.
I don't know any businesses that didn't. So while it
was a big thing, it was also a thing that
everyone was doing, which I think normalizes it. And yes,
(05:58):
there were a lot of companies making redundancy is at
the beginning of twenty twenty four, the end of twenty
twenty three. But at Inventum, I just thought, no, we
can get through this. And it's a business that has
very high tenure. People join in Ventium and they stay
for years, like I think at some points in time
my average tenure has been up at around five years,
(06:19):
which is pretty nuts for a consultancy. And it's really hard,
like when you're making decisions about people that you've worked
with for a very, very long time, and so early
in the year it just wasn't an option.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I was considering, would you do that differently now if
you had your time again?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
I think that decision was ultimately to not do anything,
and to not see that as an option was really
driven by fear. And even in my mind, you know,
I'd try to imagine those conversations because I was obviously
the one that was going to have to have those conversations,
and I thought, I can't even conceptualize being in front
of the people that I would have to have the
(06:58):
conversation with, and I I couldn't even imagine it, and
so I just erased that from being an option. But
I would definitely do things differently if I had my
time again, because I think fear was getting in the way,
and by not making that decision or avoiding that decision
or delaying that decision, I put a lot of pressure
(07:19):
on a lot of people that didn't necessarily need to
be there.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And at what cost to you and them and maybe
even the inventing brand temporarily.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think it was at a really big cost.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
And it's funny, like when you're sitting in fear, it's
really hard to think about what is the cost of indecision?
And I now see that that cost was very high.
It was very high for members of the team, it
was high for the culture, and certainly because ultimately, like
I could really only speak for myself, it was an
incredibly high personal cost for me.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And there'll be a lot of people listening who will
be thinking, I mean, who signs up for a redundancy conversation?
It's not an easy conversation to have, but it's powerful
reflections now in hindsight. You also talked in your article
about the freeze response, which is really what you're describing now,
and we know that that has well, it has unhelpful
(08:15):
end results for us when we phrase it's a commonplace
to be, that fight, that flight or phrase state is
not going to move us along where we need to go.
So just to be able to recognize I'm in that
state of phrase now, but what can i do to
shift that so I can take action because you just
kind of languished in the freeze or I don't know
if it's languishing. It's not languishing, it's you're frozen. It's
(08:37):
frozen in the freeze. And then you also talked about
in the article that people pleasing and conflict avoidance, and
you talk about wanting to be liked by your colleagues
and the people that you employ. Perhaps over having these
hard conversations tell us a bit about that, and we know,
(08:58):
of course we all want to be liked. But what
was that experience like for you.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I remember it must have been in the middle of
the year, I think, because I was trying to attend
fairly regular therapy sessions and I was talking about some
experiences that I was having at work, and my therapist
pointed out that I have very high need to be
(09:23):
liked and that was making me a really bad manager.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, actually, he he said people like you shouldn't manage people.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's right, which is a pretty powerful statement. I should
add I probably didn't question that enough at the time.
He's no longer my therapist, like he was great. I
still recommend him. But I look back on that and
at the time I really believed it, and I doubled
down on just going I need to get out of
the coo roll, like I'm not good at it, I
can't do it. I had all this doubt about myself
(09:55):
and he I think through that comment it's kind of
like the nail in the coffin, and I'm like, yeah,
I just I need to not be in this role.
But it's funny when I put this newsletter out into
the public. Through my newsletter, I had a few people
right back and actually question that and go.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Really like, really, that's what was said in therapy.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
But that's what was said. You know, I think that's something
worth questioning.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
But what do you think, Well, what's coming up for
me is one of the things that you do so
well in your AI master classes is you encourage us
to use prompts to have two way conversations, continually prompting
and questioning to build rapport with AI. I don't know
if reports the right word. It's not really, but it's
kind of parallel story to what's coming up for me
(10:43):
in the therapeutic space. Is just because a therapist says something,
it doesn't mean it's an absolute. It's something that they're
bringing into the space. And I think it's important for
all of us to be able to own that it's
okay to say, really, I mean, that doesn't land for
me or I've never thought of it that way before.
I let me just sit with that instead of buying
a hook line and sinker. It's a shared space. And
(11:05):
yet the amount of times I've heard people say, my
therapist says and then they kind of drop this one
or two sentences, which was what your experience was here,
and they hold on to that part. And as you know,
I don't do a lot of therapy anymore, but I've
got countless examples of people coming back to me over
the years in session and saying, you know, remember when
you said X, Y or Z and me thinking I
(11:27):
didn't say that, or those wouldn't be my words. But
that's how it landed, and that's how it was received.
And if we buy it literally and don't question it.
It can send us on a trajectory that we wouldn't
otherwise have gone on. And that's kind of the story
that you're telling here. So tell me a bit about
what shifted them between twenty four and twenty five that
(11:49):
allowed you to let go of some of that need
for approval or being liked and take the leadership role,
perhaps with a different lens.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well, I think I became more aware of it. I
became more are aware of this need to be liked
and how how it was showing up for me. And
I think when you're hyper aware of something, I mean,
that's the starting point for working through I think any
challenge or issue that you're tackling. And being back in
the CEO role in twenty twenty five, like it feels
(12:19):
like my experience at work is literally done a oneint eighty.
It could not be further apart from my experience of
twenty twenty four. And I feel like, you know, it's
really different when you feel like you're kind of you're
in flow. Everyone on the team is kind of behind
(12:39):
you and behind each other, and you know there's a
high amount of trust with every combination of team member,
every diad if you like that we have in the
team there is such high trust and such high respect,
and it feels in a way kind of effortless to lead,
which I guess it sort of. It feels like I'm
(13:00):
in flow from leadership point of view, compared to I
just felt every day I was struggling and drowning and
just full of self doubt in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
And what do you think the relationship with the correlation
is between that sense of trust that you're describing versus
likability or being liked or accepted.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
I'm pausing because I'm reflecting on that. I'm not sure
if it's something I've reflected on.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Good, let's do it now.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
What's your sense of things?
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Because you know me well, you've known me throughout well
for years, but certainly throughout what was going on in
twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
What's your take on it for you?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Or I think let me start broad and then all
zoom into Amantha. I think you know broader. We all
know we've heard time and time again that we are
hardwired for connection. If we don't belong to a tribe,
we die. This was your tribe, so to be liked
as a leader, not just for you, but for any leader,
(14:03):
even if we don't acknowledge that. I've worked with many
leadership teams and heard many CEOs and managing directors and
small business owners the whole gamut. I don't need to
be liked. I just need to be respected as if
you can order it up with a side of fries,
and you can't. So I think there's an honesty there,
(14:24):
and I think of vulnerability that a part of you
was saying. I do want to be liked. I want
them to like me. I want them to want to
come to work and spend time with me. These are
my words, not yours, but I want them to enjoy
this space. I want to be a part of that dynamic.
That's just honest. And I think it's a really fine
(14:44):
line that leaders have to walk between a connection with
one another versus a leadership role. And I don't think
you can just kick the likability or the connection piece
to the curb. I think when it gets in the
driver's seat, that's when it hijacks us.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, that really resonates.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
I think I definitely perform better when I do feel
like I'm liked, and I still struggle with the conversations
where I have an unpopular view.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
But like I remember a.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Few months ago, my team and I were struggling with
a decision where there were three of us making the
decision and.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
We all had quite.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Different views, and it was a decision that we had
to make quite quickly, we only had a few days
to do it. And I remember one of my teammates
like really disagreed with my view, and so she actually,
you know, she called me and she explained why, and
(15:48):
it kind of it made me open up to what
I was missing. And then we ended up making the decision,
which was not the decision I initially thought was best. Then,
through listening, you know, to the conversations the three of
us were having, I concluded that, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
This is the way to go.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
And I later had a conversation with this teammate and
she said, I would have been okay with whatever decision
that you made, but what really made a difference to
me is that you really listened to my view when
it was different to your view. And I thought that's
(16:28):
really interesting because the me that needs to be liked
would have just jumped to I guess I should probably
just make the popular decision here, but I didn't. I
made the decision that I thought was best for the company.
But I do remember that and thinking that's interesting. It's
not about making the popular decision. It's about people feeling
like they have been heard, like genuinely heard.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And I think that's the goal in that story above.
The likability piece is really hearing and the other goal
in that story. And I always say the mark of
a wise human is one that can change their mind
and their opinion in the face of new data information.
And so you heard something in that conversation that you
are open to listening to her views that actually did shift,
(17:12):
not to please her, not to appease her. The way
I'm hearing you say it is you heard something and
you thought, actually, yeah, I hadn't considered that. That's new
data in the mix, and it's changed my view. And
I think often as leaders, we're fearful to change our
view in the face of new data, particularly if it
comes from an employee or someone who works for us,
(17:32):
because we think wrongly that we should have known that
and now they're bringing something to the table that we
didn't know. I hadn't considered. We know what growth mindset
is and we know that that's useful in all domains
of life, but so often we want to be right
rather than to move the dial.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I'm just reminded of something that happened yesterday.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
It was just a small moment that I had picked
up Frankie from school and instead of going home, we'll
going to the bookshop, which meant, you know, potentially driving
a different route. And so at the intersection where we'd
normally go straight ahead, I was going to go left,
and then Frankie said, why don't we go straight ahead
and then we can use the backstreets that might be faster,
(18:18):
And I said, oh, I don't know, but like yeah,
let's try that. And Frankie's like, oh, we don't have
to mum, like we can just go the way that
you were going to go, and I'm like, no, let's
go your way, And I think, you know something in
her like it was just a small moment. It's meaningless,
how are we going to drive to the bookshop? But
for me, I think it's so important as a parent
(18:39):
to go. I'm listening to you and your opinion and
your perspectives matter. And even though I've had like nearly
four more decades on the road than she has. I
like that she's thinking differently about it, and we're going
to try that.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
That is such a potent story. And even that you
said the choice of words, let's go your way to
do the way you want to do it, And it
doesn't make any difference to you which way you drive
to a bookstore. But so often, again it's a really
nice parallel because you're the authority figure. She doesn't even
have a license, you know, she's not even eighteen, so
(19:15):
she's never even driven a car, and she's thinking about
and you want to honor that new way of thinking.
She's you know, not many children Frankie's age would be
thinking about how do we get from A to B?
They just let their parents do what their parent does.
So you want to honor that way of thinking and
her voice. And I think that's the same in a team,
in a leadership situation, or in business. You want to
(19:35):
honor the voice. And honoring the voice doesn't mean you
have to agree with it. And so often when someone speaks,
we think, well, either I have to say yes I
agree or no I don't. But as you experienced and
invent him, you can hear it and experience. You can
hear a perspective, you can hear a story, you can
hear a narrative, and you can do just that. You
can hear it and not to tick a box, but
(19:58):
to hear it with an openness, in a cure curiosity,
and then you still get to decide what you do
with it. So the listening part there. You know, we
all talk about listening in business, in life, I think
it's one of the most underused skills, and particularly in leadership.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, it's time for a quick break, but if you're
leading a team or part of one, you'll definitely want
to hear what's coming up next. In the second half,
I dive into the biggest culture mistake I made last
year and how just one person not feeling psychologically safe
can quietly unravel an entire team. I also walk through
(20:33):
the exact tool we now use every six weeks to
keep our culture on track, which is something that any
team can steal and start using today.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
you work can live.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've
discovered that have helped me personally. You can sign up
for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
You also talked about in your article, And I think
this is quite connected. Psychological safety and psychological safety we
know is a team construct. It's not an individual. You
can't just say I'm psychologically safe as a leader, or
as an employee or as a colleague, because it's got
a contagion effect to it. And you said in your article,
(21:27):
my biggest culture lesson from twenty twenty four was about
psychological safety. It must be universal, not just widespread in
smaller teams. Especially when even one person doesn't feel safe
to speak up, the entire system breaks down. So what
do you do with that as a leader? What did
you do with that as a leader? Because I agree
with the sentiment one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
That's funny because we help our clients build psychological safety
and have better conversations. But I think for me, it
didn't really land for me until I was living with
the experience where a lot of the team had high
psychological safety, They were very comfortable bringing up all sorts
of things, and then there were one or two members
(22:12):
of the team who really didn't, and often that would
result in either them sharing something with me but asking
me to keep it confidential, or again like diads sharing
with each other but no one else. And then I mean,
you know, it's the same company, but it's really different.
(22:34):
And it made me realize if just one person doesn't
feel psychologically safe, that can do a lot of damage
to the whole level of trust within the whole team,
even when some people do feel safe.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I agree, And you said in the article, without complete
psychological safety, genuine concerns moved from open forums to private conversations,
which is what you've described there. How do you test?
What are the metrics? You said, look at this regularly
as a team now, and we didn't used to.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
We've always had metrics in place to do with things
that relate to engagement. But I'll talk you through what
we do now. So every six to eight weeks we
are a remote first team, which means we all work
from wherever we want. But once a month we now
come together in person and on that in person day,
we'll spend about sixty to ninety minutes going through what
(23:25):
we call our Inventium Team Health Monitor, which is adapted
from what at Lassie and do and adapted from some
of the team performance research that wear across, and so
we look at about ten different dimensions that we know
are really important for culture and for a team to
work together really well to be a high performing team.
And one of those dimensions is psychological safety. And so
(23:49):
how we do that as a team. We come together.
We're sitting together in a room, face to face around
a table, and we are each thinking about, Okay, how
are we going the moment instead of thinking back over
the last six to eight weeks or whenever we've last
done that team health monitor, what's our experience like as individuals,
And what we do is we've got a four point
(24:11):
rating system. So silver is the highest and that's represented
by two thumbs up. Then we've got green, which is
one thumbs up. We've got orange, which is thumb on
the side, and then red, which is thumb down. And
so at the counter three, like we all think about
what is that paper scissors kind of like rocks paper scissors,
but with completely different movements, And so what we do
(24:32):
is we all think individually, how would I rate it
for myself? What's my experience? And then on the counter three,
like in rocks paper scissors, we do our gesture and
then sometimes we're completely aligned. A lot of the time
we are, but other times we're not. Other times one
person might have a two thumbs up and someone else
might have a thumbs down. And so for us that's
an important cue. Okay, we need to have a conversation
(24:53):
about this. And likewise, you know, if something is working
really well, it's also important that we know is it
working well? Like what do we need to double down on?
So that ritual that we have as a team has
been so powerful in going how are we going and
how is everyone feeling? And also I think because we're
(25:14):
there face to face, we're doing it in person. I mean,
there's just like a read that you get on body
language that is generally impossible to get virtually, you know,
not least in the because people's camera setup is generally
crap and you can only see them from the neck
up if they have not optimized their virtual setup. But
like you just get something else through that's doing.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
An energy I think there's an energy exchange. You know,
you walk into a room, whether it's for business or pleasure,
you know immediately what the sense you feel is when
you're with in the presence of others, and for all
of the benefits of working from home. That energy exchange
is really valuable. So you do your rocks, paper scissors
(25:58):
well or your thumbs up, thumbsides, thumbs down, double thumbs,
whatever it is. And you also raise something there that
made me curious. It's so easy for us to only
want to focus on the two thumbs down or whichever
the lowest rating was that you described, and we overlook
when we've got two thumbs up. And I think that
a lot of organizations and teams think, well, if it's
(26:18):
working well, let's almost not talk about it. We don't
want to curse it, we don't want to disrupt it.
It doesn't need our attention. And of course, from a
strength based model and positive psychology lens, we have to understand,
as you said, double down, what is working well? Why
is that working well? How can we continue? And what
can we learn that's transferable from whatever that double thumbs
(26:39):
scenario is. To take that to a thumbs down scenario,
because there'll be learnings there.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
I think what is really interesting, or something I think
about a lot, is that you can't rest on your
laurels with culture. It's not like we can just kind
of go oh great, like we're you know, one or
two thumbs up for everything. Let's just continue as is
like it really it does take conscious work, and I
think I also feel like I've seen culture turn around
(27:10):
for worse and for better, and it can happen quite quickly.
That is why I think it always needs to be
kept an eye on. You cannot coast with this kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What do you think the ideal cadence for checking in
on this is you're doing it six to eight weeks,
But a lot of organizations do an annual check in.
I mean not not a check in, but they do
a formalized annual exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Which I think is absolutely nuts.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Four seasons has gone past in that time, three hundred
plus sleeps in the office.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, so much can change in like
a couple of months, and like why we chose six
to eight weeks is like so much can change in
a couple of months, but not heaps can change in
a month, like certainly for us, like or a small
business where a small team, they're not like major changes
(28:05):
going on every month.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah. I think the important part there too is that
something could change quite significantly in a six to eight
week period, but it's not going to hopefully become so
embedded that it's irreversible. And I always say that the
distance between an issue arising and when we talk about
it reflects the health of any relationship. And so if
you leave the time between issue arising and talking about
(28:30):
it to an annual check in, that'd suggests that the
health of the relationship is not as it needs to be. Again,
personally and professionally, you know, I like to draw parallels
between all parts of our lives, because how can we not.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
And I think something else with that is that you
also don't want it to be so regular, like if
we're doing it weekly, that it becomes background noise and
you become desensitized changes in the system.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
So I do think it is a.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Balance between how regularly can you do it that it
still feels novel and important, but not so infrequently that
you're not catching things pretty close to when they're happening.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, and you also want it to feel meaningful enough
that it's not like yeah, thumbs up, thumbs down to
the side. You know at your head, rebi your stomach,
like we know what's expected here. This is just sort
of a ruse that we go through where we dance
around with our thumbs for a minute, but it really
counts for nothing. So when we ask people in an
organizational setting to give us feedback or to share their
experience and then we do nothing with it, we do
(29:30):
more damage than if we hadn't asked in the first place.
So you don't want to be asking so frequently but
doing nothing with it. Because it's boy who cried wolf.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Oh my god, that's so true.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
I think of countless examples with clients where they've done
their engagement survey and then three to four months later
they will actually do something with the results, or sometimes
even later than that, and I just think, oh, what
a terrible experience for employees who have done another survey
to see nothing happen, although you know, maybe something happens
(30:00):
five or six months down the track, by which case
you probably give different scores.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Anyway, that is.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
It for Part one of this very personal a couple
of episodes, but trust me, the conversation is just getting started.
In Part two, which comes out next Thursday, I dive
into what finally pulled me out of the freeze, what
radical transparency really looks like inside inventium, and how I
rebuilt trust, culture and confidence starting with the work I
(30:30):
did on myself. We're also going to unpack what to
do when your team clings too tightly to the past,
how I almost missed a massive seven figure opportunity for Inventium,
and why hitting emotional rock bottom turned out to.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Be the turning point.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
So if you're not.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Already following How I Work, now is the time. Just
tap that follow button wherever you're listening so you don't
miss the next installment. And if this episode hit home,
I'd love it if you shared it with someone else
who might need to hear it too. Thanks so much
for listening, and I'll see you next week for part two.
If you like today's show, make sure you git follow
(31:10):
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
How I Work was recorded
Speaker 4 (31:15):
On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of
the Cooler Nation.
I got leadership wrong in twenty twenty four. That's how
I started a newsletter I wrote earlier this year that
quite frankly, scared the.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hell out of me to write.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
In this episode, I turn the mic on myself, to
share the mistakes I made, the fear that paralyzed me,
and what it cost not just me, but my team
and my culture at Inventium, And to help me unpack
it all. I am joined by my incredible friends, Sabina Reid.
Sabina is a clinical psychologist, weekly expert on threeaw and
(00:35):
host of the popular podcast human Cox. If you've ever
felt frozen by indecision or driven by the need to
be liked, this conversation is for you, because sometimes the
best leadership lessons come from owning what we got wrong.
(00:59):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
For optimizing your date.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'm your host, Doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Amantha, you have worked with so many leaders, so many organizations,
but recently in your newsletter you dropped a few truth
bombs and you turned the mirror on yourself. What made
you do that, particularly around the context of leadership.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I think I.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Always like to look at what's missing, Like, what are
the things that I'm not seeing, the conversations that I'm
not seeing in the public domain, And quite frankly, I
don't see a lot of leaders reflecting on what they've
done poorly. I see a lot of humble brags on LinkedIn.
I see a lot of successes, awards and all those
(01:47):
sorts of things that, quite frankly, do we need more
of that in our feed Probably not, although I'm sure
I've been guilty of doing the same thing. But I
don't see a lot of leaders asking themselves what I'd
be doing better and sharing those lessons publicly.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That's all humble and noble, but it's not easy to do.
And you kicked off the article by saying I got
leadership wrong in twenty twenty four at Packs of Punch
as an opening line. So what was the moment that
you thought you needed to write this? What was the
exact moment that you thought now is time to share It.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Was interesting back in January this year, twenty twenty five,
I had an off site with my team, or we
went away for a couple of days, and we're talking
about all sorts of things, and you know, one of
the things that came up is twenty twenty four had
been a really hard year at Inventium, and you know,
(02:41):
I'd had to fire some people, I'd had to retrench
some people, and some people left off their own accord,
and that brought a lot of change. And you know
these days, when people leave a company or start a
new role, it's often very public. It's on LinkedIn and
some of the team it had just random people go
what's happening with Inventium? Like there, why is everyone leaving?
(03:03):
And you know, we're meant to be this amazing workplace
and I think in twenty twenty four we were not
an amazing workplace. Yet that's the image we continued to project,
and we talked about it as a team, and I thought,
I really want to share a bit more about what happened. Obviously,
(03:23):
you know, there's lots of confidential things that I can't
go into, but I thought I can at least turn
the table on myself and I can talk about my
experience and the lessons that I learned. And I thought
that was important because I felt for some people that
had followed Inventium there was perhaps a disconnect in terms
(03:44):
of what was going on and I wanted to share
more honestly about some of the things that I'd experienced
and what had happened.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And you did exactly that. So let's dive into some
of your insights and some of the summaries that you
shared in the news of it. The first one was
that hope is not a strategy, and you wrote that
you were really overwhelmed by a sense of fear, but
you didn't recognize it as fear at the time. So
what do you think, in hindsight now you are most afraid.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Of I remember doing a lot of catastrophizing and it
was a hard time in the business, but at a
bigger level, it was a really hard time for consultancies.
You know, towards the end of twenty twenty three, in
the beginning of twenty twenty four, the economy was not
looking good. A lot of our clients were cutting budgets.
I didn't know too many consultancies that hadn't made quite
(04:35):
significant retrenchments, and at that time it was something that
I just didn't see as an option for me for Inventium,
which meant that it put a lot of pressure on
the business, on the team to perform financially in what
was a really really hard environment, and you know, you
(04:55):
never know what's around the corner, like in business and
in consulting, like you never know when that big sale
is just around the corner and can really turn things
around when you're behind in your financial goals. And I
just kept hoping that things would change, and sort of
like some of the you know, the unrest in the team,
I just kept hoping that things would get better. And
at the time, I was quite actively recruiting for a
(05:18):
new CEO, even though I temporarily stepped into that role,
and I hoped, maybe I'll find someone that will really
help me turn things around. And so I just kept
hoping and hoping and hoping.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And you said that a redundancy wasn't an option. What's
the barrier that you had to redundancies?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
It's a good question.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
I think the only time we had to retrench people
in eighteen years of being in business was at the
start of COVID, and everyone had to do it then.
I don't know any businesses that didn't. So while it
was a big thing, it was also a thing that
everyone was doing, which I think normalizes it. And yes,
(05:58):
there were a lot of companies making redundancy is at
the beginning of twenty twenty four, the end of twenty
twenty three. But at Inventum, I just thought, no, we
can get through this. And it's a business that has
very high tenure. People join in Ventium and they stay
for years, like I think at some points in time
my average tenure has been up at around five years,
(06:19):
which is pretty nuts for a consultancy. And it's really hard,
like when you're making decisions about people that you've worked
with for a very, very long time, and so early
in the year it just wasn't an option.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I was considering, would you do that differently now if
you had your time again?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
I think that decision was ultimately to not do anything,
and to not see that as an option was really
driven by fear. And even in my mind, you know,
I'd try to imagine those conversations because I was obviously
the one that was going to have to have those conversations,
and I thought, I can't even conceptualize being in front
of the people that I would have to have the
(06:58):
conversation with, and I I couldn't even imagine it, and
so I just erased that from being an option. But
I would definitely do things differently if I had my
time again, because I think fear was getting in the way,
and by not making that decision or avoiding that decision
or delaying that decision, I put a lot of pressure
(07:19):
on a lot of people that didn't necessarily need to
be there.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And at what cost to you and them and maybe
even the inventing brand temporarily.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think it was at a really big cost.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
And it's funny, like when you're sitting in fear, it's
really hard to think about what is the cost of indecision?
And I now see that that cost was very high.
It was very high for members of the team, it
was high for the culture, and certainly because ultimately, like
I could really only speak for myself, it was an
incredibly high personal cost for me.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And there'll be a lot of people listening who will
be thinking, I mean, who signs up for a redundancy conversation?
It's not an easy conversation to have, but it's powerful
reflections now in hindsight. You also talked in your article
about the freeze response, which is really what you're describing now,
and we know that that has well, it has unhelpful
(08:15):
end results for us when we phrase it's a commonplace
to be, that fight, that flight or phrase state is
not going to move us along where we need to go.
So just to be able to recognize I'm in that
state of phrase now, but what can i do to
shift that so I can take action because you just
kind of languished in the freeze or I don't know
if it's languishing. It's not languishing, it's you're frozen. It's
(08:37):
frozen in the freeze. And then you also talked about
in the article that people pleasing and conflict avoidance, and
you talk about wanting to be liked by your colleagues
and the people that you employ. Perhaps over having these
hard conversations tell us a bit about that, and we know,
(08:58):
of course we all want to be liked. But what
was that experience like for you.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I remember it must have been in the middle of
the year, I think, because I was trying to attend
fairly regular therapy sessions and I was talking about some
experiences that I was having at work, and my therapist
pointed out that I have very high need to be
(09:23):
liked and that was making me a really bad manager.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, actually, he he said people like you shouldn't manage people.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's right, which is a pretty powerful statement. I should
add I probably didn't question that enough at the time.
He's no longer my therapist, like he was great. I
still recommend him. But I look back on that and
at the time I really believed it, and I doubled
down on just going I need to get out of
the coo roll, like I'm not good at it, I
can't do it. I had all this doubt about myself
(09:55):
and he I think through that comment it's kind of
like the nail in the coffin, and I'm like, yeah,
I just I need to not be in this role.
But it's funny when I put this newsletter out into
the public. Through my newsletter, I had a few people
right back and actually question that and go.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Really like, really, that's what was said in therapy.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
But that's what was said. You know, I think that's something
worth questioning.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
But what do you think, Well, what's coming up for
me is one of the things that you do so
well in your AI master classes is you encourage us
to use prompts to have two way conversations, continually prompting
and questioning to build rapport with AI. I don't know
if reports the right word. It's not really, but it's
kind of parallel story to what's coming up for me
(10:43):
in the therapeutic space. Is just because a therapist says something,
it doesn't mean it's an absolute. It's something that they're
bringing into the space. And I think it's important for
all of us to be able to own that it's
okay to say, really, I mean, that doesn't land for
me or I've never thought of it that way before.
I let me just sit with that instead of buying
a hook line and sinker. It's a shared space. And
(11:05):
yet the amount of times I've heard people say, my
therapist says and then they kind of drop this one
or two sentences, which was what your experience was here,
and they hold on to that part. And as you know,
I don't do a lot of therapy anymore, but I've
got countless examples of people coming back to me over
the years in session and saying, you know, remember when
you said X, Y or Z and me thinking I
(11:27):
didn't say that, or those wouldn't be my words. But
that's how it landed, and that's how it was received.
And if we buy it literally and don't question it.
It can send us on a trajectory that we wouldn't
otherwise have gone on. And that's kind of the story
that you're telling here. So tell me a bit about
what shifted them between twenty four and twenty five that
(11:49):
allowed you to let go of some of that need
for approval or being liked and take the leadership role,
perhaps with a different lens.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well, I think I became more aware of it. I
became more are aware of this need to be liked
and how how it was showing up for me. And
I think when you're hyper aware of something, I mean,
that's the starting point for working through I think any
challenge or issue that you're tackling. And being back in
the CEO role in twenty twenty five, like it feels
(12:19):
like my experience at work is literally done a oneint eighty.
It could not be further apart from my experience of
twenty twenty four. And I feel like, you know, it's
really different when you feel like you're kind of you're
in flow. Everyone on the team is kind of behind
(12:39):
you and behind each other, and you know there's a
high amount of trust with every combination of team member,
every diad if you like that we have in the
team there is such high trust and such high respect,
and it feels in a way kind of effortless to lead,
which I guess it sort of. It feels like I'm
(13:00):
in flow from leadership point of view, compared to I
just felt every day I was struggling and drowning and
just full of self doubt in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
And what do you think the relationship with the correlation
is between that sense of trust that you're describing versus
likability or being liked or accepted.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
I'm pausing because I'm reflecting on that. I'm not sure
if it's something I've reflected on.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Good, let's do it now.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
What's your sense of things?
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Because you know me well, you've known me throughout well
for years, but certainly throughout what was going on in
twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
What's your take on it for you?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Or I think let me start broad and then all
zoom into Amantha. I think you know broader. We all
know we've heard time and time again that we are
hardwired for connection. If we don't belong to a tribe,
we die. This was your tribe, so to be liked
as a leader, not just for you, but for any leader,
(14:03):
even if we don't acknowledge that. I've worked with many
leadership teams and heard many CEOs and managing directors and
small business owners the whole gamut. I don't need to
be liked. I just need to be respected as if
you can order it up with a side of fries,
and you can't. So I think there's an honesty there,
(14:24):
and I think of vulnerability that a part of you
was saying. I do want to be liked. I want
them to like me. I want them to want to
come to work and spend time with me. These are
my words, not yours, but I want them to enjoy
this space. I want to be a part of that dynamic.
That's just honest. And I think it's a really fine
(14:44):
line that leaders have to walk between a connection with
one another versus a leadership role. And I don't think
you can just kick the likability or the connection piece
to the curb. I think when it gets in the
driver's seat, that's when it hijacks us.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, that really resonates.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
I think I definitely perform better when I do feel
like I'm liked, and I still struggle with the conversations
where I have an unpopular view.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
But like I remember a.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Few months ago, my team and I were struggling with
a decision where there were three of us making the
decision and.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
We all had quite.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Different views, and it was a decision that we had
to make quite quickly, we only had a few days
to do it. And I remember one of my teammates
like really disagreed with my view, and so she actually,
you know, she called me and she explained why, and
(15:48):
it kind of it made me open up to what
I was missing. And then we ended up making the decision,
which was not the decision I initially thought was best. Then,
through listening, you know, to the conversations the three of
us were having, I concluded that, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
This is the way to go.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
And I later had a conversation with this teammate and
she said, I would have been okay with whatever decision
that you made, but what really made a difference to
me is that you really listened to my view when
it was different to your view. And I thought that's
(16:28):
really interesting because the me that needs to be liked
would have just jumped to I guess I should probably
just make the popular decision here, but I didn't. I
made the decision that I thought was best for the company.
But I do remember that and thinking that's interesting. It's
not about making the popular decision. It's about people feeling
like they have been heard, like genuinely heard.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And I think that's the goal in that story above.
The likability piece is really hearing and the other goal
in that story. And I always say the mark of
a wise human is one that can change their mind
and their opinion in the face of new data information.
And so you heard something in that conversation that you
are open to listening to her views that actually did shift,
(17:12):
not to please her, not to appease her. The way
I'm hearing you say it is you heard something and
you thought, actually, yeah, I hadn't considered that. That's new
data in the mix, and it's changed my view. And
I think often as leaders, we're fearful to change our
view in the face of new data, particularly if it
comes from an employee or someone who works for us,
(17:32):
because we think wrongly that we should have known that
and now they're bringing something to the table that we
didn't know. I hadn't considered. We know what growth mindset
is and we know that that's useful in all domains
of life, but so often we want to be right
rather than to move the dial.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I'm just reminded of something that happened yesterday.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
It was just a small moment that I had picked
up Frankie from school and instead of going home, we'll
going to the bookshop, which meant, you know, potentially driving
a different route. And so at the intersection where we'd
normally go straight ahead, I was going to go left,
and then Frankie said, why don't we go straight ahead
and then we can use the backstreets that might be faster,
(18:18):
And I said, oh, I don't know, but like yeah,
let's try that. And Frankie's like, oh, we don't have
to mum, like we can just go the way that
you were going to go, and I'm like, no, let's
go your way, And I think, you know something in
her like it was just a small moment. It's meaningless,
how are we going to drive to the bookshop? But
for me, I think it's so important as a parent
(18:39):
to go. I'm listening to you and your opinion and
your perspectives matter. And even though I've had like nearly
four more decades on the road than she has. I
like that she's thinking differently about it, and we're going
to try that.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
That is such a potent story. And even that you
said the choice of words, let's go your way to
do the way you want to do it, And it
doesn't make any difference to you which way you drive
to a bookstore. But so often, again it's a really
nice parallel because you're the authority figure. She doesn't even
have a license, you know, she's not even eighteen, so
(19:15):
she's never even driven a car, and she's thinking about
and you want to honor that new way of thinking.
She's you know, not many children Frankie's age would be
thinking about how do we get from A to B?
They just let their parents do what their parent does.
So you want to honor that way of thinking and
her voice. And I think that's the same in a team,
in a leadership situation, or in business. You want to
(19:35):
honor the voice. And honoring the voice doesn't mean you
have to agree with it. And so often when someone speaks,
we think, well, either I have to say yes I
agree or no I don't. But as you experienced and
invent him, you can hear it and experience. You can
hear a perspective, you can hear a story, you can
hear a narrative, and you can do just that. You
can hear it and not to tick a box, but
(19:58):
to hear it with an openness, in a cure curiosity,
and then you still get to decide what you do
with it. So the listening part there. You know, we
all talk about listening in business, in life, I think
it's one of the most underused skills, and particularly in leadership.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, it's time for a quick break, but if you're
leading a team or part of one, you'll definitely want
to hear what's coming up next. In the second half,
I dive into the biggest culture mistake I made last
year and how just one person not feeling psychologically safe
can quietly unravel an entire team. I also walk through
(20:33):
the exact tool we now use every six weeks to
keep our culture on track, which is something that any
team can steal and start using today.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
you work can live.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've
discovered that have helped me personally. You can sign up
for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
You also talked about in your article, And I think
this is quite connected. Psychological safety and psychological safety we
know is a team construct. It's not an individual. You
can't just say I'm psychologically safe as a leader, or
as an employee or as a colleague, because it's got
a contagion effect to it. And you said in your article,
(21:27):
my biggest culture lesson from twenty twenty four was about
psychological safety. It must be universal, not just widespread in
smaller teams. Especially when even one person doesn't feel safe
to speak up, the entire system breaks down. So what
do you do with that as a leader? What did
you do with that as a leader? Because I agree
with the sentiment one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
That's funny because we help our clients build psychological safety
and have better conversations. But I think for me, it
didn't really land for me until I was living with
the experience where a lot of the team had high
psychological safety, They were very comfortable bringing up all sorts
of things, and then there were one or two members
(22:12):
of the team who really didn't, and often that would
result in either them sharing something with me but asking
me to keep it confidential, or again like diads sharing
with each other but no one else. And then I mean,
you know, it's the same company, but it's really different.
(22:34):
And it made me realize if just one person doesn't
feel psychologically safe, that can do a lot of damage
to the whole level of trust within the whole team,
even when some people do feel safe.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I agree, And you said in the article, without complete
psychological safety, genuine concerns moved from open forums to private conversations,
which is what you've described there. How do you test?
What are the metrics? You said, look at this regularly
as a team now, and we didn't used to.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
We've always had metrics in place to do with things
that relate to engagement. But I'll talk you through what
we do now. So every six to eight weeks we
are a remote first team, which means we all work
from wherever we want. But once a month we now
come together in person and on that in person day,
we'll spend about sixty to ninety minutes going through what
(23:25):
we call our Inventium Team Health Monitor, which is adapted
from what at Lassie and do and adapted from some
of the team performance research that wear across, and so
we look at about ten different dimensions that we know
are really important for culture and for a team to
work together really well to be a high performing team.
And one of those dimensions is psychological safety. And so
(23:49):
how we do that as a team. We come together.
We're sitting together in a room, face to face around
a table, and we are each thinking about, Okay, how
are we going the moment instead of thinking back over
the last six to eight weeks or whenever we've last
done that team health monitor, what's our experience like as individuals,
And what we do is we've got a four point
(24:11):
rating system. So silver is the highest and that's represented
by two thumbs up. Then we've got green, which is
one thumbs up. We've got orange, which is thumb on
the side, and then red, which is thumb down. And
so at the counter three, like we all think about
what is that paper scissors kind of like rocks paper scissors,
but with completely different movements, And so what we do
(24:32):
is we all think individually, how would I rate it
for myself? What's my experience? And then on the counter three,
like in rocks paper scissors, we do our gesture and
then sometimes we're completely aligned. A lot of the time
we are, but other times we're not. Other times one
person might have a two thumbs up and someone else
might have a thumbs down. And so for us that's
an important cue. Okay, we need to have a conversation
(24:53):
about this. And likewise, you know, if something is working
really well, it's also important that we know is it
working well? Like what do we need to double down on?
So that ritual that we have as a team has
been so powerful in going how are we going and
how is everyone feeling? And also I think because we're
(25:14):
there face to face, we're doing it in person. I mean,
there's just like a read that you get on body
language that is generally impossible to get virtually, you know,
not least in the because people's camera setup is generally
crap and you can only see them from the neck
up if they have not optimized their virtual setup. But
like you just get something else through that's doing.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
An energy I think there's an energy exchange. You know,
you walk into a room, whether it's for business or pleasure,
you know immediately what the sense you feel is when
you're with in the presence of others, and for all
of the benefits of working from home. That energy exchange
is really valuable. So you do your rocks, paper scissors
(25:58):
well or your thumbs up, thumbsides, thumbs down, double thumbs,
whatever it is. And you also raise something there that
made me curious. It's so easy for us to only
want to focus on the two thumbs down or whichever
the lowest rating was that you described, and we overlook
when we've got two thumbs up. And I think that
a lot of organizations and teams think, well, if it's
(26:18):
working well, let's almost not talk about it. We don't
want to curse it, we don't want to disrupt it.
It doesn't need our attention. And of course, from a
strength based model and positive psychology lens, we have to understand,
as you said, double down, what is working well? Why
is that working well? How can we continue? And what
can we learn that's transferable from whatever that double thumbs
(26:39):
scenario is. To take that to a thumbs down scenario,
because there'll be learnings there.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
I think what is really interesting, or something I think
about a lot, is that you can't rest on your
laurels with culture. It's not like we can just kind
of go oh great, like we're you know, one or
two thumbs up for everything. Let's just continue as is
like it really it does take conscious work, and I
think I also feel like I've seen culture turn around
(27:10):
for worse and for better, and it can happen quite quickly.
That is why I think it always needs to be
kept an eye on. You cannot coast with this kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What do you think the ideal cadence for checking in
on this is you're doing it six to eight weeks,
But a lot of organizations do an annual check in.
I mean not not a check in, but they do
a formalized annual exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Which I think is absolutely nuts.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Four seasons has gone past in that time, three hundred
plus sleeps in the office.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, so much can change in like
a couple of months, and like why we chose six
to eight weeks is like so much can change in
a couple of months, but not heaps can change in
a month, like certainly for us, like or a small
business where a small team, they're not like major changes
(28:05):
going on every month.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah. I think the important part there too is that
something could change quite significantly in a six to eight
week period, but it's not going to hopefully become so
embedded that it's irreversible. And I always say that the
distance between an issue arising and when we talk about
it reflects the health of any relationship. And so if
you leave the time between issue arising and talking about
(28:30):
it to an annual check in, that'd suggests that the
health of the relationship is not as it needs to be. Again,
personally and professionally, you know, I like to draw parallels
between all parts of our lives, because how can we not.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
And I think something else with that is that you
also don't want it to be so regular, like if
we're doing it weekly, that it becomes background noise and
you become desensitized changes in the system.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
So I do think it is a.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Balance between how regularly can you do it that it
still feels novel and important, but not so infrequently that
you're not catching things pretty close to when they're happening.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, and you also want it to feel meaningful enough
that it's not like yeah, thumbs up, thumbs down to
the side. You know at your head, rebi your stomach,
like we know what's expected here. This is just sort
of a ruse that we go through where we dance
around with our thumbs for a minute, but it really
counts for nothing. So when we ask people in an
organizational setting to give us feedback or to share their
experience and then we do nothing with it, we do
(29:30):
more damage than if we hadn't asked in the first place.
So you don't want to be asking so frequently but
doing nothing with it. Because it's boy who cried wolf.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Oh my god, that's so true.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
I think of countless examples with clients where they've done
their engagement survey and then three to four months later
they will actually do something with the results, or sometimes
even later than that, and I just think, oh, what
a terrible experience for employees who have done another survey
to see nothing happen, although you know, maybe something happens
(30:00):
five or six months down the track, by which case
you probably give different scores.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Anyway, that is.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
It for Part one of this very personal a couple
of episodes, but trust me, the conversation is just getting started.
In Part two, which comes out next Thursday, I dive
into what finally pulled me out of the freeze, what
radical transparency really looks like inside inventium, and how I
rebuilt trust, culture and confidence starting with the work I
(30:30):
did on myself. We're also going to unpack what to
do when your team clings too tightly to the past,
how I almost missed a massive seven figure opportunity for Inventium,
and why hitting emotional rock bottom turned out to.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Be the turning point.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
So if you're not.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Already following How I Work, now is the time. Just
tap that follow button wherever you're listening so you don't
miss the next installment. And if this episode hit home,
I'd love it if you shared it with someone else
who might need to hear it too. Thanks so much
for listening, and I'll see you next week for part two.
If you like today's show, make sure you git follow
(31:10):
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
How I Work was recorded
Speaker 4 (31:15):
On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of
the Cooler Nation.
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