September 2, 2026 • 33 mins
You give your team something rare. A four-day week. Flexible hours. Real breathing room. And for a while, it works beautifully. Then, gradually, the gratitude fades. The expectation creeps in. And suddenly, the gift feels like a given.
This is one of the more uncomfortable paradoxes of building a genuinely good workplace: the better the culture you create, the faster it becomes the new normal. And once people stop noticing it, they start resenting any friction that interrupts it.
This episode is part of The Work Edit, a format where I sit down with someone facing a real professional challenge and we work through it together. My guest is Marilla, who has spent eight years building Equality Media and Marketing, a 30-person agency where flexible time is a core part of the culture. Marilla came to me with a challenge I hear a lot from leaders of genuinely good workplaces: what do you do when your team starts taking the culture for granted?
If you lead people, this one is full of things you can take straight into your week:
- The goat story: an ancient parable that explains why people stop appreciating what's good, and how to use it as a leadership tool
- Why Inventium runs a Four Day Week policy reset every one to two years, and the specific questions that make those conversations productive
- Why checking emails for 45 minutes feels like "working all night", and what that distortion does to team morale
- What to do when one or two people are quietly poisoning the culture, and when to stop trying to bring them around
- The "deal or no deal" conversation: how to give people a genuine choice about whether they're still on the bus
- The single question I ask before any team-wide pep talk, to make sure I'm not just avoiding a direct conversation I need to have
Key quotes
"All I can control is how I approach the conversation and the messages that I deliver. I can't control how that other person is gonna react."
"Is this about the minority or the majority? Because that's really unfair if it's just the minority that's the root cause of what's happening."
My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a problem almost every good boss eventually runs into.
You give your team something genuinely great and within a
year they treat it like a basic right. The gratitude fades,
the entitlement creeps in and you're left wondering how to
reset it without looking like the villain. Today's episode is
(00:21):
a work edit where I coach a listener through a
real challenge and And this one is packed with things
that you can steal. You'll learn the strange little goat
trick for resetting how people value what they've got. You'll
get the exact question to ask before you deliver any
team-wide pep talk so you stop avoiding the conversation you
actually need to have. And you'll hear how to handle
(00:43):
the one or two negative people who can quietly poison
a whole team, including the move that I have used
to turn a toxic culture around. If you lead people,
I promise you will leave this episode with something to
try out tomorrow. Welcome to How I Work, a show
(01:10):
about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm
your host, Dr. Amantha Imber. Marilla, welcome. Tell me what
made you put your hand up. What are we helping
you with today?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Thanks for having me, Amantha. So I run Equality Media
and Marketing. I've been doing that for the last eight years.
I have a team of 30 people that work with me.
And I guess people management and how to manage people
is always something that I'm always wanting to learn and
grow and understand more about. And just when you think
you're kind of getting the hang of it, something might
pop up that you kind of haven't experienced before. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So tell me, what are some of the problems and
challenges going on at Equality right now?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So we're in a really good position. And so I
think it kind of is a bit of that, like,
how do you be match fit, even when you're at
the height of career and How do you kind of
grow to that next level? So I think generally speaking,
we're in a really good position culturally. What I have
noticed is a little bit of, I wouldn't say a
lack of gratitude, but maybe a decline of gratitude for
(02:15):
the workplace that we're creating at Equality. So we do
a version of the four-day workweek. We call it Equality Time.
And similar to you, because we've taken lots of inspiration
from you and training, it's a gift, not a given.
But I've started to notice some of the language from
people moving in that there's an expectation that a quality
time or the four-day work week will be available even
(02:37):
if work's not up to date. And so we've got
structures in place. We're trying to put in regular training
around how do we make sure that our pencils are
as sharp as possible so that a quality time is possible.
But I'm just noticing that expectation kind of creep in.
So I would love to kind of work with you
on understanding how do you make sure that people feel
(02:58):
gratitude for things once they kind of become used to
it because I know that that is a human truth
that like you get used to how your life is
and so then you kind of can sometimes forget how
lucky your life can be.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Great so we're talking about gratitude and on the flip
side entitlement which is something that I've thought so much
about over the last few years or really I mean
we've been running the four-day week for six years now
and I think it's an inevitable part of running it.
So let's get into that. Is there anything else though
(03:30):
that is on your mind that you might like some
help with?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, I think the flip side of the gratitude is
the grit and the hard work that has to go
into making something like a quality time possible. And again,
it's not just an expectation that when you're employed at
somewhere like a quality, then you're working four days a
week or you're part-time because that's not the case. It's
about How do you double down and work efficiently, but
also hard to get that reward?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Let's start with the gratitude slash entitlement challenge. It reminds
me of this story that I think maybe my parents
told me, and I can't even remember what context, but
it's called the goat story. And I think of it
(04:16):
when I think of entitlement and just trying to reset expectations.
So There's a family and they're a Jewish family. It's like,
you know, a mom and a dad and six kids
and they're living in this tiny two-bedroom apartment and things
are like, you know, really squashed and they're all like,
you know, living on each other's backs and it's just
(04:38):
like it's horrible. And so they go to their rabbi
and they're like, Rabbi, what can we do? Like it's
just chaos. It's so cramped in our apartment with our
big family. What should we do? And the rabbi says,
get a goat. And the parents are like, what are
you talking about? We've just told you how crazy and
chaotic it is in this space. Makes no sense. Yeah.
And he said, get a goat and come back and
(05:01):
see me in a week. And so they're a bit baffled,
but they go and they buy a goat. Mm-hmm. And
the goat then moves in with them. And it's a disaster.
Like the goat is eating everything. The place is an
utter disaster zone. It's terrible. It is the worst week.
And then they go back and they see the rabbi.
And they said, this has just been the worst week.
(05:24):
Things have got so much worse with the goat. Everything's destroyed.
It's eaten and so on. And the rabbi says, get
rid of the goat. Come back and see me in
a week. And they get rid of the goat. I
don't know how, I'm sure ethically. And suddenly everything's fantastic.
Like nothing's been eaten. It's like, it's peaceful again without
the goat. And that is essentially the story because it's so,
(05:48):
you know, I love that because like when you're used
to a certain way of working that is actually, you know, good,
good conditions. I mean, anyone that is working for a
company that has a four day week, is pretty fortunate,
I think. And it's really easy to forget that. And
so I think, well, what is your version of the goat?
(06:08):
Like that is one way to think about it. But
then another way that I think about this and something
that's been really useful at Inventium is that Every one
or two years, we've actually done a policy reset with,
we call it the gift of the fifth. So, you know,
if you do your work in four normal length days,
you get the gift of time on Friday. And for
(06:29):
the most part, it's worked really well. But in 2024,
it was terrible. And interestingly, 2024 was kind of like
our year of the goat, where we were working five days,
almost all of the team was doing a five day
week for a large part of the year because we
were you know, we're behind on our financial targets. It
was a really hard economic environment for a, like a,
(06:50):
you know, a training company like ours. And I mean,
like personally, I was doing the six or seven day week,
you know, which I did write about and speak about
at the time quite publicly and, you know, felt sort
of quite shameful, but that was kind of a year
of the goat. And it's been brilliant since then, once
we got rid of the goat and got back to normal.
We've all had years of the goat.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So I guess that's my first question to you. Like,
Taking that goat story, what could the goat be? Because
bringing in a goat is a pretty quick way to
improve gratitude and reduce entitlement. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's hard because I'm not a goat giver. Like I've
done so much work around. The first thing when you
say that, that I think about is like the reward
or the consequence. So I'm a mum and I try
with my kids around the choice of consequence, you know,
like Choose your behavior wisely now so you have a
really good consequence. If you behave well in this situation,
(07:47):
the consequence will be what you want. If you don't,
then you won't get what you want and trying to
give them that choice. I know I shouldn't compare my
children to my workplace, but I feel like there's so
much in leadership that is parallel. I guess I could
take something like that rather than I don't really want
to take equality time away or punish or threaten that
(08:09):
it could be different. And so keeping people in that environment,
like maybe that is a conversation I need to be
having is like, you have a choice in this, the consequence.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Something I thought about at the time when, you know, during,
you know, over the six years of doing it, there
have been times where 2024 aside, we struggled with a
sense of entitlement, probably in the first two or three
years of running the four day week. And, you know,
occasionally we'd hire someone that this was their first full-time
(08:40):
job out of say, you know, uni and, you know,
doing like post-grad studies and so forth. And they'd never
experienced a five-day work week. And it's really hard when
you have no comparison points. So one idea I have,
I never executed this idea, but I thought, wouldn't it
be interesting to just give team members a secondment for
three months at one of our clients who are, you know,
(09:03):
all kind of mid to large size corporate organizations for
the most part and see kind of how life is
there because, you know, that was one version of the goat.
But yeah, another thing I think, and I kind of
alluded to this, is thinking about a policy reset where
you actually come together as a team and you go,
(09:23):
what's working, what's not working, and what's confusing? And I
think that this is a really useful thing to do
for most policies that are novel, as obviously the four-day
work policy is. And so how those conversations have gone
at Inventium, they've always been at our all-team off-sites where
we've spoken about what's working well about the policy and
(09:46):
what we're enjoying, what's not working well about the policy.
And then we've spoken about what's confusing or where are
we seeing inconsistent behavior? Like, for example, something that has
often come up for us is, is it okay to
send emails on a Friday? Like that is a very
simple question, but it sends a really powerful signal. And
(10:08):
what we find, and certainly what I found and has
been my experience, is that during busy times, I will
start to send emails on Fridays. And very occasionally, I
will have a meeting on a Friday. And of course,
we can all see each other's diaries. And most of
the time, my team would be checking emails once or
(10:30):
twice on a Friday, assuming that they're taking gift of
the fifth. And if they're seeing emails from the leader
of the company, they're going to be like, oh, we're
not doing gift of the fifth now. So I've had
to be really careful about what is my behavior signaling
to to the team. That is a thing. But we've
also had to have really open discussions to go, well,
(10:53):
we should probably have a principle around this because I
can't have a different standard for myself that I expect
from the team. And so the last time we did
a reset, which was, I want to say nearly 12
months ago now, we as a team said, We're not
going to send emails on a Friday and we're not
(11:15):
going to have meetings. Like obviously we'd never have an
internal meeting on a Friday, but we would also never
have a client meeting on a Friday. And that in
and of itself was an absolute, that was a huge
change for the team. Sounds really simple, but I'm a
big believer in thinking about, well, what are these small
signals that actually say so much to the team?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
What's this kind of bringing up for you? Because I'm curious,
what are the signals saying right now? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And like I said, overall, I feel like we're in
a really positive position and it's more trying to nip
things in the bud before they get out of hand.
And I would say that 95% of people are still
really gracious. It's when you feel or hear those rumblings
of a couple of people saying, well, I never get
a full day of equality time, for example, because they're
checking emails. And Is it me just being able to
(12:05):
have the courage as a leader to say, I've noticed
a couple of things that you're saying feels like you're
taking ET time for granted or is everything okay and
having a check-in with somebody in a different way? Because
often what I've found as a leader is the things
that are the issues are rarely the things that are
brought up in the first place.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So- That's what I.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Kind of am starting to think about as you're explaining
some of those. The other thing that's a little bit
different for our ET time versus yours is we split
at Mondays and Fridays because we kind of can't ever
be all off at once within the business structure that
we have. And so it can be a little bit
harder because it's not always cut and dry because not
everybody's like off at the same time.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Something you said then triggered something else for me. Mm-hmm.
in that you said, well, people are saying, well, I'm
checking emails on my ET time day. And so therefore
I am working. And I recently had Laura Vanderkam on
the podcast. I think she's been on a couple of
times and she's this amazing American woman. She's written many
(13:10):
books on how to manage our time. I loved it.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I was going to reference it before when we were
talking about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So something she talks about is how we're pretty bad
at judging how we're using our time and how much
time we're spending on things. And let's just take the
example as she gave to me, someone that says, I
spent all night working. And probably what has actually happened
if they were tracking their time is they maybe spent
(13:39):
45 minutes on their computer in their inbox, but it
just felt like they were working all night when in reality, no.
they worked for 45 minutes and then they went back
to Netflix. And what's interesting there is again, like what
we do at Inventium, we've actually got quite clear definitions
(14:00):
around what does it mean to take gift of the fifth?
And every Tuesday we send around a survey asking people,
you know, did you take gift of the fifth? And
for us taking gift of the fifth, is if you
worked less than two hours. So it would be very,
very normal for anyone on the team, I think, to
probably spend half an hour in their inbox just cleaning
things up and ending the week in a clean way
(14:23):
and getting ready for the next week to be all
set up so it's not going to be overwhelming or
stressful or whatever. And so if you work half an
hour or an hour on a Friday... it's still taking
gift of the fifth and we're all really clear on that. But,
you know, I think fundamentally people are really bad at
estimating how much time they're spending on something. And if
(14:46):
they're already in that frame of entitlement, they're going to
view an hour's worth of work on ET time very
differently to someone that's feeling the gratitude. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
And is that something around like the gratitude and tying
that into like resilience and that hard work? The reason
that I created Equality was because I felt like for
a lot of my career, my hard work wasn't appreciated. And,
you know, every job I'd ever left before I started Equality,
I got replaced with at least two people, but I
was never paid two people's wages. And so, you know,
(15:24):
like we've tried to stack a lot of things that say,
we want to value you as humans in the workplace.
All we ask for in return is like that commitment
to getting your job done and making sure that we're
not overloading people with the amount of work that we're
expecting them to be able to achieve in that period
of time.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It's obviously like a different set of responsibilities and stresses
when you're the founder of a business. And I never
expect that people will be Because I think in the
early days of Inventium, I'd be like, why does no
one care as much as me? Why is no one
working as hard as me? And then it's like, well,
that's why I've taken on the risk of being a
(16:02):
business owner. That's right. And so I think I learned
that pretty early on. But then I also think about, well,
what does work actually mean? And again, one of my
other problems with the four-day week is that it essentially
is it's thinking about workers hours as opposed to the
impact and the outcomes that you're driving. And so wherever possible,
(16:25):
and this can be really hard to do in some
roles is to, to really quantify the impact that people
are having. So, you know, I think about my team
and a lot of the team are in ventiologists. So
that means they're, They're consultants, they're facilitators, they're working with
clients helping develop some kind of a skill, whether that
(16:47):
be AI fluency or productivity or innovation or whatever. And
for me, it's like the things that I'm most interested
in are how are clients feeling about the experience that
they're having with my team? And of course, is my
team able to take gift of the fifth? And that's
(17:07):
just a shortcut for going, okay, great. We're leading balanced lives,
which is obviously an important value that we hold at Inventium.
But I'm trying to go, well, where are those objective
markers of impact? And I know a lot of people
talk about outcome over hours, et cetera, but I think
that that can be just a really useful way of going, okay,
(17:31):
how are you working? And to spend the time going,
what does that look like for each role? And I
think at Inventium, we've managed to do that. And also
like in this world of AI, where again, hard work
is really like, what does it even mean to work hard?
Like when I hear that, I think, well, they're working
(17:53):
long hours. And in our business, that's not aspirational. I
get quite worried when I hear someone is working long
hours because I either think, oh, we haven't managed workload
well and that is something that is a really hard
part of being a professional services business or does it
mean that maybe they're not approaching this task in a
(18:15):
way that I think is like a smarter way to
approach it where it's not going to take that long. So, yeah,
for me it's quite negative when I hear someone is
working long hours because I've either fucked up or they
could be finding better ways to work. Coming up next,
why the person who swears they worked all night probably
(18:36):
spent 45 minutes in their inbox and what that does
to how your team judges their own effort. Plus the
hardest thing I learned in my most miserable year in business,
you can't talk everyone around and knowing when to stop
trying will protect your whole culture. And also, The single
question I ask myself before any team-wide pep talk, because
(19:00):
it'll stop you dodging the conversation you actually need to have.
If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
you work and live, 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.com. That's amantha.com.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
So going back to what you were saying before about
understanding that not everybody's going to care the same way
that I care, it is a rude awakening. And I
sometimes wonder then, what did that make me as an employee?
Because I was working as an employee for 15 years
before I went and started my own organization. So maybe
(19:47):
my mindset even as an employee isn't something that I
should be then putting onto my employees going like, oh, well,
when I was an employee, that's what I thought and
that's how I worked. Because in the end, I've become
an employer and not everybody can do that and not
everybody can survive at that because it is really bloody
difficult as we know. And so I'm trying to think
(20:10):
about how I need to change my mindset for that,
that like not everybody's going to be like mini Marillas
or mini entrepreneurs within the organization. But then also, yeah,
being able to kind of say like these things are
created with the expectation that you're going to be able
to come in and yeah, hopefully not have to work overtime.
Like I don't want everybody working overtime, but if it
(20:31):
means staying back for 30 minutes at the end of
the day to tidy things up, like you said, or
finish off a task, then would enable you to have
that time at the end of the week. Wouldn't you
say that's a good payoff? And so I think that's
the kind of conversation that I feel like I want
to have. But as soon as you kind of pop
your head up from the status quo, so if people
(20:52):
aren't getting 100% of their four-day week or their quality time,
then that's a problem. If you say maybe you might
have to stay back and do half an hour of
extra work to get that, that feels like I'm being
disingenuous when it comes to me saying like, I want
people to have flexibility or work-life balance. What do you
(21:12):
think about that?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
I think something that I've learned over like around 20
years of doing Inventium is that occasionally there have been
times where the culture has turned from being very positive, optimistic, energetic,
and all it's taken are one or two people who
(21:36):
have just turned pretty negative for a variety of different reasons.
And I've just seen in a small team, because typically
our team size has been between the 10 to 20
people mark. I try to keep it really small these
days because that makes me more happy and I'm not
someone that's just all about growth and wants world domination.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I fantasized about that. Being smaller.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, when you get bigger, you go, maybe smaller
was better.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. I spent a lot of
2024 just going, oh, I'd love to be a team
of like three. But anyway, that's a whole other segue.
So there have been times where we've had, you know,
one or two people just turn for a variety of
reasons and all it takes is one or two people
(22:25):
in a small team to really damage the culture. And
when that's happened, and there's probably been about three times
over the last 20 years where that's happened and it's
happened quite acutely, and I remember each of those times
being And look, I'm all about behavior change, but I
(22:47):
wasn't able to change that individual. And I invested so
much time and so much thought in going, what do
I do? But I feel like sometimes it's really hard
to change people when they've made a decision that this
is their belief system. Just like with anything, like, you know,
like you look at cults and it's like, it's really
hard to change people that have like, this is my
(23:07):
belief system now. You look at political affiliations and views.
It's really hard to change people. once they've adopted a
certain belief system and that is quite cemented. And I
think recognizing that as a leader to go, there's some
things that I can change and there's some things that
I can control, but there's also a lot that I can't.
And I think that's been a really important lesson to
(23:29):
look at any situation and go, what can I control
or influence? And what is beyond that sphere of influence
where I just kind of have to let it go?
I think about really difficult conversations that I've had over
the years, you know, particularly in these times and, you know,
conversations with staff members that I've been really dreading because
(23:50):
I'm not good with conflict. I'm really bad when people
get emotional or upset. And I've spent, you know, tens
of hours worrying about how people will react when I
need to deliver what is news that feels really hard
or not what they want to hear. And then, you know,
certainly like in 2024, which was, you know, easily my
(24:10):
most miserable year in business, it kind of dawned on
me that all I can control is how I approach
the conversation and the messages that I deliver and how
I choose to deliver that and trying to be direct
but caring. And sometimes I'll completely stuff that up and
other times I won't. But I can't control how that
(24:31):
other person is going to react to that. And I
think understanding that, really understanding that, helped a lot in
terms of just having– these conversations that you have to have.
And also going like, sometimes leaders will have people that
are really difficult and are feeling really negative about, you know,
(24:51):
whether it be just a slight sense of entitlement or
just like, this place is terrible, you know, like sometimes
there's just no coming back from that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
When can you identify that as a moment? Because that
really resonates with me. And I think I'm the same
as you, haven't been a huge fan of conflict, but understanding.
And I guess instead of, shying away from conflict with
one individual or a difficult conversation with one individual. To
save them or to save me, I have to be
(25:19):
able to make a decision for the collective. And so
I feel like the bit that resonated for me is the,
when do you identify that moment that says, There's nothing
that I'm going to be able to do or say
to convince this person that this is a different place
and we're not going to beef everybody.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
It's such a hard question to answer. One way though
that we have approached it that has been relatively successful,
and I will preface this with saying, do this before
speaking to an employment lawyer, is we have within the
bounds of what employment law in Australia requires you to do,
(25:56):
is do a thing. We've called it at various points
in time, something like deal or no deal. And there
have been times where we've completely changed strategy as a company.
There have been times where the culture had become really
shit and toxic and we knew we needed to do
a hard reset and we needed people who were either
(26:16):
on the bus and if you weren't on the bus,
then you're off the bus. And so we'd offered people
I mean, I guess it's like a voluntary redundancy, I guess,
if I look at it through a normal employer's lens.
But we basically said, we're going to pay you X
number of weeks on top of our legal entitlements if
you just decide that this is not the place for
(26:37):
you anymore. And so that has been a process of
me sitting down and having that same conversation with everyone
on the team and going, this is how we're moving forward.
If you're in, fantastic. But if you're not 100% in,
then you're out. And this is what we can do.
And again, I just preface this with speak to an
(26:58):
employment lawyer first. This is not official advice. This is
not official advice. And there's kind of ways that you
need to think about this in the bounds of the law,
because obviously you do not want to do anything that
is illegal or unjust or anything like that. But I
found that to be incredibly effective. And if you can
(27:21):
do that legally, psychologically, that has a really big impact
because people are in control of their destiny. And I
feel like where toxicity can come into play is where
people feel like they don't have control. And so I
am just going to bitch and moan and be miserable
and because I can't be bothered looking for a job
(27:42):
or maybe I am looking and I haven't found one.
So I'm just going to stay here and I'm going
to be, you know, a pretty negative influence on as
many people as I can. But if you can kind
of short circuit that and call it for what it is,
then I think that is really, really powerful because then
people are forced to look at their own behaviour and go, well,
(28:04):
if I'm not happy here, why am I staying? Like
I'm making myself miserable.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
And I'm making a whole team or a whole organisation miserable.
And is that the impact that I want to have
in the world? I don't think there's anyone that, you know,
that wants to have that impact on the world. But
sometimes it's really hard, you know, to see that without
someone just, you know, calling it out. So that is
probably the best solution I have found to that problem
(28:31):
and just going, please just make a choice.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
And I think that is.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Isn't it like we all have a choice and sometimes
it can be hard to remember that when you're stuck.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I think something else that, you know, cause like I'm
thinking about the resilience and the entitlement and, and something else,
like when I was reflecting on that, you know, but
before our recording today and it came up in a
conversation that I had with Tom Rath, who's, you know,
he's kind of known for Strength Finder, you know, very
(29:06):
like well-known American writer and leader. And he talks a
lot about, well, you know, how do you find meaning
at work? And I think for people that are perhaps,
you know, lacking grit or focusing on what's this company
not doing right by me, and maybe Just thinking about
that through the frame of what's in it for me?
(29:28):
What am I going to get out of this? How
can I get ahead? And like that is a very
natural place for humans to operate within. But I think
if as a leader you can be coaching people to go, go, well,
really our focus and, you know, to make work and
life more meaningful is going like, how can I help others?
(29:48):
What am I doing today that's going to help others?
Whether that be fellow co-workers, whether that be clients and
just getting the focus off yourself and thinking about, How
am I here to serve other people? Because personally, that
feels a whole lot more meaningful going, who did I
help today? Yeah. As opposed to how did I get
ahead today? Yeah. So I think that is a useful
mindset shift to maybe start talking about if you haven't already.
(30:11):
And when you catch, you know, either that entitlement or,
you know, that lack of grit, which can often be
linked to just like, what's my purpose? What am I doing?
Or like, why am I doing this job? You know,
everything's like falling. Yeah. on top of me. It's just
kind of coming back to how am I helping other people? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Like you with the conflict, there'll be times when I
will have all teams to talk about, we're doing a
reset or we're having this thing. And as a team,
we're all going to approach this issue together instead of going, hey, Amantha,
I've noticed this about you. Do you ever do that?
And when are those moments that you go, this is
(30:51):
actually a hundred percent something I have to deal with
with this person instead of giving everybody a pep talk
about something that's not applicable to them.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I always ask myself, is this about the minority or
the majority? Because that's really unfair, I think, if it's
just the minority that say, you know, the root cause
of what's happening.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I'm so cognizant of that right now.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, yeah. Or is it the majority? And we've had
that with the gift of the fifth policy, where I've
seen a couple of members of the team kind of
taking the piss. And my urge has been, well, I
just want to avoid a difficult conversation there. So I'm
just going to do a whole of team policy reset.
(31:35):
And then I've kind of questioned myself and I'm like,
that's not actually fair. That's me just avoiding conflict. And
I actually know, no, I need to have a conversation.
So I think, is it the minority or is it
the majority. And I think your answer will lie there.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh, and I know it's the minority.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So we've covered quite a bit of ground. We've gone
like bounced around a few places. Tell me what's one
thing that's sticking with you that you're going to try
doing differently in the next seven days?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I think it is asking myself that question around, is
this a minority or a majority? And something that I've
sort of been working on myself a little bit, but
it ties in with that is like clear is kind
and getting ahead of a the communication with somebody when
I can see an issue is arising or, you know,
trying to follow through on anything that we've kind of
got live at the moment, dealing with that with each
(32:24):
of those individuals.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I love that. I'm going to check back with you
in seven days and see how you've gone. But thank
you for sharing so openly and honestly. And I, you know,
I do think it's the brave leader that does share
really vulnerably like you have today. So thank you so
much for coming on.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Thank you for all your inspiration and the opportunity, Amanda.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
If you enjoyed this conversation with Marilla from Equality Media
and Marketing, I highly recommend checking out an interview I
had with Laura Vanderkam, who is the master of time management.
I think it complements this episode really well if you
are someone that is thinking about your time and how
to use it more wisely. And finally, if you're struggling
(33:06):
with your own work problem, drop me a note. My
details are in the show notes because I would love
to consider you for a future work edit episode. If
you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on
your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the Wurundjeri people, part of the Kulin Nation.
Here's a problem almost every good boss eventually runs into.
You give your team something genuinely great and within a
year they treat it like a basic right. The gratitude fades,
the entitlement creeps in and you're left wondering how to
reset it without looking like the villain. Today's episode is
(00:21):
a work edit where I coach a listener through a
real challenge and And this one is packed with things
that you can steal. You'll learn the strange little goat
trick for resetting how people value what they've got. You'll
get the exact question to ask before you deliver any
team-wide pep talk so you stop avoiding the conversation you
actually need to have. And you'll hear how to handle
(00:43):
the one or two negative people who can quietly poison
a whole team, including the move that I have used
to turn a toxic culture around. If you lead people,
I promise you will leave this episode with something to
try out tomorrow. Welcome to How I Work, a show
(01:10):
about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm
your host, Dr. Amantha Imber. Marilla, welcome. Tell me what
made you put your hand up. What are we helping
you with today?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Thanks for having me, Amantha. So I run Equality Media
and Marketing. I've been doing that for the last eight years.
I have a team of 30 people that work with me.
And I guess people management and how to manage people
is always something that I'm always wanting to learn and
grow and understand more about. And just when you think
you're kind of getting the hang of it, something might
pop up that you kind of haven't experienced before. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So tell me, what are some of the problems and
challenges going on at Equality right now?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So we're in a really good position. And so I
think it kind of is a bit of that, like,
how do you be match fit, even when you're at
the height of career and How do you kind of
grow to that next level? So I think generally speaking,
we're in a really good position culturally. What I have
noticed is a little bit of, I wouldn't say a
lack of gratitude, but maybe a decline of gratitude for
(02:15):
the workplace that we're creating at Equality. So we do
a version of the four-day workweek. We call it Equality Time.
And similar to you, because we've taken lots of inspiration
from you and training, it's a gift, not a given.
But I've started to notice some of the language from
people moving in that there's an expectation that a quality
time or the four-day work week will be available even
(02:37):
if work's not up to date. And so we've got
structures in place. We're trying to put in regular training
around how do we make sure that our pencils are
as sharp as possible so that a quality time is possible.
But I'm just noticing that expectation kind of creep in.
So I would love to kind of work with you
on understanding how do you make sure that people feel
(02:58):
gratitude for things once they kind of become used to
it because I know that that is a human truth
that like you get used to how your life is
and so then you kind of can sometimes forget how
lucky your life can be.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Great so we're talking about gratitude and on the flip
side entitlement which is something that I've thought so much
about over the last few years or really I mean
we've been running the four-day week for six years now
and I think it's an inevitable part of running it.
So let's get into that. Is there anything else though
(03:30):
that is on your mind that you might like some
help with?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, I think the flip side of the gratitude is
the grit and the hard work that has to go
into making something like a quality time possible. And again,
it's not just an expectation that when you're employed at
somewhere like a quality, then you're working four days a
week or you're part-time because that's not the case. It's
about How do you double down and work efficiently, but
also hard to get that reward?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Let's start with the gratitude slash entitlement challenge. It reminds
me of this story that I think maybe my parents
told me, and I can't even remember what context, but
it's called the goat story. And I think of it
(04:16):
when I think of entitlement and just trying to reset expectations.
So There's a family and they're a Jewish family. It's like,
you know, a mom and a dad and six kids
and they're living in this tiny two-bedroom apartment and things
are like, you know, really squashed and they're all like,
you know, living on each other's backs and it's just
(04:38):
like it's horrible. And so they go to their rabbi
and they're like, Rabbi, what can we do? Like it's
just chaos. It's so cramped in our apartment with our
big family. What should we do? And the rabbi says,
get a goat. And the parents are like, what are
you talking about? We've just told you how crazy and
chaotic it is in this space. Makes no sense. Yeah.
And he said, get a goat and come back and
(05:01):
see me in a week. And so they're a bit baffled,
but they go and they buy a goat. Mm-hmm. And
the goat then moves in with them. And it's a disaster.
Like the goat is eating everything. The place is an
utter disaster zone. It's terrible. It is the worst week.
And then they go back and they see the rabbi.
And they said, this has just been the worst week.
(05:24):
Things have got so much worse with the goat. Everything's destroyed.
It's eaten and so on. And the rabbi says, get
rid of the goat. Come back and see me in
a week. And they get rid of the goat. I
don't know how, I'm sure ethically. And suddenly everything's fantastic.
Like nothing's been eaten. It's like, it's peaceful again without
the goat. And that is essentially the story because it's so,
(05:48):
you know, I love that because like when you're used
to a certain way of working that is actually, you know, good,
good conditions. I mean, anyone that is working for a
company that has a four day week, is pretty fortunate,
I think. And it's really easy to forget that. And
so I think, well, what is your version of the goat?
(06:08):
Like that is one way to think about it. But
then another way that I think about this and something
that's been really useful at Inventium is that Every one
or two years, we've actually done a policy reset with,
we call it the gift of the fifth. So, you know,
if you do your work in four normal length days,
you get the gift of time on Friday. And for
(06:29):
the most part, it's worked really well. But in 2024,
it was terrible. And interestingly, 2024 was kind of like
our year of the goat, where we were working five days,
almost all of the team was doing a five day
week for a large part of the year because we
were you know, we're behind on our financial targets. It
was a really hard economic environment for a, like a,
(06:50):
you know, a training company like ours. And I mean,
like personally, I was doing the six or seven day week,
you know, which I did write about and speak about
at the time quite publicly and, you know, felt sort
of quite shameful, but that was kind of a year
of the goat. And it's been brilliant since then, once
we got rid of the goat and got back to normal.
We've all had years of the goat.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So I guess that's my first question to you. Like,
Taking that goat story, what could the goat be? Because
bringing in a goat is a pretty quick way to
improve gratitude and reduce entitlement. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's hard because I'm not a goat giver. Like I've
done so much work around. The first thing when you
say that, that I think about is like the reward
or the consequence. So I'm a mum and I try
with my kids around the choice of consequence, you know,
like Choose your behavior wisely now so you have a
really good consequence. If you behave well in this situation,
(07:47):
the consequence will be what you want. If you don't,
then you won't get what you want and trying to
give them that choice. I know I shouldn't compare my
children to my workplace, but I feel like there's so
much in leadership that is parallel. I guess I could
take something like that rather than I don't really want
to take equality time away or punish or threaten that
(08:09):
it could be different. And so keeping people in that environment,
like maybe that is a conversation I need to be
having is like, you have a choice in this, the consequence.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Something I thought about at the time when, you know, during,
you know, over the six years of doing it, there
have been times where 2024 aside, we struggled with a
sense of entitlement, probably in the first two or three
years of running the four day week. And, you know,
occasionally we'd hire someone that this was their first full-time
(08:40):
job out of say, you know, uni and, you know,
doing like post-grad studies and so forth. And they'd never
experienced a five-day work week. And it's really hard when
you have no comparison points. So one idea I have,
I never executed this idea, but I thought, wouldn't it
be interesting to just give team members a secondment for
three months at one of our clients who are, you know,
(09:03):
all kind of mid to large size corporate organizations for
the most part and see kind of how life is
there because, you know, that was one version of the goat.
But yeah, another thing I think, and I kind of
alluded to this, is thinking about a policy reset where
you actually come together as a team and you go,
(09:23):
what's working, what's not working, and what's confusing? And I
think that this is a really useful thing to do
for most policies that are novel, as obviously the four-day
work policy is. And so how those conversations have gone
at Inventium, they've always been at our all-team off-sites where
we've spoken about what's working well about the policy and
(09:46):
what we're enjoying, what's not working well about the policy.
And then we've spoken about what's confusing or where are
we seeing inconsistent behavior? Like, for example, something that has
often come up for us is, is it okay to
send emails on a Friday? Like that is a very
simple question, but it sends a really powerful signal. And
(10:08):
what we find, and certainly what I found and has
been my experience, is that during busy times, I will
start to send emails on Fridays. And very occasionally, I
will have a meeting on a Friday. And of course,
we can all see each other's diaries. And most of
the time, my team would be checking emails once or
(10:30):
twice on a Friday, assuming that they're taking gift of
the fifth. And if they're seeing emails from the leader
of the company, they're going to be like, oh, we're
not doing gift of the fifth now. So I've had
to be really careful about what is my behavior signaling
to to the team. That is a thing. But we've
also had to have really open discussions to go, well,
(10:53):
we should probably have a principle around this because I
can't have a different standard for myself that I expect
from the team. And so the last time we did
a reset, which was, I want to say nearly 12
months ago now, we as a team said, We're not
going to send emails on a Friday and we're not
(11:15):
going to have meetings. Like obviously we'd never have an
internal meeting on a Friday, but we would also never
have a client meeting on a Friday. And that in
and of itself was an absolute, that was a huge
change for the team. Sounds really simple, but I'm a
big believer in thinking about, well, what are these small
signals that actually say so much to the team?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
What's this kind of bringing up for you? Because I'm curious,
what are the signals saying right now? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And like I said, overall, I feel like we're in
a really positive position and it's more trying to nip
things in the bud before they get out of hand.
And I would say that 95% of people are still
really gracious. It's when you feel or hear those rumblings
of a couple of people saying, well, I never get
a full day of equality time, for example, because they're
checking emails. And Is it me just being able to
(12:05):
have the courage as a leader to say, I've noticed
a couple of things that you're saying feels like you're
taking ET time for granted or is everything okay and
having a check-in with somebody in a different way? Because
often what I've found as a leader is the things
that are the issues are rarely the things that are
brought up in the first place.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So- That's what I.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Kind of am starting to think about as you're explaining
some of those. The other thing that's a little bit
different for our ET time versus yours is we split
at Mondays and Fridays because we kind of can't ever
be all off at once within the business structure that
we have. And so it can be a little bit
harder because it's not always cut and dry because not
everybody's like off at the same time.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Something you said then triggered something else for me. Mm-hmm.
in that you said, well, people are saying, well, I'm
checking emails on my ET time day. And so therefore
I am working. And I recently had Laura Vanderkam on
the podcast. I think she's been on a couple of
times and she's this amazing American woman. She's written many
(13:10):
books on how to manage our time. I loved it.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I was going to reference it before when we were
talking about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So something she talks about is how we're pretty bad
at judging how we're using our time and how much
time we're spending on things. And let's just take the
example as she gave to me, someone that says, I
spent all night working. And probably what has actually happened
if they were tracking their time is they maybe spent
(13:39):
45 minutes on their computer in their inbox, but it
just felt like they were working all night when in reality, no.
they worked for 45 minutes and then they went back
to Netflix. And what's interesting there is again, like what
we do at Inventium, we've actually got quite clear definitions
(14:00):
around what does it mean to take gift of the fifth?
And every Tuesday we send around a survey asking people,
you know, did you take gift of the fifth? And
for us taking gift of the fifth, is if you
worked less than two hours. So it would be very,
very normal for anyone on the team, I think, to
probably spend half an hour in their inbox just cleaning
things up and ending the week in a clean way
(14:23):
and getting ready for the next week to be all
set up so it's not going to be overwhelming or
stressful or whatever. And so if you work half an
hour or an hour on a Friday... it's still taking
gift of the fifth and we're all really clear on that. But,
you know, I think fundamentally people are really bad at
estimating how much time they're spending on something. And if
(14:46):
they're already in that frame of entitlement, they're going to
view an hour's worth of work on ET time very
differently to someone that's feeling the gratitude. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
And is that something around like the gratitude and tying
that into like resilience and that hard work? The reason
that I created Equality was because I felt like for
a lot of my career, my hard work wasn't appreciated. And,
you know, every job I'd ever left before I started Equality,
I got replaced with at least two people, but I
was never paid two people's wages. And so, you know,
(15:24):
like we've tried to stack a lot of things that say,
we want to value you as humans in the workplace.
All we ask for in return is like that commitment
to getting your job done and making sure that we're
not overloading people with the amount of work that we're
expecting them to be able to achieve in that period
of time.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It's obviously like a different set of responsibilities and stresses
when you're the founder of a business. And I never
expect that people will be Because I think in the
early days of Inventium, I'd be like, why does no
one care as much as me? Why is no one
working as hard as me? And then it's like, well,
that's why I've taken on the risk of being a
(16:02):
business owner. That's right. And so I think I learned
that pretty early on. But then I also think about, well,
what does work actually mean? And again, one of my
other problems with the four-day week is that it essentially
is it's thinking about workers hours as opposed to the
impact and the outcomes that you're driving. And so wherever possible,
(16:25):
and this can be really hard to do in some
roles is to, to really quantify the impact that people
are having. So, you know, I think about my team
and a lot of the team are in ventiologists. So
that means they're, They're consultants, they're facilitators, they're working with
clients helping develop some kind of a skill, whether that
(16:47):
be AI fluency or productivity or innovation or whatever. And
for me, it's like the things that I'm most interested
in are how are clients feeling about the experience that
they're having with my team? And of course, is my
team able to take gift of the fifth? And that's
(17:07):
just a shortcut for going, okay, great. We're leading balanced lives,
which is obviously an important value that we hold at Inventium.
But I'm trying to go, well, where are those objective
markers of impact? And I know a lot of people
talk about outcome over hours, et cetera, but I think
that that can be just a really useful way of going, okay,
(17:31):
how are you working? And to spend the time going,
what does that look like for each role? And I
think at Inventium, we've managed to do that. And also
like in this world of AI, where again, hard work
is really like, what does it even mean to work hard?
Like when I hear that, I think, well, they're working
(17:53):
long hours. And in our business, that's not aspirational. I
get quite worried when I hear someone is working long
hours because I either think, oh, we haven't managed workload
well and that is something that is a really hard
part of being a professional services business or does it
mean that maybe they're not approaching this task in a
(18:15):
way that I think is like a smarter way to
approach it where it's not going to take that long. So, yeah,
for me it's quite negative when I hear someone is
working long hours because I've either fucked up or they
could be finding better ways to work. Coming up next,
why the person who swears they worked all night probably
(18:36):
spent 45 minutes in their inbox and what that does
to how your team judges their own effort. Plus the
hardest thing I learned in my most miserable year in business,
you can't talk everyone around and knowing when to stop
trying will protect your whole culture. And also, The single
question I ask myself before any team-wide pep talk, because
(19:00):
it'll stop you dodging the conversation you actually need to have.
If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
you work and live, 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.com. That's amantha.com.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
So going back to what you were saying before about
understanding that not everybody's going to care the same way
that I care, it is a rude awakening. And I
sometimes wonder then, what did that make me as an employee?
Because I was working as an employee for 15 years
before I went and started my own organization. So maybe
(19:47):
my mindset even as an employee isn't something that I
should be then putting onto my employees going like, oh, well,
when I was an employee, that's what I thought and
that's how I worked. Because in the end, I've become
an employer and not everybody can do that and not
everybody can survive at that because it is really bloody
difficult as we know. And so I'm trying to think
(20:10):
about how I need to change my mindset for that,
that like not everybody's going to be like mini Marillas
or mini entrepreneurs within the organization. But then also, yeah,
being able to kind of say like these things are
created with the expectation that you're going to be able
to come in and yeah, hopefully not have to work overtime.
Like I don't want everybody working overtime, but if it
(20:31):
means staying back for 30 minutes at the end of
the day to tidy things up, like you said, or
finish off a task, then would enable you to have
that time at the end of the week. Wouldn't you
say that's a good payoff? And so I think that's
the kind of conversation that I feel like I want
to have. But as soon as you kind of pop
your head up from the status quo, so if people
(20:52):
aren't getting 100% of their four-day week or their quality time,
then that's a problem. If you say maybe you might
have to stay back and do half an hour of
extra work to get that, that feels like I'm being
disingenuous when it comes to me saying like, I want
people to have flexibility or work-life balance. What do you
(21:12):
think about that?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
I think something that I've learned over like around 20
years of doing Inventium is that occasionally there have been
times where the culture has turned from being very positive, optimistic, energetic,
and all it's taken are one or two people who
(21:36):
have just turned pretty negative for a variety of different reasons.
And I've just seen in a small team, because typically
our team size has been between the 10 to 20
people mark. I try to keep it really small these
days because that makes me more happy and I'm not
someone that's just all about growth and wants world domination.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I fantasized about that. Being smaller.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, when you get bigger, you go, maybe smaller
was better.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. I spent a lot of
2024 just going, oh, I'd love to be a team
of like three. But anyway, that's a whole other segue.
So there have been times where we've had, you know,
one or two people just turn for a variety of
reasons and all it takes is one or two people
(22:25):
in a small team to really damage the culture. And
when that's happened, and there's probably been about three times
over the last 20 years where that's happened and it's
happened quite acutely, and I remember each of those times
being And look, I'm all about behavior change, but I
(22:47):
wasn't able to change that individual. And I invested so
much time and so much thought in going, what do
I do? But I feel like sometimes it's really hard
to change people when they've made a decision that this
is their belief system. Just like with anything, like, you know,
like you look at cults and it's like, it's really
hard to change people that have like, this is my
(23:07):
belief system now. You look at political affiliations and views.
It's really hard to change people. once they've adopted a
certain belief system and that is quite cemented. And I
think recognizing that as a leader to go, there's some
things that I can change and there's some things that
I can control, but there's also a lot that I can't.
And I think that's been a really important lesson to
(23:29):
look at any situation and go, what can I control
or influence? And what is beyond that sphere of influence
where I just kind of have to let it go?
I think about really difficult conversations that I've had over
the years, you know, particularly in these times and, you know,
conversations with staff members that I've been really dreading because
(23:50):
I'm not good with conflict. I'm really bad when people
get emotional or upset. And I've spent, you know, tens
of hours worrying about how people will react when I
need to deliver what is news that feels really hard
or not what they want to hear. And then, you know,
certainly like in 2024, which was, you know, easily my
(24:10):
most miserable year in business, it kind of dawned on
me that all I can control is how I approach
the conversation and the messages that I deliver and how
I choose to deliver that and trying to be direct
but caring. And sometimes I'll completely stuff that up and
other times I won't. But I can't control how that
(24:31):
other person is going to react to that. And I
think understanding that, really understanding that, helped a lot in
terms of just having– these conversations that you have to have.
And also going like, sometimes leaders will have people that
are really difficult and are feeling really negative about, you know,
(24:51):
whether it be just a slight sense of entitlement or
just like, this place is terrible, you know, like sometimes
there's just no coming back from that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
When can you identify that as a moment? Because that
really resonates with me. And I think I'm the same
as you, haven't been a huge fan of conflict, but understanding.
And I guess instead of, shying away from conflict with
one individual or a difficult conversation with one individual. To
save them or to save me, I have to be
(25:19):
able to make a decision for the collective. And so
I feel like the bit that resonated for me is the,
when do you identify that moment that says, There's nothing
that I'm going to be able to do or say
to convince this person that this is a different place
and we're not going to beef everybody.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
It's such a hard question to answer. One way though
that we have approached it that has been relatively successful,
and I will preface this with saying, do this before
speaking to an employment lawyer, is we have within the
bounds of what employment law in Australia requires you to do,
(25:56):
is do a thing. We've called it at various points
in time, something like deal or no deal. And there
have been times where we've completely changed strategy as a company.
There have been times where the culture had become really
shit and toxic and we knew we needed to do
a hard reset and we needed people who were either
(26:16):
on the bus and if you weren't on the bus,
then you're off the bus. And so we'd offered people
I mean, I guess it's like a voluntary redundancy, I guess,
if I look at it through a normal employer's lens.
But we basically said, we're going to pay you X
number of weeks on top of our legal entitlements if
you just decide that this is not the place for
(26:37):
you anymore. And so that has been a process of
me sitting down and having that same conversation with everyone
on the team and going, this is how we're moving forward.
If you're in, fantastic. But if you're not 100% in,
then you're out. And this is what we can do.
And again, I just preface this with speak to an
(26:58):
employment lawyer first. This is not official advice. This is
not official advice. And there's kind of ways that you
need to think about this in the bounds of the law,
because obviously you do not want to do anything that
is illegal or unjust or anything like that. But I
found that to be incredibly effective. And if you can
(27:21):
do that legally, psychologically, that has a really big impact
because people are in control of their destiny. And I
feel like where toxicity can come into play is where
people feel like they don't have control. And so I
am just going to bitch and moan and be miserable
and because I can't be bothered looking for a job
(27:42):
or maybe I am looking and I haven't found one.
So I'm just going to stay here and I'm going
to be, you know, a pretty negative influence on as
many people as I can. But if you can kind
of short circuit that and call it for what it is,
then I think that is really, really powerful because then
people are forced to look at their own behaviour and go, well,
(28:04):
if I'm not happy here, why am I staying? Like
I'm making myself miserable.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
And I'm making a whole team or a whole organisation miserable.
And is that the impact that I want to have
in the world? I don't think there's anyone that, you know,
that wants to have that impact on the world. But
sometimes it's really hard, you know, to see that without
someone just, you know, calling it out. So that is
probably the best solution I have found to that problem
(28:31):
and just going, please just make a choice.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
And I think that is.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Isn't it like we all have a choice and sometimes
it can be hard to remember that when you're stuck.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I think something else that, you know, cause like I'm
thinking about the resilience and the entitlement and, and something else,
like when I was reflecting on that, you know, but
before our recording today and it came up in a
conversation that I had with Tom Rath, who's, you know,
he's kind of known for Strength Finder, you know, very
(29:06):
like well-known American writer and leader. And he talks a
lot about, well, you know, how do you find meaning
at work? And I think for people that are perhaps,
you know, lacking grit or focusing on what's this company
not doing right by me, and maybe Just thinking about
that through the frame of what's in it for me?
(29:28):
What am I going to get out of this? How
can I get ahead? And like that is a very
natural place for humans to operate within. But I think
if as a leader you can be coaching people to go, go, well,
really our focus and, you know, to make work and
life more meaningful is going like, how can I help others?
(29:48):
What am I doing today that's going to help others?
Whether that be fellow co-workers, whether that be clients and
just getting the focus off yourself and thinking about, How
am I here to serve other people? Because personally, that
feels a whole lot more meaningful going, who did I
help today? Yeah. As opposed to how did I get
ahead today? Yeah. So I think that is a useful
mindset shift to maybe start talking about if you haven't already.
(30:11):
And when you catch, you know, either that entitlement or,
you know, that lack of grit, which can often be
linked to just like, what's my purpose? What am I doing?
Or like, why am I doing this job? You know,
everything's like falling. Yeah. on top of me. It's just
kind of coming back to how am I helping other people? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Like you with the conflict, there'll be times when I
will have all teams to talk about, we're doing a
reset or we're having this thing. And as a team,
we're all going to approach this issue together instead of going, hey, Amantha,
I've noticed this about you. Do you ever do that?
And when are those moments that you go, this is
(30:51):
actually a hundred percent something I have to deal with
with this person instead of giving everybody a pep talk
about something that's not applicable to them.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I always ask myself, is this about the minority or
the majority? Because that's really unfair, I think, if it's
just the minority that say, you know, the root cause
of what's happening.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I'm so cognizant of that right now.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, yeah. Or is it the majority? And we've had
that with the gift of the fifth policy, where I've
seen a couple of members of the team kind of
taking the piss. And my urge has been, well, I
just want to avoid a difficult conversation there. So I'm
just going to do a whole of team policy reset.
(31:35):
And then I've kind of questioned myself and I'm like,
that's not actually fair. That's me just avoiding conflict. And
I actually know, no, I need to have a conversation.
So I think, is it the minority or is it
the majority. And I think your answer will lie there.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh, and I know it's the minority.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So we've covered quite a bit of ground. We've gone
like bounced around a few places. Tell me what's one
thing that's sticking with you that you're going to try
doing differently in the next seven days?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I think it is asking myself that question around, is
this a minority or a majority? And something that I've
sort of been working on myself a little bit, but
it ties in with that is like clear is kind
and getting ahead of a the communication with somebody when
I can see an issue is arising or, you know,
trying to follow through on anything that we've kind of
got live at the moment, dealing with that with each
(32:24):
of those individuals.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I love that. I'm going to check back with you
in seven days and see how you've gone. But thank
you for sharing so openly and honestly. And I, you know,
I do think it's the brave leader that does share
really vulnerably like you have today. So thank you so
much for coming on.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Thank you for all your inspiration and the opportunity, Amanda.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
If you enjoyed this conversation with Marilla from Equality Media
and Marketing, I highly recommend checking out an interview I
had with Laura Vanderkam, who is the master of time management.
I think it complements this episode really well if you
are someone that is thinking about your time and how
to use it more wisely. And finally, if you're struggling
(33:06):
with your own work problem, drop me a note. My
details are in the show notes because I would love
to consider you for a future work edit episode. If
you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on
your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the Wurundjeri people, part of the Kulin Nation.
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