December 11, 2025 • 46 mins
In this reflective and practical episode of the Big Careers, Small Children podcast, Leaders Plus Interim COO Helen Fraser speaks with Rupert Brown, author of Lost in Transformation and Leaders Plus Senior Leader Mentor.
Rupert has spent much of his career leading people change in multinational organisations, including international assignments in Switzerland, Singapore, Denmark and Dubai, while raising two children abroad. He shares what he has learned about making big career decisions when family needs change, leading transformation with more humanity, and staying honest with yourself in the middle of corporate upheaval.
Drawing on his experience working with people and culture, he shares the moment his teenagers asked why the family was “doing lockdown in the desert,” the family’s return to the UK, and how the sudden death of his father and his employer’s response reshaped his view of leadership and empathy.
Together, they explore
✔️ How Rupert and his family navigated multiple international moves, and why their teenagers’ voices were central to the decision to come back to the UK for more stability.
✔️ What really happens to family life and career confidence when work and location decisions stop being “just” the parents’ choices.
✔️ Why he believes many corporate change programmes ignore basic psychology and the lived experience of the people affected, and what drew him to write Lost in Transformation.
✔️ Rupert’s PIE model: performance, image and exposure, and why hard work alone is rarely enough for progression, especially for working parents with limited time.
✔️ What the death of his father taught him about principle based policies, bereavement leave, and the quiet power of simple, human responses from leaders in moments of grief.
What you’ll learn in this episode
🔹 Ways to think through big career and location choices when your children start expressing their own clear preferences.
🔹 Practical ideas for building “spacious” relationships at work that help you stay resourceful and honest under pressure.
🔹 How leaders can respond to loss and difficulty with empathy rather than hiding behind rigid policies or avoiding uncomfortable conversations.
🔹 Questions to ask yourself if you are involved in leading change, so that you do change with people rather than doing change to them.
Show Notes:
- Connect with Rupert Brown on LinkedIn
- Find Rupert Brown’s book Lost in Transformation on Amazon
- Learn more about the Leaders Plus: Big Careers, Small Children podcast and explore additional resources at leadersplus.org.
- Follow Leaders Plus on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Bluesky.
- Connect with Helen Fraser on LinkedIn.
- Connect with our CEO, Verena Hefti MBE on LinkedIn.
- Find out more about the work of Leaders Plus by signing up to our Newsletter.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Big CareersSmall Children Podcast. My name is
Verena Hefti. I believe thatno one should have to choose between
becoming a CEO and enjoyingtheir young children for much too
long. Amazing people like I'msure you listening right now have
found themselves stuck on thecareer ladder when they have children.
(00:22):
And that leads to genderinequality in senior leadership because
those people don't progress tosenior leadership. And the same stale,
often male, middle classpeople leading our organizations.
We must change this together.And I hope that many of you listening
right now will progress to themost senior leadership roles that
you like, where you can makethe decisions that make our world
(00:43):
a better place. Outside of thepodcast. I am the CEO and founder
of the social enterpriseLeaders Plus. We exist to help working
parents progress their careersto senior leadership in a way that
works for you and for yourfamilies. We have free events and
resources on leadersplus.orgwhere you can download helpful toolkits
(01:04):
such as on returning frommaternity leave, share parental leave,
securing a promotion, dealingwith workload challenges, or managing
as a dual career couple. Wealso have an award winning fellowship
community which is global forworking parents who have big dreams
for their careers but don'twant to sacrifice their family. You'll
join an absolutely wonderfulgroup of people, a very tight knit,
(01:29):
supportive group of parentswho have your back together. You'll
explore what your careeraspirations are and you'll get advice
from senior leaders who arealso working parents about how to
achieve those aspirations.You'll get new ideas to combine your
hopes for your careers withyour hope for your family. And you
are supported by people whoare experiencing what you're experiencing
(01:50):
yourself. I'm really delightedthat a larger majority of our fellows
have made tangible changesfollowing the program, be that becoming
more senior in their roles,working shorter hours, having better
flexible working arrangement,they always impress me so much with
the courage that they instillin each other to do what is right
for them without apologizingfor having a family or apologizing
(02:14):
for wanting that top job.Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship.
Hello everyone. My name'sHelen Fraser and I'm currently the
Interim COO at Leaders plus,covering for Verina while she is
on maternity leave. And todayI've stepped into the role of podcast
(02:36):
host for the Big Careers SmallChildren podcast. And I'm really
delighted to be joined by oneof our brilliant senior leader mentors,
Rupert Brown. Rupert, wouldyou like to introduce yourself and
let me know who you are, whatyou do and who is in your family?
Well, first of all, thank youfor inviting me on the podcast. I'm
a big fan of what you do atLeaders plus and I think it's because
(02:59):
I too have had the pleasure ofbalancing an interesting career with
a beautiful family. And sowhere we stand today then? I have
married to Helen who is alsoin the human resources field like
myself. We have my eldest sonOliver, who is in the first year
at university so we are justgetting to grips with him being not
(03:20):
in his bedroom wondering whathe's doing. And my youngest child,
Lottie, she is in first yearof A levels. And then we have a two
year old cocker spaniel calledMabel who is like a little baby so
she makes the family feelcomplete again. Even though we're
coming to terms with the ideathat people are leaving the nest
and then I'm sure that theywill return. And in the career context
(03:43):
really has been about a careerin human resource management in lots
of different sort ofmultinationals. Fifteen years of
my career has been outside ofthe uk so six international assignments
including Switzerland,Singapore, twice actually Denmark
and Dubai. And decided to comeback with teenagers in Covid and
(04:03):
sort of put down some routesfor the benefit of the children really
because we've been draggingthem from pillar to post the quest
of my career. And yeah, I'mstill in the human resources field
sort of doing a changemanagement people change advisory
work, whether that's interimor inside large organizations. Organizations.
Amazing. And I had theprivilege of meeting your daughter
(04:23):
at the book launch for Lost inTransformation. And you and Helen
have clearly done a brilliantparenting job with her. And I am
interested in thinking aboutlike is there, as you said, you've
had quite a varied career,you've lived abroad in terms of where
you've been based. Is theresomething you know now about combining
(04:44):
that career with raising afamily that you didn't know then
in the early years?
Yes. I mean the most. Thankyou. Met Lottie and she's so inspired
to meet so many amazing women.She said, dad, how do you know all
these incredible women? It'slike. Blessed to work with some great
people and I think it's lovelyto see show her to some some role
models as she's wondering whatto do after school. I mean there
(05:07):
must be lots of things I knownow I didn't know that. I think something
that is front of mind whenyou're balancing career and a young
family, especially when thereis a travel dimension to it, is in
the back of your mind you'rewondering what damage you're doing
to Your children. There isthat sort of constant guilt of, are
we getting away with this? Whydoes he have a funny accent? Why
(05:28):
can't he do maths? Whatever itmight be? It's because he's been
growing up in differentcultures, different education systems.
Every three years you take himto a different country and I suppose
you're always sort of keepingscore, aren't you, as a parent? It's
like, how are we doing? Are weinflicting more damage than we are?
Sort of like upside. I thinkone of the reflections is the upside
(05:49):
to having this internationallife is that the family became very
tight. We were each other'ssort of nucleus and it was very much,
I think in a way theiradaptability stems from the fact
that there was, at least whenwe moved around, we were tight and
we were common to one another.And I was also, in hindsight pleased.
We sort of called it a daywhen we did. And often a lot of the
(06:12):
times when you're doing theright thing for the family, it still
hurts, right? You're in mycase, it's like they had this amazing
international career. We're inlockdown in the desert in Dubai and
Ollie and Lottie becomingteenagers and they're becoming much
more self-aware and they cansay things that they haven't said
before. And when they said,dad, what are you doing? Why are
(06:33):
we doing lockdown in thedesert? I mean, surely there are
smarter things to do thanthis. Children start questioning
your career choices. And upuntil that point it had simply been
a case of pack the kids littlesuitcase, trundle them through the
airport. They don't need toknow really where they're going,
they just need to stick withmum and dad. And then all of a sudden
(06:54):
the realization is, yeah, it'sprobably time to put them first.
And putting them first, ofcourse there's a price. As a consequence,
it means putting careersecond. And probably I've been in
that sort of luxury, selfishposition for so long of always thinking
career first to an extent. Imean, there's always has to be to
interesting places that aresafe and sort of of value safety
(07:16):
for the children. But that wasalways the lead cause. And five was
that five, six years later,after sort of coming home and unpacking
the bags and taking a lotfewer airplanes. It was the right
thing to do. It absolutely wasthe right thing to do. Because now
I think the kids have a bit ofa best of both worlds. You know,
they grew up internationally,but they're doing their sort of important
(07:37):
teenage years with stabilityand they're making those friends
for life. But if you'd haveasked me, when I was in the desert
during lockdown during COVID Ifelt torn, but I felt really torn.
And I didn't know what theright answer was.
How did you come to thatdecision then? Because it's something
I think that a lot of parentsfacing similar decisions might find
(07:58):
interesting. What turned thedial? What kind of made you decide?
It's when the conversationwith the children is not so much
a just sort of do what I saykind of conversation. It's a sort
of a more grown upconversation between two adults really.
And you realize it's notworking. You know, it wasn't working
for him. It wasn't reallyworking for me. But the thought was,
(08:21):
well, we just keep going,don't we? That's what we've always
done. And I think it's adifferent conversation when you've
got other people to please.When the family becomes older. I
suppose that's the case, isn'tit? There's lots of different people
to please. Up until thatpoint, really, the guilt axis had
been between Helen and myselfand our parents. It's kind of like,
(08:41):
can we stay away from mum anddad this long, given their health,
given this, that and theother? And you can sort of wrestle
that. But when it's also thepeople in your family, I mean, you're
just waiting for the dog tospeak up, aren't you? And just like,
I'm not happy either. So it'sjust, okay, guys, we've got to meet
in the middle. And that's abit of a career compromise moment,
(09:02):
I think.
Yeah, definitely. And I thinkeverybody will face those at some
point. And it's interestingwhat you say about. Once the children
become more like adults,really. And I'm similar to a bit
younger than yours, but 13 and16. And it is a different conversation
I think, that you can have,and I know you probably want to speak,
speak on their behalf. But interms of, do you get a sense from
them of. Of those youngeryears? Because I think they are more
(09:26):
adaptable in those youngeryears to kind of do that moving.
And do they ever talk abouthow they've enjoyed that or if they
really hated it?
So there was differentassignments or different periods.
So they were both born inSingapore and they spent their early
childhood there. I mean,Lottie, who you met, her first preschool
was bilingual English andMandarin. So she grew up. Her friends
(09:48):
were little Chinese kids whowas eating kanji for lunch. She was
singing Mandarin, you know,but she had no idea whether that
was normal or not. We had thesense of sort of beaming pride that
it was very cool andsophisticated, and surely this will
only bring, you know, expandedhorizons in the future. But you don't
know, do you? I mean, as aparent, you don't know any better.
And now when we talk about itwith the kids, they often do refer
(10:11):
to the fact that, for example,they, you know, Lottie has very diverse
food interests, travelinterests, is well read and so forth.
And I think some of that doescome from there. But there was also
one assignment in particular.So we went from Singapore to Denmark,
which was strange, going fromthe heat to the cold and the dark.
And a lot of people said, thatwill be hard for the family. And
(10:32):
it turned out to be reallyeasy for the family because you were
going to a very tight,inclusive sort of community there.
So they absolutely loved it.We then went from there to Dubai
when they were a little bitolder. So Ollie was just in first
year of secondary school, andall of us, that was really hard because
they'd gone from sort of bigfish in a small pond to this very
(10:52):
competitive, very sort ofalpha world in the Middle east, where
it's about sort of wealth andsuccess and so forth. And they sort
of all of a sudden felt likemuch lower down the pecking order
and a bit exposed. And I don'tthink they ever would say that they
loved being in thatenvironment. And then, of course,
with the COVID factor, it wasjust, okay, it's probably time to
(11:14):
do something different. Butthen I think it has broadened their
horizons in some respect. Theycertainly talk about it in a positive
way. We had to get ourselvesout of a tight situation there, I
think, and we did. And we'rethe better for it.
Yeah, brilliant. And thank youfor sharing those reflections. So
I suppose one of the thingsthat happened when you did make that
(11:34):
move. I know not immediately,but you did then decide to write
a book. So do you want to tellus a bit about that? And why. Why
did you decide to write a book?
Yeah, but you make it soundlike I just woke up one morning and
just started writing. It'slike I have a joke. It's like the
time from what was somebodywith a military background, they
talk about flash to bang,which is this idea of flash is when
(11:57):
you have the idea. Bang iswhen it materializes. And it's a
little bit like when youdecide to leave your employer. Flash
is when you say, I've got togo. Bang is when you actually go.
And I can Think of one companywhere it was two years before I left,
because it takes that long to,to either summon the courage or figure
out how on earth to do that,where do I go to, who's going to
take me, et cetera, et cetera.And I think writing the book was
(12:19):
probably quite similar in thatI had realized that I was doing a
lot of corporate change andtransformation work. My background
is in people and psychology,and that's where my interest is.
And it was slowly dawning onme that we were sort of ignoring
everything we knew aboutpsychology when we do corporate change.
(12:40):
And we weren't considering thehuman aspects, what's going on for
the whole person when they goto work. And there's a million little
things that are changing theretoo. So we call it change management,
but really we're totallyignorant to the human in that. And
I remember the moment where Ithought there might be a book here
was when I was at an off sitemeeting in Barcelona and I just come
(13:01):
out, I was working on a verybig digital transformation program
with some of the, probablysome of the smartest people I've
ever worked with. And Iremember we had got ourselves stuck
into this us and them dynamicbetween us being the brilliant surgeons
with the scalpel who weregoing to fix the company, and the
company being the idiots thathave been mismanaging it for years.
(13:22):
And there was zeroappreciation for what it means to
do change well, or toexperience change, or really, really
zero appreciation of anythingother than just sort of proving to
everyone that we were smarterthan they were. And I remember coming
out of that meeting thinking,this just can't go on, this is ridiculous.
The company's put considerablemoney and talent into this program
(13:44):
and it's going to get nothingbut civil war. And that's what we
had. We had a civil war. And Iremember thinking, there's something
to be written here. But thenof course, I'm an HR practitioner.
Many of us who are probablylistening to this, you're juggling
a million things, you mighthave an idea, but when do you actually
do something with the idea?And then it was a period where I
(14:04):
finished an assignment and Iknew it was going to take a few months
before the next assignmentarrived. And I thought, I'm just
going to start writing thisup. And I sort of realized then,
actually there was a bit of aresearch thesis emerging. It's like.
And I wanted to do a bit ofresearch, I wanted to do a lot of
writing, but ultimately Iwanted to reflect on what I'd experienced
(14:25):
as A person doing all thisinternational stuff and raising a
family, and as a professionaldoing all this really intense change
stuff, merges, acquisitions,divestitures, all that stuff. And
that's really where the ideafor the book came from. But it was,
you know, it was a couple ofyears from epiphany to publication.
Hard work as well. But youjust touched on something there as
(14:47):
well. And I think I spoke ofit on email before recording today,
and you sort of said, oh, am Ihonest? Because I said to you, I
think you're really honest inthis book, and you seem to surprise
you. But I think even what youjust said then it is those honest
reflections about things that.That often have been ignored or haven't
been taken into consideration.So I guess did you set out with that
(15:08):
in mind, or did that just comefrom, I guess, who you are anyway?
No, it took a little bit ofprompting, actually. So I probably
approached the book a littlebit like I would have approached
doing a thesis at university.Hypothesis, research, questions,
subjects, go interview, doyour literature review, pull it all
together. I remember when Iwas getting some friends, read an
(15:30):
early draft, and somebodysaid, this is great, but I want to
know what you think. You know,less journalism, more you. And I
thought, wow, what achallenge. All of a sudden, it's
like I was sort of hidingbehind the book. I was interviewing
people to see what theirthoughts were and change. But it's
like, Rupert, you've done morechange than these people you're interviewing.
Why aren't you interviewingyourself? And then when I started
to ask people the harderquestions, like, tell me about times
(15:53):
when it went wrong. Tell meabout the times when it went really
sideways at work and maybe youwere actually to blame. And all of
a sudden, people don't want togo on the record with that stuff.
So I thought, well, I'm goingto have to go first, I'm going to
have to lead, I'm going tohave to dig deep and ask myself all
those questions, then it wasreally a process of. I didn't realize
at that point how far back Iwas going to go in the memory banks,
(16:15):
because I'd assumed I'd bewriting from the vantage point of
my most recent, most sort ofsenior jobs, the really big, complex
stuff. And I realized actuallythat what had shaped me as a leader
and what I believe couldchange to be actually happened in
my 20s. So now you're goingback 20 years. I'm nearly 50 now.
So you're going back a while.And that was very, very powerful
(16:35):
to sort of do the selfdiscovery and do the inner work as
I describe it and to talk itthrough with coaches, with therapists,
with other people who arereally skilled in this area. And
I think my stance of writingthe book, I'm sort of writing it
from a mid career angle. Somaybe I'm pivoting from corporate
life to self employedconsulting coaching, but I'm still
(16:56):
mid career and I want to knowhow I can sort of be more effective
in the second of my careerthan I was in my first. So I'm very
empathetic towards leadershipto leaders and change. It's not like
some people want to throwtomatoes at both those things that
leaders are bad and pleasestop changing stuff, just leave us
alone. And I'm more pragmaticthan that's impossible. But how could
we be better next time? And Istarted remembering situations where
(17:19):
I felt this dissonance, youknow, where you're projecting one
image and you're saying onething, you're feeling another and
it's just impossible toconnect the two things. And it was
in a merger situation wherewe'd just been acquired. We were
three years post sort ofmerger integration. I was the leader
for the integration and my jobwas to make sure that people didn't
leave, get them to assimilateto the new culture, be successful
(17:42):
in the new environment anddon't leave. That was sort of my
key metric, keep the businessgrowing. And I remember sort of delivering
workshops where I was at thefront of the classroom teaching them
about sort of the psychologyof change and very much being told
to hurry up, don't lower thetone, don't get people upset, don't
stir up bad feelings. Itdawned on me that do you know what
(18:05):
I'm talking about? Thiscombined organization, like I believe
it and I don't want to be heremyself and I haven't done this work
for myself. And the very factthat we can't talk about emotions
during change because it'salmost like admitting that your defeat,
if you admit that change ishard for you, it's a little bit like
saying I'm not really on thebus, I'm not the right guy for the
(18:27):
job, I'm not making theprogress you'd hoped for. You feel
like you've let somebody down.I sort of realized all of that is
just impossible, impossible tocontain. And of course it impacts
your ability to lead and toenjoy what you do, impacts everything
home as well. And that feelingvery much stays with me. And again,
actually with that company, itwas two years from flash to bang.
(18:49):
It was two years fromrealizing I have to get out of here
to getting out of here. Andpart of that was because I had a
one year old and a three yearold. We were living in Singapore
in what most people would sayis very sort of fortunate circumstances.
And if dad's getting a littlebit nostalgic for the past is not
a great thing to bring up athome when you're changing nappies,
(19:11):
you know. Not the righttiming, it's like, just suck it up,
just swallow it down and we'llbook a holiday. You can think about
it then. But increasingly,leadership's really hard and doing
that with family is reallydifficult. So where do you find the
space to do the inner workwithout having to sort of like, book
yourself into rehab? I mean,I'm trying to do it in the course
of work, not having to do itbecause you've succumbed to something
(19:34):
unfortunate. But we just needto get better at this.
And what do you think you've.In your research and writing the
book, have you got clear ideason how you might do that now?
Yes, yes and no. It's not assimple as just saying, follow these
eight steps. But I'm much moreaware and sensitive to that component
of what's not being said, whatneeds to be said. Because we're all
(19:57):
very much sort of task focusedand frustrated with progress, which
is getting in the way. So youstart to realize there's a lot of,
you know, you start to sort offind your tribe and other people
who believe things that youbelieve, whether they be sort of
coaches or psychologists orphilosophy people. And there's a
danger that your echo chamber,especially on social media, if you're
(20:17):
connected with 100 people thatagree with you, that tends to be
all you read. So you can walkaround thinking, oh, everyone's good,
everybody gets this. Well, itwas common sense. There's no need
to do that research. Everybodyunderstands empathy is important
in leadership, for example.And then you bump into a client and
you go, oh, my word. You'Renot in my echo chamber, are you?
(20:38):
And actually, I understandwhy. I can totally see why. What
you're on that bandwagon ofgetting stuff done so you don't let
people down. Now's not theright time to own up to how I'm feeling.
It's like, yeah, been there,and I know exactly how that feels.
So how can I be helpful sothat we can get what needs to be
done in a way that more peoplesort of come on the journey together,
(20:59):
sort of put our head in thesand and pretending we're not feeling
it is not the way forward.
Yeah. And I think you have tobe brave. Right. I think it is different
to share how you're feeling asa leader in certainly in some organizations.
So I think there's an elementof courage and I think you're quite
pretty courageous to write thebook as well in terms of really addressing
(21:19):
that. And I know exactly whatyou mean about echo chambers because,
you know, I'm really lucky towork with lots of senior leaders
like yourself and our fellows.And there kind of is this, oh, yeah,
I think it is all going to beokay. And then you may have one meeting
or one interaction. You'relike, oh no, there's still so much
work to do. So it's very muchin that way you talk in the book
(21:40):
about the. I suppose it'slinked to this is that those personal
blind spots and emotionalavoidance blind spots when you're
in the kind of change period.And how do you think leaders can
create a space where those twoblind spots can be viewed, can be
seen, and can be taken into consideration?
So the blind spot idea is alsocomes from a model called Johari's
(22:04):
Window, which is this ideathat there are things that are known
to us, there are things thatare known to others, and there's
also things that are not knownto anyone. But how can we get some
of those things that are inour blind spots? How can we shine
the torch on those to raiseself awareness? And I suppose really
it's all in service of selfawareness. And then a lot of the
sort of the common mistakes Ikept, the patterns I kept seeing
(22:25):
during corporate change sortof fell into making poor decisions
under haste withoutconsideration to people. But that
became the blind spot idea.And on the flip side to that, there's
also this idea ofspaciousness. But there are some
people with whom we canactually achieve great things under
difficult circumstances. Andwhat is it about those relationships
(22:49):
that's different and that canbe maintained? So if you think facts
and actually sometimes underpressure, great friendships are formed
and it's because they dosomething. It's not. I don't think
it's because it's not maybeonly because there's. It's somebody
you can confide in and tellthe truth to. Because often that
becomes what an old boss usedto call pity Island. We go and tell
(23:09):
we don't like the boss, so wego and talk about the boss in private.
And actually that just makesyou feel worse. That takes you on
a downward spiral. Butactually sometimes you have a relationship
where you can find greatresourcefulness and find a way to
actually think creativelywithout having to sort of run a mile,
run away from the stress. AndI had one particular relationship
(23:30):
in a role. It was the workfrom Megan Wright. It's Megan and
John. And they were doingresearch on this idea, these spacious
relationships. And theyinterviewed myself and my colleague
to see what was it about ourrelationship that we felt allowed
us to do great stuff undervery hostile conditions. We realized
it was this idea that we wouldcommunicate in a spacious way. So
(23:51):
a good example was we wouldtake a lot of our phone calls whilst
walking out in the park. Andso we didn't feel sort of like stuck
looking at a little screen onthe screen. But we were able to sort
of consider the big picture,ask ourselves what if it was very
felt like a safe space toexperiment and acknowledge the stress,
the fear, the anxiety of thesituation as well. What the researcher,
(24:16):
what John Higgins, who's theresearcher said. He said, rupert,
what's strikes me about yourrelationship between the two of you
is that you just have thistalked about a guy called Martin
Buber, who's a philosopher,who has this idea of unconditional
positive regard. And he wouldsay some people have an I it relationship,
so we're just task focused,you know. And some people have an
(24:36):
I thou approach which is I'mhere for you. Whatever that it is,
it doesn't matter. And it'slike, oh my God, you're absolutely
right. It was a relationship,first relationship. And I realized
I was working with a lot ofpeople in the corporate change world
who were just there to get thejob done and didn't care about me.
Even if I cared about them, itwasn't going to be reciprocated.
(24:58):
And I think I realizedactually there's something really
powerful about sort ofrecognizing your preferences here.
It's about understanding yourphilosophy a little bit, but your
preferences for relationshipbuilding and then keeping those or
fostering those relationshipswhen you need them the most. And
I think we need them the mostwhen we're trying to balance careers,
family, drive, change,experience, we're experiencing what
(25:20):
the world throws at us. Do wehave enough people to talk to that
don't just take us to thispity island place, but that actually
allow us to think creativelyand resourcefully and do amazing
things. This is such aninteresting, like, it was like the
epiphany inside the epiphany.It was like, you know, I was interested
in his work, he wasinterviewing me and he was sharing
his observations and ourrelationship. It's like. Well, I
(25:42):
feel like I'm inside the booknow. This is really interesting.
Yeah, definitely. I reallylove that. I love that idea of spaciousness
and finding people that youcan have those conversations with
because they can. It's almostlike an element of like sort of self
care and self compassion tohave those spaces where the difference
(26:02):
between, you know, what yourold boss called Pity island is not
productive. I mean, you mightfeel better for what, a minute or
two while you're gettingsomething off your chest. But actually
the difference between thatand then that spacious relationship
where you're actually alsothinking of solutions and moving
things forward is just such,such a more positive place to be.
And I suppose you don't needto have those relationships with
(26:22):
everybody. It might not befeasible to have that, but actually
if you have one or two, thatcan maybe be the difference.
That's it. I think that that'sthe advice if you like to self and
others is you definitely won'thave that with everybody. But can
you try and make sure you havethat with somebody? And if they're
not inside the system, thenyou're keeping that conversation
alive. But you've got to bedeliberate and intentional about
(26:44):
that because they're not gonnajust appear in your calendar. So
you've got to go find the timeto have these conversations. And.
And a lot what happens when wejust get busy is we sort of go to
the lowest common denominator,don't we? It's like attend the meetings
you definitely can't miss, dothis stuff. You've got to pick your
kid up from school. We do thenon negotiables and we've done sort
(27:04):
of nothing really that thattook us forward or made us feel any
better.
It, yeah, really important.And then being, you know, aware of
it is the first step to thembeing able to like do something about
it. Right.
Yeah.
Brilliant. So something sortof a little bit different, but it
did come from the book for meand it was your. I hope you don't
mind me talking about this andI'm really sorry that, you know,
(27:25):
you lost your dad. And it was,you know, very unexpected. But I've
been doing some work at themoment around this kind of flex fluency
model that we're working on atLeaders Plus. And one of the kind
of pillars of that is thisresponding. Right. And there was
just such a brilliant examplein the book where you said about
the organization you wereworking for at the time, responded
(27:47):
not with policy, but withprinciple. And by telling you to
take all the time you needrather than saying take 10 days.
And I just wonder if you couldtalk a little bit more about that
and how that kind of made youfeel and if it influenced how you
lead.
Yeah. So it's funny you shouldsay you're thinking about that as
(28:07):
well because I also had asimilar conversation just this morning
about this. And there's twodimensions. There's the how people
relate to each other duringsort of times of grief and then there's
how organizations sort of setthemselves up to respond. And this
organization had a principlebased decision making approach, which
(28:28):
is actually very hard tomaintain because everybody wants
to know, is it eight days oris it 10 days? What do I give them?
And it's like no. And thenthey kept saying no, not going to
answer the question, youdecide. And it's like, actually principle
based is very hard. And a lotof companies don't do it. They end
up doing best practice orlegally minimum required. But this
company, it was part of theirpurpose. That's how they responded.
(28:50):
And I found that veryinteresting. It also puts the leadership
on, so the onus on leaders tothink right and to relate and that's
really powerful. So maybe weshould encourage that a little bit
more often, especially ifyou're in the sort of the policy
space or the HR space, youtend to want to sort of like write,
write everything down andmakes everything crystal clear. But
you do people a disservice, Ithink, of relating to one another.
(29:13):
And who's to decide whethergrandma is closer or further away
to you emotionally than mum ordad. I mean, it's like you just can't
make those sort of decisionswhen you're writing policies. Really
the other one is a humanaspect. And the conversation this
morning was this idea thatsomeone was sharing that when they
lost a loved one and returnedto work, their boss and their boss's
(29:35):
boss avoided them because theydidn't know what to say and they
felt awkward. And the onlypeople who approached them and offered
some sort of comfort,condolence were others who had lost
people recently too. So sortof recent sort of experience of grief.
And the realization here is,this is about wisdom, isn't it? It's
about life, experience,wisdom, confidence, courage to show
(29:56):
up in a human way. And youdon't need to do anything when you
offer condolence. You don'teven need to say anything. You just
need to. I think your facesays it all. And I hadn't realized
that when I had thatexperience at work. My manager at
the time had lost his father afew years before, and I didn't know
that actually until about amonth ago. A month ago now. So we're
(30:19):
talking. So this is quiteinteresting. So 18 years later, I
realized that my boss wasempathetic because he'd had a similar
experience that he'd nevertold me about.
Interesting.
So there's gotta be somethingthere about it almost feeds that
argument of mine, which is, weneed to lead with more empathy and
humanity. And you get thatfrom experience, right? So you don't
(30:42):
get it from a course or an MBAor a book. You get it from thinking
about, what have youexperienced and how might you put
that back into how you leadand live your life?
Yeah, and I think there's aninteresting element to that as well.
But. But in. Also, like, howcan you make sure you do that even
if you don't have thatexperience? Like, how do you. How
(31:03):
do you. I know you can nevertruly understand, but it almost shouldn't
come down to if your linemanagers experience something, if
they can be empathetic aboutit. And it's like turning that into,
how can you lead in a way thatis empathetic? And. And I guess it
is that sort of responding,right, that human response rather
(31:23):
than that task response orthat kind of, oh, what are we going
to do about it? But justresponding in a. In a human way sometimes,
like, irrelevant of whetheryou can actually understand what
that person is going through,which, yeah, is a place would be,
I think, would be brilliant toget to.
It's very hard, though, isn'tit? Because you often in hr, you
(31:43):
get asked questions that arevery. You're surprised you've been
asked the question in thefirst place. I remember being asked
a question by a colleague,said, I'm going to a work colleague's
funeral. Is it okay if I cry?And it's like, at first I was like,
I was never expecting to everbe asked that question. And then
you start asking, what's thequestion behind the question? And
(32:04):
of course, the question was,well, this is a very macho environment.
Leaders are supposed to lookcomposed and together. I'm feeling
really upset by what's goingon. I'm probably going to lose it
when I'm there. Is that okay?Do I have permission to be myself?
And it's like, oh, my gosh,this is such a deeper conversation.
And in some ways you'd sort ofhoped it was never necessary, but
aren't you glad you're havingit rather than not at all? Because
(32:27):
this stuff is going throughPeople's minds, you know, they don't
know how to show up if they'resupposed. If they're allowed to show
up in a certain way. And I dothink there's probably a lot of leaders
who just don't think thatthat's their job. You know, it's
like tears and sympathy. Yougo to HR here. We do widgets, you
know, so people, some peopledo try and sort of like separate
their. That their lives inthat way.
(32:48):
Yeah, I think it can be, youknow, we talked about this earlier
about, you know, as a leader,how do you show up as your kind of
full self? And that I think isalso a really helpful way for them
people to feel that they canshow up as their fault full selves.
But I know it's not easy foreverybody to do that. And I think
(33:08):
I probably, as you are such aHR experienced leader, I'm just wondering
if I can kind of slightlypivot a little bit now and ask you
something a bit more generalin terms of, you know, people that
listen to this podcast verymuch about combining their very busy
family life as you've gotexperience with, but also really
their careers still meansomething and they, and they really
(33:30):
want to be ambitious as well.So what have you seen in your experience
working for parents, you know,who are active caregivers and, you
know, want to be present withtheir families and to continue to
progress their career?
Yes, yes, I suppose it's theperennial question, isn't it? It's
a little bit like, you know,whenever we go to Leaders plus event,
this comes up. I can't recallif I, if I've said this at the last
(33:53):
time we got together, then Iapologize. Or maybe that's because
I just truly believe it, but Ispent a lot of time sort of in the
talent management world, youknow, helping corporate careers sort
of grow and succeed and movearound. And I would say within that,
within that world, there's alot of lies we tell. There's a whole
facade that goes on at workabout, you know, if I want to show
up and be ready for the nextlevel, I need to look a certain way.
(34:15):
I need to it all together andhave capacity for more and be mobile.
And, you know, we say, we saya lot of things that might not be
true just so in the hope thatwe get the job. And that's, that's
fine. That's fine. We all haveto sort of play the game. But there's
one lesson that I like to sortof give to students and, and to people
who are coming through thebusiness, which is this fallacy of
the meritocracy and the beliefthat hard work alone will get you
(34:38):
seen and get you there. Andwhen you get busy, I think because
you have to make choices whenyou're busy, when you have a young
family, you're more inclinedto think, I just focus on doing the
work well, and then that'll beenough. And I don't think the model
changes just because you'vegot caregiving responsibilities.
So the model, if you thinkabout it, and if I draw it on the
board, would be a Venn diagramof three circles that overlap. And
(35:01):
I call it the pie model. Pie.And it stands for performance, image
and exposure. And the sweetspot is when they overlap. So the
fallacy of meritocracy is tobelieve that performance alone will
get you seen. It's Image andexposure are critical. And I would
think about those two thingseven when you're. If you like, your
window for work is gettingcontracted. But image is this idea
(35:24):
of, what do people know aboutyou? What's your rep? What are they
saying about you, you know,behind your back, almost. If the
only thing they're sayingabout you behind your back is your
contracted work week, thenthere's an opportunity to change
the story. You know, it'slike, what do you do when you are
at work? You know, what do youlike? Are you any good? Are you.
What do you stand for? So Ithink make sure your image is more
(35:44):
than just. More than justcaregiver. It's all the other things
that you are. And the thirdone is exposure. So who are you actually
talking to? And getting infront of this becomes even harder
when you are, you know, you'vegot less time to do. People often
say, but, Rupert, I don't havetime to go networking or, you know,
I have to be at home certainnumber of days a week, so I can't
(36:05):
show up in person to thatmeeting. It's like, okay. But you
can be very intentional anddeliberate. And when you can. And
I think it's making sure youget a few sort, sort of exposure
points when you can get the.Get the points, because they're more
important to you than anyonewhen you're, you know, you've got
flexible requirements, youneed to be at different places. So,
you know, and some people arebrilliant at, like, working the room.
(36:27):
Some people, you know, whenthey're there, even if they're not
there very long, you know,they're there, they just have that
ability to be seen, to beheard, to leave an impression. And
I guess the question is if youcan keep the performance, the image
and the exposure sort ofgoing. It doesn't really matter if
you're working 75%, 60%, 50%now, that's not the point. But don't
(36:47):
think that. Never think thatperformance alone will get you your
career weight where it needsto go.
Yeah, it's such a. Such animportant message, I think, and definitely
something that we explore in alot of detail on the Fellowship is
like you say, there is thiskind of perceived idea that if you're
good at your job and you do itwell, then that's kind of the key
to progression. But thoseother elements are also so important.
(37:08):
And so when you are sostretched for time, don't just focus
on one of them. Try and makesure you've got the balance of all
three of those, I think isreally, really clear. So thank you
so much for sharing that. Anddo you think having, like, written
the book, what's changed inyou? What do you think? Because I
(37:29):
know you are stillcontracting, you're still doing change
work. Did you kind of, Iguess, learn from the experience
of writing your own book thatyou'll be taking forward into your
leadership?
It's given me a sort ofprofound appreciation for writing,
for research. I think it'sgrown my network in a different way.
So, you know, my echo chamberhas changed for sure. I'm conscious
(37:49):
as well that that sort of theawareness that comes from the epiphany
fades and you quickly backinto the, you know, throw of life,
back into writing PowerPointsand going to meetings and getting
stuff done and not lettingdown the boss or the client. I mean,
that's fine. So you've got totry and find the way to keep remind,
jolting yourself back to thatawareness because you've had it,
(38:10):
you've got to keep that going.And I'm sort of exploring now different
ways of consulting withgreater impact and being more deliberate
based on what I've beenwriting about, but also exploring
more teaching, speaking,coaching, mentoring, sort of, I suppose,
a slightly different sort ofcareer model, one that's a little
bit more portfolio than justtrying to work as much as you can
(38:32):
as fast as you can, which isoften the recipe for success when
you are trying to rise throughthe ranks. But that's probably exactly
the reason why leaders don'thave that sort of space to think
and question whether or notthey can do things better. So, yeah,
I'm so I'm trying to keep thatin focus, but I also know that the
irony is you get busy doingthe new stuff, right? So actually
(38:55):
having a book that needs to bemarketed and do webinars and podcasts
and conferences, that's awhole new line of work. So I'm still
working long hours even if I'mworking on something different?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Andthinking practically now, what do
you say again, sort of fromwriting the book would be your kind
of practical tips that leadersthat are trying to drive change in
(39:20):
an organization should thinkabout doing.
Maybe some of the big lessonsthen from the book and ask yourself
whether or not you're guiltyof these things. The paradigm of
doing change to others is whatsort of needs to be challenged. This
can be really profound whenyou're hired to do a job, you know,
if you're brought in as achange agent to make something happen,
(39:42):
then you definitely feel thepressure to do stuff to other people.
This is the heart of theproblem, that change exists on the
side. And the leader typicallyhas a transformation expert or a
change management sort of teamthat meets in silence. I describe
these guys as the usualsuspects who do the change management,
(40:03):
the planning, the plotting,and you sort of think that it operates
outside of the business thatyou're in and you wonder why. Then
when you sort of do the townhall and you announce the big tada,
if you're going to change xyz,you wonder why this. There's either
a tumbleweed moment thatlasts, that can last years, or there's
this outright sort of civilwar dynamic because you haven't actually
(40:24):
done the change with others.You haven't done it in the open.
It's been inside of your ownhead. So I think there's something
about. By the way, I'm notsaying that the answer is the exact
opposite. So there are sometheories of change that talk about
sort of the large systemchange idea of sort of taking everybody
through every step together. Idon't think that's pragmatic possible.
(40:48):
There are scenarios, though,where there's some ingredient of
that that you include and yousort of just have a slightly more
open and reflexive sort of wayof leading change. Because it's very
easy. I think we get defensiveas leaders. We feel we have to know
the answers, we have to havethe vision, we have to sort of have
all the answers to all thebits that we can't possibly know.
(41:08):
We try and fill the gap. Andwhen you do that, you're not inviting
other people into that storyor finding answers or figuring out
for themselves. I just thinkwe can all do that. With a lot more
sort of awareness and more effectiveness.
And if you think about, youknow, and at the moment, I think
there's lots of organizationsundergoing, you know, quite big changes.
(41:30):
And if you're somebody who isnot in the, you know, the leadership
team, kind of responsible fordriving that change, do you have
any, like, practical advicefor the people that it affects in
terms of how they can, Iguess, maybe make their voices heard
or influence that changethat's being made?
Absolutely. And my point inthe book, I suppose, is that it affects
(41:51):
everybody and it's affectingthe leader too, even though they're
sort of pretending they're.They're driving it on others. There
are some dynamics oforganizations, especially large organizations,
that need to be kept in mind.And one is this idea that the senior
team are almost in a differenttime zone to the rest of the organisation
because of this idea thatthey're thinking ahead, they're thinking
about change and impact and soforth. So the disconnect between
(42:15):
where they're at and where theorganization is at is a really dangerous
disconnect. And good leadershave good relationships with people
at all levels who can tellthem how people are really feeling,
what's really going on, what'sworking, what's not working, what
do they think of that lastchange effort that you thought you'd
implemented two years ago, buteverybody knows, never really got
(42:36):
implemented at all. Thatsystem you bought, no one's used
it. They're not going to tellyou that. But you need to know this
stuff as a leader, you need tohave a good sense for what's going
on. And. And if you're in themiddle of that organization and there's
a middle sort of manager whohas the hardest job of anybody, because
you're trying to do the rightthing by your people and your management
(42:56):
probably aren't giving you anyanswers, so you're having to improvise
and that takes a toll. Or yourfrontline employee. Your version
of truth is gold to leaders,and I think sometimes we think they
don't want to know, or it'sinconvenient truth. Actually, it's
really powerful. If you canfind a way to be constructive but
realistic, then you actuallyare the eyes and ears that every
(43:18):
leader wishes they had. Youcan be the best friend, you can be
the best advisor and navigatorof change. Because I think what leaders
are trying to figure out is,is this a good idea? Is now the right
time? Is there a way that wecan actually, you know, be in a better
place to pull this off and ifyou, the two of you don't connect,
they'll never know.
No, that's great. Thank youfor sharing that. I think sometimes,
(43:40):
like, people might feel likethey want to do that, but it's great
to hear from you that actuallythat is what leaders will want you
to do. If you find a way to doit, then, you know, helpful for,
I guess, helping people feelmaybe a little bit less afraid to
do that. And also, like, theydo have a voice and their voice is
important when you're kind ofin these, you know, often quite difficult
(44:02):
situations. Thank you so much.I'm aware that we're vastly running
out of time. Where can peoplefind out more about you, Rupert,
and get hold of the book?
Easiest place to get the bookis probably on Amazon. Easiest place
to find me is probably onLinkedIn. Yeah, I mean, I know, you
know, hopefully I'll see somepeople at Leaders plus events as
well.
Yeah.
And yeah, I look, I lookforward to having conversations with
(44:25):
people I know. This storyevokes a lot of interest in others
who either feel, oh, yeah,I've got some similar ideas or I'm
struggling with something. Itwould be great to talk. So it would
be lovely to make someconnections and talk it through.
Absolutely. Thank you so muchfor your time and for kind of talking
through some of those reallyinteresting parts of the book. But
also it's great to find out abit more about you and your story.
(44:47):
Thanks for being here.
Thank you, Helen.
I really appreciate youlistening. Thank you so much and
I always love to hear from ourlisteners. If you want to connect
with me on LinkedIn, just goto Verina Hefti and I'd be delighted
to hear your feedback and yoursuggestions or just have you say
hi. Likewise, if you do feelpassionately about gender equality
(45:10):
and you want to support afemale led podcast, then please do
leave a review and share itwith a friend. Just because at the
moment, podcasting is still avery, very male dominated environment.
Most of the top chargingpodcasts are led by men. I really
love all the people who'vejoined from the podcast, our fellowship
(45:32):
program. And if you want to dothe same, then please head over to
leadersplus.org/Fellowship. Inorder to get access to a community
of support to help you combinean ambitious career with young children
together with people who haveyour back. See you next week.
Welcome to the Big CareersSmall Children Podcast. My name is
Verena Hefti. I believe thatno one should have to choose between
becoming a CEO and enjoyingtheir young children for much too
long. Amazing people like I'msure you listening right now have
found themselves stuck on thecareer ladder when they have children.
(00:22):
And that leads to genderinequality in senior leadership because
those people don't progress tosenior leadership. And the same stale,
often male, middle classpeople leading our organizations.
We must change this together.And I hope that many of you listening
right now will progress to themost senior leadership roles that
you like, where you can makethe decisions that make our world
(00:43):
a better place. Outside of thepodcast. I am the CEO and founder
of the social enterpriseLeaders Plus. We exist to help working
parents progress their careersto senior leadership in a way that
works for you and for yourfamilies. We have free events and
resources on leadersplus.orgwhere you can download helpful toolkits
(01:04):
such as on returning frommaternity leave, share parental leave,
securing a promotion, dealingwith workload challenges, or managing
as a dual career couple. Wealso have an award winning fellowship
community which is global forworking parents who have big dreams
for their careers but don'twant to sacrifice their family. You'll
join an absolutely wonderfulgroup of people, a very tight knit,
(01:29):
supportive group of parentswho have your back together. You'll
explore what your careeraspirations are and you'll get advice
from senior leaders who arealso working parents about how to
achieve those aspirations.You'll get new ideas to combine your
hopes for your careers withyour hope for your family. And you
are supported by people whoare experiencing what you're experiencing
(01:50):
yourself. I'm really delightedthat a larger majority of our fellows
have made tangible changesfollowing the program, be that becoming
more senior in their roles,working shorter hours, having better
flexible working arrangement,they always impress me so much with
the courage that they instillin each other to do what is right
for them without apologizingfor having a family or apologizing
(02:14):
for wanting that top job.Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship.
Hello everyone. My name'sHelen Fraser and I'm currently the
Interim COO at Leaders plus,covering for Verina while she is
on maternity leave. And todayI've stepped into the role of podcast
(02:36):
host for the Big Careers SmallChildren podcast. And I'm really
delighted to be joined by oneof our brilliant senior leader mentors,
Rupert Brown. Rupert, wouldyou like to introduce yourself and
let me know who you are, whatyou do and who is in your family?
Well, first of all, thank youfor inviting me on the podcast. I'm
a big fan of what you do atLeaders plus and I think it's because
(02:59):
I too have had the pleasure ofbalancing an interesting career with
a beautiful family. And sowhere we stand today then? I have
married to Helen who is alsoin the human resources field like
myself. We have my eldest sonOliver, who is in the first year
at university so we are justgetting to grips with him being not
(03:20):
in his bedroom wondering whathe's doing. And my youngest child,
Lottie, she is in first yearof A levels. And then we have a two
year old cocker spaniel calledMabel who is like a little baby so
she makes the family feelcomplete again. Even though we're
coming to terms with the ideathat people are leaving the nest
and then I'm sure that theywill return. And in the career context
(03:43):
really has been about a careerin human resource management in lots
of different sort ofmultinationals. Fifteen years of
my career has been outside ofthe uk so six international assignments
including Switzerland,Singapore, twice actually Denmark
and Dubai. And decided to comeback with teenagers in Covid and
(04:03):
sort of put down some routesfor the benefit of the children really
because we've been draggingthem from pillar to post the quest
of my career. And yeah, I'mstill in the human resources field
sort of doing a changemanagement people change advisory
work, whether that's interimor inside large organizations. Organizations.
Amazing. And I had theprivilege of meeting your daughter
(04:23):
at the book launch for Lost inTransformation. And you and Helen
have clearly done a brilliantparenting job with her. And I am
interested in thinking aboutlike is there, as you said, you've
had quite a varied career,you've lived abroad in terms of where
you've been based. Is theresomething you know now about combining
(04:44):
that career with raising afamily that you didn't know then
in the early years?
Yes. I mean the most. Thankyou. Met Lottie and she's so inspired
to meet so many amazing women.She said, dad, how do you know all
these incredible women? It'slike. Blessed to work with some great
people and I think it's lovelyto see show her to some some role
models as she's wondering whatto do after school. I mean there
(05:07):
must be lots of things I knownow I didn't know that. I think something
that is front of mind whenyou're balancing career and a young
family, especially when thereis a travel dimension to it, is in
the back of your mind you'rewondering what damage you're doing
to Your children. There isthat sort of constant guilt of, are
we getting away with this? Whydoes he have a funny accent? Why
(05:28):
can't he do maths? Whatever itmight be? It's because he's been
growing up in differentcultures, different education systems.
Every three years you take himto a different country and I suppose
you're always sort of keepingscore, aren't you, as a parent? It's
like, how are we doing? Are weinflicting more damage than we are?
Sort of like upside. I thinkone of the reflections is the upside
(05:49):
to having this internationallife is that the family became very
tight. We were each other'ssort of nucleus and it was very much,
I think in a way theiradaptability stems from the fact
that there was, at least whenwe moved around, we were tight and
we were common to one another.And I was also, in hindsight pleased.
We sort of called it a daywhen we did. And often a lot of the
(06:12):
times when you're doing theright thing for the family, it still
hurts, right? You're in mycase, it's like they had this amazing
international career. We're inlockdown in the desert in Dubai and
Ollie and Lottie becomingteenagers and they're becoming much
more self-aware and they cansay things that they haven't said
before. And when they said,dad, what are you doing? Why are
(06:33):
we doing lockdown in thedesert? I mean, surely there are
smarter things to do thanthis. Children start questioning
your career choices. And upuntil that point it had simply been
a case of pack the kids littlesuitcase, trundle them through the
airport. They don't need toknow really where they're going,
they just need to stick withmum and dad. And then all of a sudden
(06:54):
the realization is, yeah, it'sprobably time to put them first.
And putting them first, ofcourse there's a price. As a consequence,
it means putting careersecond. And probably I've been in
that sort of luxury, selfishposition for so long of always thinking
career first to an extent. Imean, there's always has to be to
interesting places that aresafe and sort of of value safety
(07:16):
for the children. But that wasalways the lead cause. And five was
that five, six years later,after sort of coming home and unpacking
the bags and taking a lotfewer airplanes. It was the right
thing to do. It absolutely wasthe right thing to do. Because now
I think the kids have a bit ofa best of both worlds. You know,
they grew up internationally,but they're doing their sort of important
(07:37):
teenage years with stabilityand they're making those friends
for life. But if you'd haveasked me, when I was in the desert
during lockdown during COVID Ifelt torn, but I felt really torn.
And I didn't know what theright answer was.
How did you come to thatdecision then? Because it's something
I think that a lot of parentsfacing similar decisions might find
(07:58):
interesting. What turned thedial? What kind of made you decide?
It's when the conversationwith the children is not so much
a just sort of do what I saykind of conversation. It's a sort
of a more grown upconversation between two adults really.
And you realize it's notworking. You know, it wasn't working
for him. It wasn't reallyworking for me. But the thought was,
(08:21):
well, we just keep going,don't we? That's what we've always
done. And I think it's adifferent conversation when you've
got other people to please.When the family becomes older. I
suppose that's the case, isn'tit? There's lots of different people
to please. Up until thatpoint, really, the guilt axis had
been between Helen and myselfand our parents. It's kind of like,
(08:41):
can we stay away from mum anddad this long, given their health,
given this, that and theother? And you can sort of wrestle
that. But when it's also thepeople in your family, I mean, you're
just waiting for the dog tospeak up, aren't you? And just like,
I'm not happy either. So it'sjust, okay, guys, we've got to meet
in the middle. And that's abit of a career compromise moment,
(09:02):
I think.
Yeah, definitely. And I thinkeverybody will face those at some
point. And it's interestingwhat you say about. Once the children
become more like adults,really. And I'm similar to a bit
younger than yours, but 13 and16. And it is a different conversation
I think, that you can have,and I know you probably want to speak,
speak on their behalf. But interms of, do you get a sense from
them of. Of those youngeryears? Because I think they are more
(09:26):
adaptable in those youngeryears to kind of do that moving.
And do they ever talk abouthow they've enjoyed that or if they
really hated it?
So there was differentassignments or different periods.
So they were both born inSingapore and they spent their early
childhood there. I mean,Lottie, who you met, her first preschool
was bilingual English andMandarin. So she grew up. Her friends
(09:48):
were little Chinese kids whowas eating kanji for lunch. She was
singing Mandarin, you know,but she had no idea whether that
was normal or not. We had thesense of sort of beaming pride that
it was very cool andsophisticated, and surely this will
only bring, you know, expandedhorizons in the future. But you don't
know, do you? I mean, as aparent, you don't know any better.
And now when we talk about itwith the kids, they often do refer
(10:11):
to the fact that, for example,they, you know, Lottie has very diverse
food interests, travelinterests, is well read and so forth.
And I think some of that doescome from there. But there was also
one assignment in particular.So we went from Singapore to Denmark,
which was strange, going fromthe heat to the cold and the dark.
And a lot of people said, thatwill be hard for the family. And
(10:32):
it turned out to be reallyeasy for the family because you were
going to a very tight,inclusive sort of community there.
So they absolutely loved it.We then went from there to Dubai
when they were a little bitolder. So Ollie was just in first
year of secondary school, andall of us, that was really hard because
they'd gone from sort of bigfish in a small pond to this very
(10:52):
competitive, very sort ofalpha world in the Middle east, where
it's about sort of wealth andsuccess and so forth. And they sort
of all of a sudden felt likemuch lower down the pecking order
and a bit exposed. And I don'tthink they ever would say that they
loved being in thatenvironment. And then, of course,
with the COVID factor, it wasjust, okay, it's probably time to
(11:14):
do something different. Butthen I think it has broadened their
horizons in some respect. Theycertainly talk about it in a positive
way. We had to get ourselvesout of a tight situation there, I
think, and we did. And we'rethe better for it.
Yeah, brilliant. And thank youfor sharing those reflections. So
I suppose one of the thingsthat happened when you did make that
(11:34):
move. I know not immediately,but you did then decide to write
a book. So do you want to tellus a bit about that? And why. Why
did you decide to write a book?
Yeah, but you make it soundlike I just woke up one morning and
just started writing. It'slike I have a joke. It's like the
time from what was somebodywith a military background, they
talk about flash to bang,which is this idea of flash is when
(11:57):
you have the idea. Bang iswhen it materializes. And it's a
little bit like when youdecide to leave your employer. Flash
is when you say, I've got togo. Bang is when you actually go.
And I can Think of one companywhere it was two years before I left,
because it takes that long to,to either summon the courage or figure
out how on earth to do that,where do I go to, who's going to
take me, et cetera, et cetera.And I think writing the book was
(12:19):
probably quite similar in thatI had realized that I was doing a
lot of corporate change andtransformation work. My background
is in people and psychology,and that's where my interest is.
And it was slowly dawning onme that we were sort of ignoring
everything we knew aboutpsychology when we do corporate change.
(12:40):
And we weren't considering thehuman aspects, what's going on for
the whole person when they goto work. And there's a million little
things that are changing theretoo. So we call it change management,
but really we're totallyignorant to the human in that. And
I remember the moment where Ithought there might be a book here
was when I was at an off sitemeeting in Barcelona and I just come
(13:01):
out, I was working on a verybig digital transformation program
with some of the, probablysome of the smartest people I've
ever worked with. And Iremember we had got ourselves stuck
into this us and them dynamicbetween us being the brilliant surgeons
with the scalpel who weregoing to fix the company, and the
company being the idiots thathave been mismanaging it for years.
(13:22):
And there was zeroappreciation for what it means to
do change well, or toexperience change, or really, really
zero appreciation of anythingother than just sort of proving to
everyone that we were smarterthan they were. And I remember coming
out of that meeting thinking,this just can't go on, this is ridiculous.
The company's put considerablemoney and talent into this program
(13:44):
and it's going to get nothingbut civil war. And that's what we
had. We had a civil war. And Iremember thinking, there's something
to be written here. But thenof course, I'm an HR practitioner.
Many of us who are probablylistening to this, you're juggling
a million things, you mighthave an idea, but when do you actually
do something with the idea?And then it was a period where I
(14:04):
finished an assignment and Iknew it was going to take a few months
before the next assignmentarrived. And I thought, I'm just
going to start writing thisup. And I sort of realized then,
actually there was a bit of aresearch thesis emerging. It's like.
And I wanted to do a bit ofresearch, I wanted to do a lot of
writing, but ultimately Iwanted to reflect on what I'd experienced
(14:25):
as A person doing all thisinternational stuff and raising a
family, and as a professionaldoing all this really intense change
stuff, merges, acquisitions,divestitures, all that stuff. And
that's really where the ideafor the book came from. But it was,
you know, it was a couple ofyears from epiphany to publication.
Hard work as well. But youjust touched on something there as
(14:47):
well. And I think I spoke ofit on email before recording today,
and you sort of said, oh, am Ihonest? Because I said to you, I
think you're really honest inthis book, and you seem to surprise
you. But I think even what youjust said then it is those honest
reflections about things that.That often have been ignored or haven't
been taken into consideration.So I guess did you set out with that
(15:08):
in mind, or did that just comefrom, I guess, who you are anyway?
No, it took a little bit ofprompting, actually. So I probably
approached the book a littlebit like I would have approached
doing a thesis at university.Hypothesis, research, questions,
subjects, go interview, doyour literature review, pull it all
together. I remember when Iwas getting some friends, read an
(15:30):
early draft, and somebodysaid, this is great, but I want to
know what you think. You know,less journalism, more you. And I
thought, wow, what achallenge. All of a sudden, it's
like I was sort of hidingbehind the book. I was interviewing
people to see what theirthoughts were and change. But it's
like, Rupert, you've done morechange than these people you're interviewing.
Why aren't you interviewingyourself? And then when I started
to ask people the harderquestions, like, tell me about times
(15:53):
when it went wrong. Tell meabout the times when it went really
sideways at work and maybe youwere actually to blame. And all of
a sudden, people don't want togo on the record with that stuff.
So I thought, well, I'm goingto have to go first, I'm going to
have to lead, I'm going tohave to dig deep and ask myself all
those questions, then it wasreally a process of. I didn't realize
at that point how far back Iwas going to go in the memory banks,
(16:15):
because I'd assumed I'd bewriting from the vantage point of
my most recent, most sort ofsenior jobs, the really big, complex
stuff. And I realized actuallythat what had shaped me as a leader
and what I believe couldchange to be actually happened in
my 20s. So now you're goingback 20 years. I'm nearly 50 now.
So you're going back a while.And that was very, very powerful
(16:35):
to sort of do the selfdiscovery and do the inner work as
I describe it and to talk itthrough with coaches, with therapists,
with other people who arereally skilled in this area. And
I think my stance of writingthe book, I'm sort of writing it
from a mid career angle. Somaybe I'm pivoting from corporate
life to self employedconsulting coaching, but I'm still
(16:56):
mid career and I want to knowhow I can sort of be more effective
in the second of my careerthan I was in my first. So I'm very
empathetic towards leadershipto leaders and change. It's not like
some people want to throwtomatoes at both those things that
leaders are bad and pleasestop changing stuff, just leave us
alone. And I'm more pragmaticthan that's impossible. But how could
we be better next time? And Istarted remembering situations where
(17:19):
I felt this dissonance, youknow, where you're projecting one
image and you're saying onething, you're feeling another and
it's just impossible toconnect the two things. And it was
in a merger situation wherewe'd just been acquired. We were
three years post sort ofmerger integration. I was the leader
for the integration and my jobwas to make sure that people didn't
leave, get them to assimilateto the new culture, be successful
(17:42):
in the new environment anddon't leave. That was sort of my
key metric, keep the businessgrowing. And I remember sort of delivering
workshops where I was at thefront of the classroom teaching them
about sort of the psychologyof change and very much being told
to hurry up, don't lower thetone, don't get people upset, don't
stir up bad feelings. Itdawned on me that do you know what
(18:05):
I'm talking about? Thiscombined organization, like I believe
it and I don't want to be heremyself and I haven't done this work
for myself. And the very factthat we can't talk about emotions
during change because it'salmost like admitting that your defeat,
if you admit that change ishard for you, it's a little bit like
saying I'm not really on thebus, I'm not the right guy for the
(18:27):
job, I'm not making theprogress you'd hoped for. You feel
like you've let somebody down.I sort of realized all of that is
just impossible, impossible tocontain. And of course it impacts
your ability to lead and toenjoy what you do, impacts everything
home as well. And that feelingvery much stays with me. And again,
actually with that company, itwas two years from flash to bang.
(18:49):
It was two years fromrealizing I have to get out of here
to getting out of here. Andpart of that was because I had a
one year old and a three yearold. We were living in Singapore
in what most people would sayis very sort of fortunate circumstances.
And if dad's getting a littlebit nostalgic for the past is not
a great thing to bring up athome when you're changing nappies,
(19:11):
you know. Not the righttiming, it's like, just suck it up,
just swallow it down and we'llbook a holiday. You can think about
it then. But increasingly,leadership's really hard and doing
that with family is reallydifficult. So where do you find the
space to do the inner workwithout having to sort of like, book
yourself into rehab? I mean,I'm trying to do it in the course
of work, not having to do itbecause you've succumbed to something
(19:34):
unfortunate. But we just needto get better at this.
And what do you think you've.In your research and writing the
book, have you got clear ideason how you might do that now?
Yes, yes and no. It's not assimple as just saying, follow these
eight steps. But I'm much moreaware and sensitive to that component
of what's not being said, whatneeds to be said. Because we're all
(19:57):
very much sort of task focusedand frustrated with progress, which
is getting in the way. So youstart to realize there's a lot of,
you know, you start to sort offind your tribe and other people
who believe things that youbelieve, whether they be sort of
coaches or psychologists orphilosophy people. And there's a
danger that your echo chamber,especially on social media, if you're
(20:17):
connected with 100 people thatagree with you, that tends to be
all you read. So you can walkaround thinking, oh, everyone's good,
everybody gets this. Well, itwas common sense. There's no need
to do that research. Everybodyunderstands empathy is important
in leadership, for example.And then you bump into a client and
you go, oh, my word. You'Renot in my echo chamber, are you?
(20:38):
And actually, I understandwhy. I can totally see why. What
you're on that bandwagon ofgetting stuff done so you don't let
people down. Now's not theright time to own up to how I'm feeling.
It's like, yeah, been there,and I know exactly how that feels.
So how can I be helpful sothat we can get what needs to be
done in a way that more peoplesort of come on the journey together,
(20:59):
sort of put our head in thesand and pretending we're not feeling
it is not the way forward.
Yeah. And I think you have tobe brave. Right. I think it is different
to share how you're feeling asa leader in certainly in some organizations.
So I think there's an elementof courage and I think you're quite
pretty courageous to write thebook as well in terms of really addressing
(21:19):
that. And I know exactly whatyou mean about echo chambers because,
you know, I'm really lucky towork with lots of senior leaders
like yourself and our fellows.And there kind of is this, oh, yeah,
I think it is all going to beokay. And then you may have one meeting
or one interaction. You'relike, oh no, there's still so much
work to do. So it's very muchin that way you talk in the book
(21:40):
about the. I suppose it'slinked to this is that those personal
blind spots and emotionalavoidance blind spots when you're
in the kind of change period.And how do you think leaders can
create a space where those twoblind spots can be viewed, can be
seen, and can be taken into consideration?
So the blind spot idea is alsocomes from a model called Johari's
(22:04):
Window, which is this ideathat there are things that are known
to us, there are things thatare known to others, and there's
also things that are not knownto anyone. But how can we get some
of those things that are inour blind spots? How can we shine
the torch on those to raiseself awareness? And I suppose really
it's all in service of selfawareness. And then a lot of the
sort of the common mistakes Ikept, the patterns I kept seeing
(22:25):
during corporate change sortof fell into making poor decisions
under haste withoutconsideration to people. But that
became the blind spot idea.And on the flip side to that, there's
also this idea ofspaciousness. But there are some
people with whom we canactually achieve great things under
difficult circumstances. Andwhat is it about those relationships
(22:49):
that's different and that canbe maintained? So if you think facts
and actually sometimes underpressure, great friendships are formed
and it's because they dosomething. It's not. I don't think
it's because it's not maybeonly because there's. It's somebody
you can confide in and tellthe truth to. Because often that
becomes what an old boss usedto call pity Island. We go and tell
(23:09):
we don't like the boss, so wego and talk about the boss in private.
And actually that just makesyou feel worse. That takes you on
a downward spiral. Butactually sometimes you have a relationship
where you can find greatresourcefulness and find a way to
actually think creativelywithout having to sort of run a mile,
run away from the stress. AndI had one particular relationship
(23:30):
in a role. It was the workfrom Megan Wright. It's Megan and
John. And they were doingresearch on this idea, these spacious
relationships. And theyinterviewed myself and my colleague
to see what was it about ourrelationship that we felt allowed
us to do great stuff undervery hostile conditions. We realized
it was this idea that we wouldcommunicate in a spacious way. So
(23:51):
a good example was we wouldtake a lot of our phone calls whilst
walking out in the park. Andso we didn't feel sort of like stuck
looking at a little screen onthe screen. But we were able to sort
of consider the big picture,ask ourselves what if it was very
felt like a safe space toexperiment and acknowledge the stress,
the fear, the anxiety of thesituation as well. What the researcher,
(24:16):
what John Higgins, who's theresearcher said. He said, rupert,
what's strikes me about yourrelationship between the two of you
is that you just have thistalked about a guy called Martin
Buber, who's a philosopher,who has this idea of unconditional
positive regard. And he wouldsay some people have an I it relationship,
so we're just task focused,you know. And some people have an
(24:36):
I thou approach which is I'mhere for you. Whatever that it is,
it doesn't matter. And it'slike, oh my God, you're absolutely
right. It was a relationship,first relationship. And I realized
I was working with a lot ofpeople in the corporate change world
who were just there to get thejob done and didn't care about me.
Even if I cared about them, itwasn't going to be reciprocated.
(24:58):
And I think I realizedactually there's something really
powerful about sort ofrecognizing your preferences here.
It's about understanding yourphilosophy a little bit, but your
preferences for relationshipbuilding and then keeping those or
fostering those relationshipswhen you need them the most. And
I think we need them the mostwhen we're trying to balance careers,
family, drive, change,experience, we're experiencing what
(25:20):
the world throws at us. Do wehave enough people to talk to that
don't just take us to thispity island place, but that actually
allow us to think creativelyand resourcefully and do amazing
things. This is such aninteresting, like, it was like the
epiphany inside the epiphany.It was like, you know, I was interested
in his work, he wasinterviewing me and he was sharing
his observations and ourrelationship. It's like. Well, I
(25:42):
feel like I'm inside the booknow. This is really interesting.
Yeah, definitely. I reallylove that. I love that idea of spaciousness
and finding people that youcan have those conversations with
because they can. It's almostlike an element of like sort of self
care and self compassion tohave those spaces where the difference
(26:02):
between, you know, what yourold boss called Pity island is not
productive. I mean, you mightfeel better for what, a minute or
two while you're gettingsomething off your chest. But actually
the difference between thatand then that spacious relationship
where you're actually alsothinking of solutions and moving
things forward is just such,such a more positive place to be.
And I suppose you don't needto have those relationships with
(26:22):
everybody. It might not befeasible to have that, but actually
if you have one or two, thatcan maybe be the difference.
That's it. I think that that'sthe advice if you like to self and
others is you definitely won'thave that with everybody. But can
you try and make sure you havethat with somebody? And if they're
not inside the system, thenyou're keeping that conversation
alive. But you've got to bedeliberate and intentional about
(26:44):
that because they're not gonnajust appear in your calendar. So
you've got to go find the timeto have these conversations. And.
And a lot what happens when wejust get busy is we sort of go to
the lowest common denominator,don't we? It's like attend the meetings
you definitely can't miss, dothis stuff. You've got to pick your
kid up from school. We do thenon negotiables and we've done sort
(27:04):
of nothing really that thattook us forward or made us feel any
better.
It, yeah, really important.And then being, you know, aware of
it is the first step to thembeing able to like do something about
it. Right.
Yeah.
Brilliant. So something sortof a little bit different, but it
did come from the book for meand it was your. I hope you don't
mind me talking about this andI'm really sorry that, you know,
(27:25):
you lost your dad. And it was,you know, very unexpected. But I've
been doing some work at themoment around this kind of flex fluency
model that we're working on atLeaders Plus. And one of the kind
of pillars of that is thisresponding. Right. And there was
just such a brilliant examplein the book where you said about
the organization you wereworking for at the time, responded
(27:47):
not with policy, but withprinciple. And by telling you to
take all the time you needrather than saying take 10 days.
And I just wonder if you couldtalk a little bit more about that
and how that kind of made youfeel and if it influenced how you
lead.
Yeah. So it's funny you shouldsay you're thinking about that as
(28:07):
well because I also had asimilar conversation just this morning
about this. And there's twodimensions. There's the how people
relate to each other duringsort of times of grief and then there's
how organizations sort of setthemselves up to respond. And this
organization had a principlebased decision making approach, which
(28:28):
is actually very hard tomaintain because everybody wants
to know, is it eight days oris it 10 days? What do I give them?
And it's like no. And thenthey kept saying no, not going to
answer the question, youdecide. And it's like, actually principle
based is very hard. And a lotof companies don't do it. They end
up doing best practice orlegally minimum required. But this
company, it was part of theirpurpose. That's how they responded.
(28:50):
And I found that veryinteresting. It also puts the leadership
on, so the onus on leaders tothink right and to relate and that's
really powerful. So maybe weshould encourage that a little bit
more often, especially ifyou're in the sort of the policy
space or the HR space, youtend to want to sort of like write,
write everything down andmakes everything crystal clear. But
you do people a disservice, Ithink, of relating to one another.
(29:13):
And who's to decide whethergrandma is closer or further away
to you emotionally than mum ordad. I mean, it's like you just can't
make those sort of decisionswhen you're writing policies. Really
the other one is a humanaspect. And the conversation this
morning was this idea thatsomeone was sharing that when they
lost a loved one and returnedto work, their boss and their boss's
(29:35):
boss avoided them because theydidn't know what to say and they
felt awkward. And the onlypeople who approached them and offered
some sort of comfort,condolence were others who had lost
people recently too. So sortof recent sort of experience of grief.
And the realization here is,this is about wisdom, isn't it? It's
about life, experience,wisdom, confidence, courage to show
(29:56):
up in a human way. And youdon't need to do anything when you
offer condolence. You don'teven need to say anything. You just
need to. I think your facesays it all. And I hadn't realized
that when I had thatexperience at work. My manager at
the time had lost his father afew years before, and I didn't know
that actually until about amonth ago. A month ago now. So we're
(30:19):
talking. So this is quiteinteresting. So 18 years later, I
realized that my boss wasempathetic because he'd had a similar
experience that he'd nevertold me about.
Interesting.
So there's gotta be somethingthere about it almost feeds that
argument of mine, which is, weneed to lead with more empathy and
humanity. And you get thatfrom experience, right? So you don't
(30:42):
get it from a course or an MBAor a book. You get it from thinking
about, what have youexperienced and how might you put
that back into how you leadand live your life?
Yeah, and I think there's aninteresting element to that as well.
But. But in. Also, like, howcan you make sure you do that even
if you don't have thatexperience? Like, how do you. How
(31:03):
do you. I know you can nevertruly understand, but it almost shouldn't
come down to if your linemanagers experience something, if
they can be empathetic aboutit. And it's like turning that into,
how can you lead in a way thatis empathetic? And. And I guess it
is that sort of responding,right, that human response rather
(31:23):
than that task response orthat kind of, oh, what are we going
to do about it? But justresponding in a. In a human way sometimes,
like, irrelevant of whetheryou can actually understand what
that person is going through,which, yeah, is a place would be,
I think, would be brilliant toget to.
It's very hard, though, isn'tit? Because you often in hr, you
(31:43):
get asked questions that arevery. You're surprised you've been
asked the question in thefirst place. I remember being asked
a question by a colleague,said, I'm going to a work colleague's
funeral. Is it okay if I cry?And it's like, at first I was like,
I was never expecting to everbe asked that question. And then
you start asking, what's thequestion behind the question? And
(32:04):
of course, the question was,well, this is a very macho environment.
Leaders are supposed to lookcomposed and together. I'm feeling
really upset by what's goingon. I'm probably going to lose it
when I'm there. Is that okay?Do I have permission to be myself?
And it's like, oh, my gosh,this is such a deeper conversation.
And in some ways you'd sort ofhoped it was never necessary, but
aren't you glad you're havingit rather than not at all? Because
(32:27):
this stuff is going throughPeople's minds, you know, they don't
know how to show up if they'resupposed. If they're allowed to show
up in a certain way. And I dothink there's probably a lot of leaders
who just don't think thatthat's their job. You know, it's
like tears and sympathy. Yougo to HR here. We do widgets, you
know, so people, some peopledo try and sort of like separate
their. That their lives inthat way.
(32:48):
Yeah, I think it can be, youknow, we talked about this earlier
about, you know, as a leader,how do you show up as your kind of
full self? And that I think isalso a really helpful way for them
people to feel that they canshow up as their fault full selves.
But I know it's not easy foreverybody to do that. And I think
(33:08):
I probably, as you are such aHR experienced leader, I'm just wondering
if I can kind of slightlypivot a little bit now and ask you
something a bit more generalin terms of, you know, people that
listen to this podcast verymuch about combining their very busy
family life as you've gotexperience with, but also really
their careers still meansomething and they, and they really
(33:30):
want to be ambitious as well.So what have you seen in your experience
working for parents, you know,who are active caregivers and, you
know, want to be present withtheir families and to continue to
progress their career?
Yes, yes, I suppose it's theperennial question, isn't it? It's
a little bit like, you know,whenever we go to Leaders plus event,
this comes up. I can't recallif I, if I've said this at the last
(33:53):
time we got together, then Iapologize. Or maybe that's because
I just truly believe it, but Ispent a lot of time sort of in the
talent management world, youknow, helping corporate careers sort
of grow and succeed and movearound. And I would say within that,
within that world, there's alot of lies we tell. There's a whole
facade that goes on at workabout, you know, if I want to show
up and be ready for the nextlevel, I need to look a certain way.
(34:15):
I need to it all together andhave capacity for more and be mobile.
And, you know, we say, we saya lot of things that might not be
true just so in the hope thatwe get the job. And that's, that's
fine. That's fine. We all haveto sort of play the game. But there's
one lesson that I like to sortof give to students and, and to people
who are coming through thebusiness, which is this fallacy of
the meritocracy and the beliefthat hard work alone will get you
(34:38):
seen and get you there. Andwhen you get busy, I think because
you have to make choices whenyou're busy, when you have a young
family, you're more inclinedto think, I just focus on doing the
work well, and then that'll beenough. And I don't think the model
changes just because you'vegot caregiving responsibilities.
So the model, if you thinkabout it, and if I draw it on the
board, would be a Venn diagramof three circles that overlap. And
(35:01):
I call it the pie model. Pie.And it stands for performance, image
and exposure. And the sweetspot is when they overlap. So the
fallacy of meritocracy is tobelieve that performance alone will
get you seen. It's Image andexposure are critical. And I would
think about those two thingseven when you're. If you like, your
window for work is gettingcontracted. But image is this idea
(35:24):
of, what do people know aboutyou? What's your rep? What are they
saying about you, you know,behind your back, almost. If the
only thing they're sayingabout you behind your back is your
contracted work week, thenthere's an opportunity to change
the story. You know, it'slike, what do you do when you are
at work? You know, what do youlike? Are you any good? Are you.
What do you stand for? So Ithink make sure your image is more
(35:44):
than just. More than justcaregiver. It's all the other things
that you are. And the thirdone is exposure. So who are you actually
talking to? And getting infront of this becomes even harder
when you are, you know, you'vegot less time to do. People often
say, but, Rupert, I don't havetime to go networking or, you know,
I have to be at home certainnumber of days a week, so I can't
(36:05):
show up in person to thatmeeting. It's like, okay. But you
can be very intentional anddeliberate. And when you can. And
I think it's making sure youget a few sort, sort of exposure
points when you can get the.Get the points, because they're more
important to you than anyonewhen you're, you know, you've got
flexible requirements, youneed to be at different places. So,
you know, and some people arebrilliant at, like, working the room.
(36:27):
Some people, you know, whenthey're there, even if they're not
there very long, you know,they're there, they just have that
ability to be seen, to beheard, to leave an impression. And
I guess the question is if youcan keep the performance, the image
and the exposure sort ofgoing. It doesn't really matter if
you're working 75%, 60%, 50%now, that's not the point. But don't
(36:47):
think that. Never think thatperformance alone will get you your
career weight where it needsto go.
Yeah, it's such a. Such animportant message, I think, and definitely
something that we explore in alot of detail on the Fellowship is
like you say, there is thiskind of perceived idea that if you're
good at your job and you do itwell, then that's kind of the key
to progression. But thoseother elements are also so important.
(37:08):
And so when you are sostretched for time, don't just focus
on one of them. Try and makesure you've got the balance of all
three of those, I think isreally, really clear. So thank you
so much for sharing that. Anddo you think having, like, written
the book, what's changed inyou? What do you think? Because I
(37:29):
know you are stillcontracting, you're still doing change
work. Did you kind of, Iguess, learn from the experience
of writing your own book thatyou'll be taking forward into your
leadership?
It's given me a sort ofprofound appreciation for writing,
for research. I think it'sgrown my network in a different way.
So, you know, my echo chamberhas changed for sure. I'm conscious
(37:49):
as well that that sort of theawareness that comes from the epiphany
fades and you quickly backinto the, you know, throw of life,
back into writing PowerPointsand going to meetings and getting
stuff done and not lettingdown the boss or the client. I mean,
that's fine. So you've got totry and find the way to keep remind,
jolting yourself back to thatawareness because you've had it,
(38:10):
you've got to keep that going.And I'm sort of exploring now different
ways of consulting withgreater impact and being more deliberate
based on what I've beenwriting about, but also exploring
more teaching, speaking,coaching, mentoring, sort of, I suppose,
a slightly different sort ofcareer model, one that's a little
bit more portfolio than justtrying to work as much as you can
(38:32):
as fast as you can, which isoften the recipe for success when
you are trying to rise throughthe ranks. But that's probably exactly
the reason why leaders don'thave that sort of space to think
and question whether or notthey can do things better. So, yeah,
I'm so I'm trying to keep thatin focus, but I also know that the
irony is you get busy doingthe new stuff, right? So actually
(38:55):
having a book that needs to bemarketed and do webinars and podcasts
and conferences, that's awhole new line of work. So I'm still
working long hours even if I'mworking on something different?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Andthinking practically now, what do
you say again, sort of fromwriting the book would be your kind
of practical tips that leadersthat are trying to drive change in
(39:20):
an organization should thinkabout doing.
Maybe some of the big lessonsthen from the book and ask yourself
whether or not you're guiltyof these things. The paradigm of
doing change to others is whatsort of needs to be challenged. This
can be really profound whenyou're hired to do a job, you know,
if you're brought in as achange agent to make something happen,
(39:42):
then you definitely feel thepressure to do stuff to other people.
This is the heart of theproblem, that change exists on the
side. And the leader typicallyhas a transformation expert or a
change management sort of teamthat meets in silence. I describe
these guys as the usualsuspects who do the change management,
(40:03):
the planning, the plotting,and you sort of think that it operates
outside of the business thatyou're in and you wonder why. Then
when you sort of do the townhall and you announce the big tada,
if you're going to change xyz,you wonder why this. There's either
a tumbleweed moment thatlasts, that can last years, or there's
this outright sort of civilwar dynamic because you haven't actually
(40:24):
done the change with others.You haven't done it in the open.
It's been inside of your ownhead. So I think there's something
about. By the way, I'm notsaying that the answer is the exact
opposite. So there are sometheories of change that talk about
sort of the large systemchange idea of sort of taking everybody
through every step together. Idon't think that's pragmatic possible.
(40:48):
There are scenarios, though,where there's some ingredient of
that that you include and yousort of just have a slightly more
open and reflexive sort of wayof leading change. Because it's very
easy. I think we get defensiveas leaders. We feel we have to know
the answers, we have to havethe vision, we have to sort of have
all the answers to all thebits that we can't possibly know.
(41:08):
We try and fill the gap. Andwhen you do that, you're not inviting
other people into that storyor finding answers or figuring out
for themselves. I just thinkwe can all do that. With a lot more
sort of awareness and more effectiveness.
And if you think about, youknow, and at the moment, I think
there's lots of organizationsundergoing, you know, quite big changes.
(41:30):
And if you're somebody who isnot in the, you know, the leadership
team, kind of responsible fordriving that change, do you have
any, like, practical advicefor the people that it affects in
terms of how they can, Iguess, maybe make their voices heard
or influence that changethat's being made?
Absolutely. And my point inthe book, I suppose, is that it affects
(41:51):
everybody and it's affectingthe leader too, even though they're
sort of pretending they're.They're driving it on others. There
are some dynamics oforganizations, especially large organizations,
that need to be kept in mind.And one is this idea that the senior
team are almost in a differenttime zone to the rest of the organisation
because of this idea thatthey're thinking ahead, they're thinking
about change and impact and soforth. So the disconnect between
(42:15):
where they're at and where theorganization is at is a really dangerous
disconnect. And good leadershave good relationships with people
at all levels who can tellthem how people are really feeling,
what's really going on, what'sworking, what's not working, what
do they think of that lastchange effort that you thought you'd
implemented two years ago, buteverybody knows, never really got
(42:36):
implemented at all. Thatsystem you bought, no one's used
it. They're not going to tellyou that. But you need to know this
stuff as a leader, you need tohave a good sense for what's going
on. And. And if you're in themiddle of that organization and there's
a middle sort of manager whohas the hardest job of anybody, because
you're trying to do the rightthing by your people and your management
(42:56):
probably aren't giving you anyanswers, so you're having to improvise
and that takes a toll. Or yourfrontline employee. Your version
of truth is gold to leaders,and I think sometimes we think they
don't want to know, or it'sinconvenient truth. Actually, it's
really powerful. If you canfind a way to be constructive but
realistic, then you actuallyare the eyes and ears that every
(43:18):
leader wishes they had. Youcan be the best friend, you can be
the best advisor and navigatorof change. Because I think what leaders
are trying to figure out is,is this a good idea? Is now the right
time? Is there a way that wecan actually, you know, be in a better
place to pull this off and ifyou, the two of you don't connect,
they'll never know.
No, that's great. Thank youfor sharing that. I think sometimes,
(43:40):
like, people might feel likethey want to do that, but it's great
to hear from you that actuallythat is what leaders will want you
to do. If you find a way to doit, then, you know, helpful for,
I guess, helping people feelmaybe a little bit less afraid to
do that. And also, like, theydo have a voice and their voice is
important when you're kind ofin these, you know, often quite difficult
(44:02):
situations. Thank you so much.I'm aware that we're vastly running
out of time. Where can peoplefind out more about you, Rupert,
and get hold of the book?
Easiest place to get the bookis probably on Amazon. Easiest place
to find me is probably onLinkedIn. Yeah, I mean, I know, you
know, hopefully I'll see somepeople at Leaders plus events as
well.
Yeah.
And yeah, I look, I lookforward to having conversations with
(44:25):
people I know. This storyevokes a lot of interest in others
who either feel, oh, yeah,I've got some similar ideas or I'm
struggling with something. Itwould be great to talk. So it would
be lovely to make someconnections and talk it through.
Absolutely. Thank you so muchfor your time and for kind of talking
through some of those reallyinteresting parts of the book. But
also it's great to find out abit more about you and your story.
(44:47):
Thanks for being here.
Thank you, Helen.
I really appreciate youlistening. Thank you so much and
I always love to hear from ourlisteners. If you want to connect
with me on LinkedIn, just goto Verina Hefti and I'd be delighted
to hear your feedback and yoursuggestions or just have you say
hi. Likewise, if you do feelpassionately about gender equality
(45:10):
and you want to support afemale led podcast, then please do
leave a review and share itwith a friend. Just because at the
moment, podcasting is still avery, very male dominated environment.
Most of the top chargingpodcasts are led by men. I really
love all the people who'vejoined from the podcast, our fellowship
(45:32):
program. And if you want to dothe same, then please head over to
leadersplus.org/Fellowship. Inorder to get access to a community
of support to help you combinean ambitious career with young children
together with people who haveyour back. See you next week.
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