Engage, Empower and Educate Your Team

Chris: 00:00:00

I started my career in Japan as a language teacher and moved

Chris: 00:00:05

into administration at some point.

Chris: 00:00:06

I was working at universities.

Chris: 00:00:08

So I'm very much focused on education.

Chris: 00:00:11

That means, building up the people in my team so that they can meet The challenges

Chris: 00:00:18

that they have ahead of them, that they can continue to grow and develop.

Chris: 00:00:21

And then also, the market changes, there's new opportunities or like in 2009,

Chris: 00:00:28

2010, when the stock market crashed, you have to be prepared for those unknown

Chris: 00:00:32

unknowns and by educating the team, they're able to meet those challenges.

Chris: 00:00:38

Empowering the team.

Chris: 00:00:39

You're giving them the tools, you're giving them the resources, you're

Chris: 00:00:43

giving them the trust in order to be able to work independently.

Chris: 00:00:47

There's still accountability, of course, but they don't need

Chris: 00:00:51

me telling them do a, B, and C.

Chris: 00:00:53

You can just say, okay.

Chris: 00:00:55

The goal is D and tell me how you're going to get there.

Chris: 00:00:59

Check in with me a few times.

Chris: 00:01:00

If you have questions, I'll be able to answer them and let them,

Chris: 00:01:04

go how they feel best to go.

Chris: 00:01:06

Cause there's many different paths in order to reach the goal.

Chris: 00:01:08

And then in terms of engagement, if you're getting the training, if you're

Chris: 00:01:12

getting the support, you're getting the resources, generally you are engaged.

Chris: 00:01:17

You have the chance to come in and do what you enjoy doing.

Chris: 00:01:19

You have the chance to come in and do what you do best.

Chris: 00:01:23

On a daily basis and those are the three pillars that, in my teams, I've

Chris: 00:01:27

always focused on and what it would look like, whether I was in customer

Chris: 00:01:31

success in my last role or running a language school and the role before that,

Chris: 00:01:36

or designing curriculum and training teachers and a few roles before that

Chris: 00:01:41

they've all had those core components.

Rob: 00:01:43

So the three pillars are to empower I don't know if there's a

Chris: 00:01:47

specific order, but empower and get educate and engage.

Rob: 00:01:51

So it's very much about building people up to be best prepared.

Rob: 00:01:56

Yes.

Rob: 00:01:56

So what brought you to Japan?

Chris: 00:01:59

Like most people you graduate university and you don't

Chris: 00:02:01

really know what you want to do.

Chris: 00:02:03

I did know that I wanted to travel Before going back and doing

Chris: 00:02:06

a master's and starting your career and getting a real job.

Chris: 00:02:10

I had done a working holiday junior year abroad in the UK a few years before

Chris: 00:02:14

that, and I thought, where can I go?

Chris: 00:02:17

What can I do?

Chris: 00:02:18

I need to earn some money for bills and loans, and then also

Chris: 00:02:23

to pay for graduate school.

Chris: 00:02:25

I had studied Japanese my first year at university.

Chris: 00:02:29

So I found the program where the government brought new grads to Japan.

Chris: 00:02:34

I think at the time they had 5, 000 slots that they were in public junior

Chris: 00:02:39

high schools and public high schools.

Chris: 00:02:41

Went through the interview process, got accepted, got flown

Chris: 00:02:44

out here with everybody else in July of 97, I think it was.

Chris: 00:02:49

And that's what started and it was going to be a year or two.

Chris: 00:02:54

Like most people who end up being in Japan or in another country for a long time.

Chris: 00:02:58

And then two years became three years and it became five years and

Chris: 00:03:01

now it's become 27 years this July.

Chris: 00:03:05

So I've spent more than half my life here, which is weird to think, but

Chris: 00:03:09

yeah, that's how I ended up coming here.

Chris: 00:03:11

Met my wife here.

Chris: 00:03:13

We raised our kids here.

Rob: 00:03:14

Japanese is one of the hardest languages

Chris: 00:03:16

to

Rob: 00:03:17

learn.

Chris: 00:03:17

Level five language, I think it is, which is, yeah, the

Chris: 00:03:20

most difficult it's up there with Chinese and Finnish and Hungarian.

Chris: 00:03:24

I think there's a few languages that are level five.

Chris: 00:03:26

If I remember off the top of my head, I'm sure someone will

Chris: 00:03:28

correct me if I'm wrong here.

Rob: 00:03:29

So what made you pick Japanese?

Chris: 00:03:32

I don't remember exactly, but I think that when I was in

Chris: 00:03:35

elementary school in fifth grade there was a transfer student from Japan.

Chris: 00:03:41

His dad was sent over here with the family working at some business in Chicago.

Chris: 00:03:46

And he came to my elementary school and we were really good friends for two

Chris: 00:03:49

years, and then he came back to Japan.

Chris: 00:03:51

I think maybe that was the start of my interest in the country.

Chris: 00:03:55

I remember writing, letters to him, like pen pal, and there was

Chris: 00:03:59

a dictionary at the library in elementary school and it's Oh, okay.

Chris: 00:04:03

You say Konichiwa for hello.

Chris: 00:04:04

Okay.

Chris: 00:04:05

And so I would write that down in Roman and Roman characters.

Chris: 00:04:08

I think that's what started it.

Chris: 00:04:10

And interested in, the history and the culture as well.

Chris: 00:04:14

That's why I studied for a year.

Chris: 00:04:16

And then I switched schools, switched majors and decided that

Chris: 00:04:20

Japanese really wasn't going to fit with what I wanted to do.

Chris: 00:04:23

So it stopped studying, but I still had that interest in the country.

Chris: 00:04:27

Still had the interest in the language and the culture.

Chris: 00:04:30

And I don't think like I wanted to travel a lot and let's say there was

Chris: 00:04:35

the same program in some other country.

Chris: 00:04:38

I don't know if I would have been as interested.

Chris: 00:04:41

Going to that country or even maybe staying as long if I didn't

Chris: 00:04:45

have that initial interest.

Rob: 00:04:47

What was it about Japan that you obviously fell in love with

Rob: 00:04:50

the country to, to stay that long?

Rob: 00:04:52

What was your initial experience?

Chris: 00:04:54

It was a good experience.

Chris: 00:04:56

I got lucky.

Chris: 00:04:57

So I remember going through the orientations that they would set

Chris: 00:05:00

up for you before you came here.

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So there were maybe like a hundred people leaving out of Chicago.

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Everybody would arrive at the same time from, from everywhere in the U S and

Chris: 00:05:08

the UK and elsewhere around the world, and there were orientations before

Chris: 00:05:13

we departed and then while the first few days while we had just arrived

Chris: 00:05:18

and everyone kept saying that each person's I think it was the jet program.

Chris: 00:05:22

Each person's jet program is unique and it's different than

Chris: 00:05:26

the person sitting next to you.

Chris: 00:05:28

And I found that to be very true.

Chris: 00:05:30

And I got lucky.

Chris: 00:05:31

I was placed in a small school with 250 kids.

Chris: 00:05:35

It was a junior high school in a small town of 5, 200 and

Chris: 00:05:40

something middle of nowhere.

Chris: 00:05:42

And I could become a real part of the school.

Chris: 00:05:46

So I was the softball assistant softball coach.

Chris: 00:05:49

I had a English club as well that I had put together.

Chris: 00:05:52

I could become a part of the town.

Chris: 00:05:54

So I had friends in the town.

Chris: 00:05:56

We went and we did barbecues.

Chris: 00:05:57

We went hiking and did lots of things like that.

Chris: 00:05:59

And then also there were a lot of other friends that I became with who were

Chris: 00:06:03

either japanese or Expats who were on the same program and many of them

Chris: 00:06:08

had also stayed and I think that's what kept me here and I met my wife

Chris: 00:06:12

the Second year I was here as well.

Chris: 00:06:16

Probably if I had never met her, I don't know if I would have stayed for 27 years,

Chris: 00:06:19

but that also, you know Kept me here.

Rob: 00:06:22

Okay.

Rob: 00:06:22

So What are the key differences between american culture and Japanese.

Chris: 00:06:28

Oh, that's a lot.

Chris: 00:06:29

American culture, and to stereotype Americans and also Western

Chris: 00:06:34

culture, it is more self centered.

Chris: 00:06:38

Where Japanese culture, it's the group.

Chris: 00:06:40

Like every action or everything you say impacts the group.

Chris: 00:06:46

And so you have to think about.

Chris: 00:06:48

The group as a whole.

Chris: 00:06:49

And there's these, there are like concentric circles where you have

Chris: 00:06:53

the family and then you have like the business or, friends and out and out.

Chris: 00:06:58

And so you have to think like.

Chris: 00:07:00

what you're doing or what you're saying, who is that impacting?

Chris: 00:07:03

How does that affect them?

Chris: 00:07:04

So there's lots of little things which can be quite stressful.

Chris: 00:07:07

There's lots of conversations in the background.

Chris: 00:07:10

They're, reading the air where what you say and what you don't and what you don't

Chris: 00:07:14

say Conveys a lot of information and that's something that Japanese people

Chris: 00:07:20

spend their whole life immersed in and me being the non Japanese, I'm fairly

Chris: 00:07:27

empathetic and I can get maybe 50%.

Chris: 00:07:30

But there's a lot of things where people say that's too direct.

Chris: 00:07:32

That's too forward.

Chris: 00:07:33

You can't say that.

Chris: 00:07:34

Or how did you not understand that?

Chris: 00:07:36

They would never say how do you not understand it?

Chris: 00:07:37

Because that is too direct as well.

Chris: 00:07:39

But that's the implication of what they're saying.

Chris: 00:07:42

So that's a huge difference in culture.

Chris: 00:07:44

And then it's also a huge difference in how business culture is run as well,

Chris: 00:07:48

where in the U S you have a meeting, for example, and people are there to

Chris: 00:07:53

decide on the best idea for the meeting in Japan, or at least more traditionally

Chris: 00:07:57

in Japan, you have the higher ups, which have decided a lot of And then

Chris: 00:08:02

meetings are to sell you the information.

Chris: 00:08:05

And get you on board, not for your input and it's because you have the harmony and

Chris: 00:08:11

the group and everybody has to be aligned.

Chris: 00:08:12

Everybody has to be in agreement and working together,

Chris: 00:08:16

even if they're not really.

Chris: 00:08:17

But that's how business works.

Chris: 00:08:19

That's how the culture works.

Rob: 00:08:20

Yeah.

Rob: 00:08:21

So it's really the difference between America is probably at the

Rob: 00:08:25

peak of the at the extreme of self.

Rob: 00:08:28

And then Japan is probably one of the countries that are

Rob: 00:08:31

the extreme of the collective.

Rob: 00:08:33

So it's a fascinating dynamic to figure out where you are on the spectrum.

Chris: 00:08:37

Exactly.

Chris: 00:08:38

Obviously, I'm vastly generalizing, of course.

Chris: 00:08:41

But, my experience is that people who have come to Japan who are not good at

Chris: 00:08:48

like the group dynamics, they really don't enjoy being here and they really struggle.

Chris: 00:08:54

And conversely, Japanese who go overseas for work or for business,

Chris: 00:08:59

if they are not more direct and more forward, they really struggle to find

Chris: 00:09:06

their voice and can't participate.

Chris: 00:09:09

And they feel very left out and separated.

Chris: 00:09:11

And then they don't do well in their position or in their role

Chris: 00:09:15

when they've been sent to the U S or the UK or wherever it might be.

Chris: 00:09:19

And it's even worse when they're, when they've been sent over to in a management

Chris: 00:09:22

position and they're leading a team of people from that aren't Japanese from

Chris: 00:09:27

elsewhere the dynamic and how teams and businesses and conversations are

Chris: 00:09:31

run, they really struggle and they don't do well if they don't have that

Chris: 00:09:35

ability to, make changes of how they communicate and how they work together.

Rob: 00:09:40

Yeah.

Rob: 00:09:40

It's one of the things when you go to a different culture, often we

Rob: 00:09:43

assume every culture is like ours and that's where people struggle because.

Rob: 00:09:47

You don't know what you don't know until you, you don't know what you don't know.

Rob: 00:09:51

Yeah.

Rob: 00:09:52

Yeah.

Chris: 00:09:53

It's harder I think if you're going to a country that is so vastly different.

Chris: 00:09:59

It's easy to remember Oh, this is a different place.

Chris: 00:10:01

This is a different culture.

Chris: 00:10:02

Things work differently here.

Chris: 00:10:03

But if you're going to a kind of a similar, like a and a if you're an

Chris: 00:10:06

American going to the UK or an American going to Europe, or then it's easier to

Chris: 00:10:11

forget that there are differences in how people talk and communicate and cultural

Chris: 00:10:16

aspects and all those other points.

Rob: 00:10:18

Yeah it's on the one hand, you don't want to stereotype people, but on the

Rob: 00:10:22

other hand, there are cultural differences where you need to appreciate those

Rob: 00:10:27

differences before you can really fit in and you can work and harmonize in that.

Chris: 00:10:32

You have to be very open otherwise, and receptive to any new

Chris: 00:10:36

idea or just accept that, okay, this is not the way I would do it, but

Chris: 00:10:41

this is how we're going to do it.

Rob: 00:10:43

I remember reading a lot of books maybe like when

Rob: 00:10:46

I was growing up, 80s, 90s.

Rob: 00:10:48

And it was, Japan was flourishing then and everyone was bringing over the Kaizen

Rob: 00:10:54

and the all the different techniques that the Japanese had brought in.

Rob: 00:10:59

But what they hadn't realized is the cultural differences.

Rob: 00:11:02

There was a completely different culture like them though.

Rob: 00:11:05

Individual orientated, which meant that the whole process didn't work.

Rob: 00:11:09

So it's understanding the context from where from where you take

Rob: 00:11:13

an idea and being able to be sensitive to how that would impact.

Rob: 00:11:17

There's a, there's

Chris: 00:11:18

an old movie gung ho.

Chris: 00:11:20

I don't know if you have seen that with Michael Keaton.

Chris: 00:11:22

It's about the peak of when, Japan was this big powerhouse of a country

Chris: 00:11:27

and economically they were very strong and they were moving into the U S

Chris: 00:11:30

and into like cars and factories.

Chris: 00:11:33

And so they had moved into some Detroit or Ohio Car manufacturing plant, and they

Chris: 00:11:40

brought all the Japanese ideas with them.

Chris: 00:11:42

So they're outside in the morning doing the group exercises

Chris: 00:11:45

and all these other things.

Chris: 00:11:46

And if that's a perfect example, these ideas don't necessarily translate.

Chris: 00:11:51

The idea is, okay, we're all working together as a team and

Chris: 00:11:53

we want to be healthy physically and mentally together as a team.

Chris: 00:11:56

So we do these exercises together in the morning to, come together.

Chris: 00:12:00

But yeah, that's not going to translate so well to.

Chris: 00:12:03

A manufacturing plant in the middle of, Detroit or Ohio or

Chris: 00:12:08

wherever the movie took place.

Rob: 00:12:09

You used to hear a lot about Japan being a, being one of the fastest growing

Rob: 00:12:13

countries economically becoming one of the most powerful countries economically.

Rob: 00:12:17

I haven't heard anything about Japan.

Rob: 00:12:18

It's been supplanted

Chris: 00:12:20

by China a few years ago.

Chris: 00:12:22

So Japan had a Economic bubble, which burst around 92, 93, 94.

Chris: 00:12:29

And it's never really recovered from that.

Chris: 00:12:32

So they've coasted along they've implemented policies and done

Chris: 00:12:36

different things, but nothing has really jumpstarted the economy.

Chris: 00:12:39

And I think a lot of where we are now, it's.

Chris: 00:12:43

Based on the momentum of Japan's strength from the 70s, 80s, and early

Chris: 00:12:49

90s, but now we're starting to see for example the yen is very weak.

Chris: 00:12:55

It was a hundred, a dollar, 156 yen or 157 yen to the dollar.

Chris: 00:13:01

Just a couple days ago, which is unheard of, it's 160 something yen

Chris: 00:13:05

to the euro, which is unheard of.

Chris: 00:13:07

Just to put it in context, the entire time I've been here, except for like 2008,

Chris: 00:13:12

2009, the yen has been between about a hundred yen to 110 yen to the dollar.

Chris: 00:13:17

So it's significantly gotten a lot weaker and everything at the

Chris: 00:13:21

store are much more expensive.

Chris: 00:13:22

But and salaries haven't increased and the government recently said, to

Chris: 00:13:26

businesses, please increase workers salaries because they're not able to

Chris: 00:13:32

Survive well enough and they're not putting money back into the economy

Chris: 00:13:36

as well and businesses can't because they just don't have the money either

Rob: 00:13:40

So you decided to stick around, you were in the school,

Rob: 00:13:43

you were teaching foreign language.

Rob: 00:13:45

What happened next?

Chris: 00:13:46

So the jet program at that time limited you to three years because

Chris: 00:13:50

the idea was internationalization.

Chris: 00:13:52

So they wanted people coming and moving and going and moving and so on.

Chris: 00:13:56

So after the three years were up, I moved to Tokyo with my

Chris: 00:14:01

wife and started teaching here.

Chris: 00:14:03

I taught for a few years and then that company moved into curriculum design

Chris: 00:14:09

and was building training programs for all the teachers to teach the

Chris: 00:14:14

new content that we were building.

Chris: 00:14:16

Some of it was conversational English, some of it was business

Chris: 00:14:18

focused English, some of it was test related English, and then I also

Chris: 00:14:22

started teaching at universities.

Chris: 00:14:24

And that was, Easy, track education, stay in education, stay as a teacher.

Chris: 00:14:31

But I shifted around 2008 to 2009, somewhere around there.

Chris: 00:14:38

And I remember specifically thinking in Japan, if you're a university

Chris: 00:14:42

teacher, it's a great position but it's contract it's very hard for, at

Chris: 00:14:46

that time, it was very hard for a non Japanese to get tenured positions.

Chris: 00:14:51

And they also could fire you.

Chris: 00:14:55

So you had a contract, but it was renewed every year or it was renewed every three

Chris: 00:14:59

years or was renewed every five years and there weren't any safeguards for ageism.

Chris: 00:15:05

There wasn't any safeguards for a declining economy where if I had been

Chris: 00:15:10

hired in 2000, Eight, for example, and the university had less money in 2018.

Chris: 00:15:17

I could have been fired because they could bring in somebody younger and cheaper

Chris: 00:15:21

and have them teach the same courses.

Chris: 00:15:23

So I made the decision to exit.

Chris: 00:15:26

teaching.

Chris: 00:15:27

And then I ended up working at a startup language school in the center

Chris: 00:15:32

of Tokyo, where, I was in charge of all the curriculum and all the

Chris: 00:15:36

content and all the programs, but I was also doing an MBA at that time.

Chris: 00:15:39

Cause it was a small company, it was a startup.

Chris: 00:15:41

I worked with marketing.

Chris: 00:15:43

I worked with sales worked with the different universities that we were

Chris: 00:15:47

contracting with to teach specific and specialized courses for them.

Chris: 00:15:51

And then later, that's the language school that I actually was in charge of and ran

Chris: 00:15:56

the business for three or four years.

Chris: 00:15:58

So I made that, I made that conscious decision to Exit teaching, because

Chris: 00:16:02

it seems safer to move into business.

Chris: 00:16:05

And also, if I decided to leave Japan at some point, it would be easier for

Chris: 00:16:10

me to transition to a role in the U.

Chris: 00:16:13

S.

Chris: 00:16:13

as, with a business background or, business experience than

Chris: 00:16:16

just as somebody who was teaching foreign language at a university.

Rob: 00:16:20

So what happened After that, what I'm trying to get at is

Rob: 00:16:24

where's the journey to the teams?

Chris: 00:16:25

I was at that company for nine years, I think seven, eight, nine years.

Chris: 00:16:32

And I was headhunted.

Chris: 00:16:34

For a tech startup in Japan.

Chris: 00:16:36

And that company had built a language learning app using an AI to deliver

Chris: 00:16:45

the right content at the right time based on your learning progress.

Chris: 00:16:50

So if you were learning.

Chris: 00:16:52

English with this app, and I was learning English with this app, and another person

Chris: 00:16:56

was learning English with this app.

Chris: 00:16:58

Our user experience would all look somewhat different.

Chris: 00:17:01

Because maybe you're better at vocabulary, I'm better at grammar, and this other

Chris: 00:17:07

person, he studied or lived overseas, and his grammar and vocabulary is

Chris: 00:17:11

a mess, it's all, out of context, but he can communicate really well.

Chris: 00:17:15

All the data was, was put together so that you would get different tasks, I

Chris: 00:17:20

would get different tasks and another person would get different tasks.

Chris: 00:17:23

And that was the app was B2B in Japan.

Chris: 00:17:26

So I was the first person brought in for customer success, which Japan

Chris: 00:17:30

has been doing customer success, just under a different name for a long

Chris: 00:17:33

time and built the team from there.

Chris: 00:17:36

And that was my most recent role where I was there for four and a half years.

Rob: 00:17:41

Like on the cutting edge of AI.

Chris: 00:17:42

That was very, It was really interesting and really exciting.

Rob: 00:17:45

So where was the jump then to Teams?

Chris: 00:17:47

So I was laid off.

Chris: 00:17:49

From that, like most of the CS team was laid off.

Chris: 00:17:51

A lot of other people, a couple people from machine learning, a couple developers

Chris: 00:17:56

more than half the company was let go.

Chris: 00:17:58

So that was at the.

Chris: 00:18:01

end of November, beginning of December of last year.

Chris: 00:18:04

And I thought, okay, I'll start with LinkedIn.

Chris: 00:18:06

Need to network as they say apply for jobs.

Chris: 00:18:10

You need to also, contact other people.

Chris: 00:18:12

So I started that and I started posting as well.

Chris: 00:18:15

Cause that's something I had wanted to do during COVID around 2020, 2021, maybe

Chris: 00:18:22

it was I started posting on LinkedIn.

Chris: 00:18:25

But just didn't really have enough time with working full time.

Chris: 00:18:29

And also it was also fairly early into COVID or not so far into it

Chris: 00:18:33

that, it was a bit of a struggle.

Chris: 00:18:35

The kids were home studying at home.

Chris: 00:18:37

Everything was up in the air.

Chris: 00:18:39

Things were really weird, a lot of stress just from the whole situation.

Chris: 00:18:43

So I started, but I stopped and I just couldn't carry on with it.

Chris: 00:18:46

And.

Chris: 00:18:47

Earlier, like as a teacher and as a content developer, I was more active.

Chris: 00:18:53

With the international community, but it was just teaching related.

Chris: 00:18:57

So we would share ideas.

Chris: 00:18:58

We would share information.

Chris: 00:18:59

We would share resources.

Chris: 00:19:01

I had a website with content on there as well.

Chris: 00:19:05

People from all over the world were coming and downloading the

Chris: 00:19:07

content or, I wrote a couple of books for people buying those books.

Chris: 00:19:11

And so it seemed okay, I wanted to do this with LinkedIn.

Chris: 00:19:13

But now for language teaching, do it for business do it for leadership

Chris: 00:19:18

because I've been leading teams for more than 20 years in Japan.

Chris: 00:19:22

And the team has been international as well.

Chris: 00:19:24

And so that's where it's grown from that idea and it's just taking up more and

Chris: 00:19:30

it's a good thing, but it's taking up more and more of my time as I find more

Chris: 00:19:34

value in it And I see more possibility in it of maybe doing my own thing

Chris: 00:19:40

coaching or other services instead of getting the traditional nine to five

Chris: 00:19:45

job And that's where I am at the moment.

Rob: 00:19:48

What i'm Interested in this is your the philosophy so I work with

Rob: 00:19:52

teams, my basis is relationships.

Rob: 00:19:54

My philosophy is that the relationships between team members determines how well

Rob: 00:19:58

they're going to work simplistically.

Rob: 00:20:00

So what drives your philosophy?

Rob: 00:20:02

We've got the engage, educate and empower, isn't it?

Rob: 00:20:05

So they're the three pillars.

Rob: 00:20:06

So tell me more about where does that come from?

Rob: 00:20:09

Cause I, I think all of us have a different shade

Rob: 00:20:11

based on our individuality.

Rob: 00:20:14

So I'm interested in, Yes.

Rob: 00:20:16

Digging into that.

Chris: 00:20:17

I do think, the strongest teams are teams that work together.

Chris: 00:20:21

And I think maybe that philosophy comes from my experience in Japan where, we

Chris: 00:20:27

do, there's the, as going back to what I said initially, there's the collective

Chris: 00:20:31

where you work together as a group and you think about the people around you and

Chris: 00:20:35

taking that idea and marrying it with, a more Western viewpoint of leadership Yeah.

Chris: 00:20:41

And teams where, we're working together, we should work together, but then also

Chris: 00:20:47

we're empowering each other and educating and making sure that the team is engaged,

Chris: 00:20:52

there's the collective and supportive culture that you've tried to create.

Chris: 00:20:55

So I don't think that if you work independently, Or if, if you work, let's

Chris: 00:21:01

say, if you work independently you're not as strong as if you're working together

Chris: 00:21:06

as a whole if you are going into meetings and you're fighting for your idea or

Chris: 00:21:14

you're fighting to, to be recognized.

Chris: 00:21:18

You're not working together as a collective whole.

Chris: 00:21:20

So I think that's very much important, an important component of teams and

Chris: 00:21:25

how they work together, but in order to achieve that, you also have to

Chris: 00:21:29

create this psychological safety where everybody feels comfortable.

Chris: 00:21:34

Everybody feels valued.

Chris: 00:21:35

Everybody feels supported.

Chris: 00:21:37

And so how do we achieve that?

Chris: 00:21:39

And for me, it's going back to, educating them it's engaging them

Chris: 00:21:44

and it's empowering them so they feel comfortable they're learning

Chris: 00:21:48

new things, so they feel engaged.

Chris: 00:21:49

They feel supported.

Chris: 00:21:51

which means they feel psychologically safe, which means that they're more

Chris: 00:21:53

likely to share ideas and share resources with other people on the team.

Chris: 00:21:59

They're more willing to ask one another hey, I've got this idea.

Chris: 00:22:02

Can you take a look at it?

Chris: 00:22:03

Or I'm having trouble with this client.

Chris: 00:22:04

Can you help me?

Chris: 00:22:05

Or do you have any ideas?

Chris: 00:22:06

And going back to what I've done, like real world examples at the language

Chris: 00:22:12

school that I was running, I was in charge of the sales team and we would

Chris: 00:22:15

have a monthly sit down where everybody brought in one win or one client that was

Chris: 00:22:21

doing well and one client that they were struggling with or that they had lost.

Chris: 00:22:25

And then they would share.

Chris: 00:22:27

And so the more experienced sales members.

Chris: 00:22:30

Would be using like sharing their knowledge and their ideas for the less

Chris: 00:22:35

experienced but even if you had 10 years of experience and somebody else had five

Chris: 00:22:40

years of experience that person with 10 years of experience would Still walk

Chris: 00:22:43

out of the room going I didn't know that or that's a really good idea I can take

Chris: 00:22:46

that put that in my pocket and use that again at some point in the future and

Chris: 00:22:51

That wouldn't happen unless they felt psychologically safe if they had all

Chris: 00:22:54

those other components, if they were missing those other components as well.

Rob: 00:22:58

That's, I'm curious about that because that obviously I'm got quite

Rob: 00:23:02

an ignorant view of Japanese culture.

Rob: 00:23:04

Based on the stereotype that seems the kind of thing that

Rob: 00:23:08

they feel uncomfortable with.

Rob: 00:23:10

My understanding is there's like a shame of admitting that to the group and feeling

Rob: 00:23:15

that you've let everyone down and that.

Rob: 00:23:18

So how did that work?

Rob: 00:23:19

What, were there any barriers to that?

Chris: 00:23:21

One person didn't like that so much.

Chris: 00:23:24

But he was also the person who was the lowest performer.

Chris: 00:23:28

So for him, it was, you're putting me in the spotlight and this is not all okay.

Chris: 00:23:33

And we had a few conversations where he said to me, a foreigner

Chris: 00:23:36

should not manage Japanese people.

Chris: 00:23:39

And I think this was Probably part of it as well.

Chris: 00:23:40

Cause I would push them.

Chris: 00:23:41

I would say, look, I have the data and you say that you're doing it.

Chris: 00:23:45

You're selling as well as other people, or you're meeting as many

Chris: 00:23:47

prospective clients as other people, but you're not so and so met this many

Chris: 00:23:51

close this many, so and so met this many and close this many and so on.

Chris: 00:23:54

So we need to find ways to support you and get you, producing a little bit more.

Chris: 00:24:01

And then we would have to work together.

Chris: 00:24:03

Whereas he didn't like that was a bit too direct for him.

Chris: 00:24:06

So he really struggled.

Chris: 00:24:07

But other people did pick it up pretty quickly.

Chris: 00:24:11

They saw the value of it.

Chris: 00:24:12

There was one woman who was the top performer and she had

Chris: 00:24:16

lived overseas for a few years.

Chris: 00:24:17

So she was a bit more on board with doing things differently.

Chris: 00:24:22

And I think that probably helped as well because she would help mentor some of

Chris: 00:24:26

the newer and less experienced sales reps within the team so that they looked

Chris: 00:24:32

up to her and she said, this is good.

Chris: 00:24:33

We need to do this.

Chris: 00:24:34

This is why we need to do this.

Chris: 00:24:36

And so they would.

Chris: 00:24:37

They would put down their guard and accept okay, I feel a little uncomfortable,

Chris: 00:24:42

but after doing it a few times.

Chris: 00:24:44

they saw the value in it because Oh, I, this was like an hour mastermind

Chris: 00:24:48

session where I can go do my job better.

Chris: 00:24:51

And the company's paying me to do this fantastic stuff.

Chris: 00:24:54

And so after that, it was more or less.

Chris: 00:24:56

Okay.

Rob: 00:24:57

Okay.

Rob: 00:24:58

So when you talk about engage, so you start with engage is that.

Chris: 00:25:02

They all circle together a flow.

Chris: 00:25:05

You can't just engage people and say you're engaged, go do it.

Chris: 00:25:08

I trust you.

Chris: 00:25:09

And, but if you educate them, if you're giving them resources, you're giving

Chris: 00:25:12

them advice, if you're coaching and mentoring, then they feel valued.

Chris: 00:25:15

And if they feel valued, then they're engaged.

Chris: 00:25:18

And if they're engaged, they're more willing to take on risks and try new

Chris: 00:25:21

things, which is empowering for them.

Chris: 00:25:23

And as, as they're learning and failing and trying those new things, then you

Chris: 00:25:28

have more opportunities to engage or educate and train them and coach them,

Chris: 00:25:32

which then makes them more engaged.

Chris: 00:25:34

So it's this, it's this virtuous loop.

Chris: 00:25:36

I feel it's not one or the other first, second, third it all fits together.

Rob: 00:25:41

Okay.

Rob: 00:25:41

So what typically do you see as the biggest problems?

Rob: 00:25:45

What are the biggest barriers, challenges?

Chris: 00:25:48

Every person comes in with their own history and their own baggage.

Chris: 00:25:53

And sometimes they've come from a good organization where they had a team

Chris: 00:25:59

leader who, supported them, who cared about them, who, who built them up.

Chris: 00:26:06

And then other times they come from the opposite or, or somewhere in between,

Chris: 00:26:11

which is not such a positive environment.

Chris: 00:26:13

They might come from a larger organization where they have to really play politics.

Chris: 00:26:19

They have to be careful with what they say.

Chris: 00:26:21

They have to be careful about appearing vulnerable.

Chris: 00:26:24

Because other people are going to pounce on them and take

Chris: 00:26:26

advantage of that, generosity or those other positive aspects.

Chris: 00:26:30

And bringing somebody new onto the team, that's always you

Chris: 00:26:34

have to erase that negative past history and start them afresh.

Chris: 00:26:39

When things are difficult when there's, a lot of challenges, like for example, at

Chris: 00:26:46

my last company being the first CS hire and then bringing on a team the company

Chris: 00:26:51

was not customer centric whatsoever.

Chris: 00:26:54

They said they were, but then every decision they made would be

Chris: 00:26:57

like, okay, we can only do this.

Chris: 00:26:59

How can you make sure the customer doesn't complain too much.

Chris: 00:27:01

That's not being customer centric.

Chris: 00:27:03

So in times like that, then even if you've tried to erase like that past

Chris: 00:27:08

history, it can still be a default.

Chris: 00:27:11

And then they, they revert back to, they, the old style that they were first,

Chris: 00:27:17

the first company that they worked at for five years where it was cutthroat

Chris: 00:27:21

or they were on their own and if they opened their mouth and they were, their

Chris: 00:27:25

ideas were stolen or they were attacked, that can rear its head every now and

Chris: 00:27:29

then, especially in difficult times.

Chris: 00:27:32

And you have to be aware of, okay, that's so and so's default and be aware of that.

Chris: 00:27:37

Circle around it so that, they don't or ask those right questions and engage

Chris: 00:27:41

in active listening so that you can understand and then support them and

Chris: 00:27:44

say, okay don't worry about that.

Chris: 00:27:46

I've got that.

Chris: 00:27:47

What else can you do for a, b and c and so on?

Rob: 00:27:50

I went to work for a little while in a cinema.

Rob: 00:27:52

And what I noticed was the customer service was terrible.

Rob: 00:27:55

It was like, there was constant complaints because we obviously you

Rob: 00:27:59

have to deal with complaints and the complaints were just basically there

Rob: 00:28:02

was a basically really sorry that you had this here Have a free ticket.

Chris: 00:28:06

Yeah.

Chris: 00:28:06

Yeah, I worked in the movie theater in high school.

Chris: 00:28:08

That was the same thing Oh, we're really sorry here.

Chris: 00:28:10

Here's a free movie pass.

Rob: 00:28:11

I was on the management team and managers would sit in the office.

Rob: 00:28:15

So I was there learning initially.

Rob: 00:28:17

And you do all the different bits and I'd watch and the managers would sit in

Rob: 00:28:21

the office and then they come out and they bark at someone and go back in.

Rob: 00:28:25

I'm like, this is the problem.

Rob: 00:28:26

It was like a really young manager.

Rob: 00:28:28

I think she was like 20, 21.

Rob: 00:28:30

She'd been a usher, like worked in the cinema and then got promoted

Rob: 00:28:34

and made the house manager.

Rob: 00:28:36

And Yeah, there was a lot of the managers were going with

Rob: 00:28:39

the last manager to a new site.

Rob: 00:28:41

And she was just like, I'll just let these go and I'm not going

Rob: 00:28:45

to stand up and say anything.

Rob: 00:28:46

So they would just basically sit around bark at the young kids.

Rob: 00:28:50

They were only like, high school or just finishing college, all that.

Rob: 00:28:54

And it's where I first realized that you have to look after the people

Rob: 00:28:57

if you, before you, that you're going to get customer service.

Rob: 00:29:00

And so I went to the manager and the area manager and said,

Rob: 00:29:04

look, this is what we need to do.

Rob: 00:29:05

Okay, yeah, this is great.

Rob: 00:29:06

And I remember the other managers and first off a lot

Rob: 00:29:09

of the managers it was like.

Rob: 00:29:11

Here he is the new kid thinks he knows better.

Rob: 00:29:13

And so while I was still learning stuff, they would set me up, it's tell you,

Rob: 00:29:17

you think you should go and do that.

Rob: 00:29:18

And, like trying to put me in situations where I would fail.

Rob: 00:29:22

Yeah.

Rob: 00:29:22

But anyway we sat down and there was a couple of other, I worked with another

Rob: 00:29:27

one to go through this process and but even another one of the new ones were

Rob: 00:29:32

like, there's no point doing this.

Rob: 00:29:33

You say you're just going to set up, they're going to

Rob: 00:29:35

moan about what they want.

Rob: 00:29:36

They're going to want more money.

Rob: 00:29:37

We can't give it to them and they're going to be more unhappy.

Rob: 00:29:39

And it was, and so we sat in and we did run through these and we

Rob: 00:29:43

go every problem that you have, and they listed out 23 problems.

Rob: 00:29:46

And yeah, money was one of them, but it was way down the list.

Rob: 00:29:50

A better uniform was another one, but that was down the list.

Rob: 00:29:53

And so we basically took all of these things and most

Rob: 00:29:55

of them were really simple.

Rob: 00:29:57

And it was like, how do we schedule?

Rob: 00:29:58

How do we basically being treated with respect And it made such a difference

Rob: 00:30:03

yeah, people were so close minded that, oh, if you do anything different, like

Rob: 00:30:08

people prejudge and most people don't want money, most people want respect,

Rob: 00:30:12

but you have to tap into what it is that they really want in order for it to work.

Chris: 00:30:17

So there, there's actually two things I want to say.

Chris: 00:30:20

One, like every study you look at, Money is important, of course.

Chris: 00:30:24

People don't work for free, but it's not the most important, doesn't

Chris: 00:30:28

top lists if you want an engaged team, if you want a team of high

Chris: 00:30:32

performers, money is less relevant than a lot of other key components.

Rob: 00:30:38

So If you were gonna, like you, you've written a book in,

Rob: 00:30:41

in, in your language work, you've written a couple of books, you said,

Chris: 00:30:44

yeah.

Rob: 00:30:45

If you're going to write a book on teams or you're going to give a

Rob: 00:30:48

TED talk on teams, what would it be?

Chris: 00:30:50

I would want to write or talk about something a little bit different.

Chris: 00:30:55

Everybody talks or writes about the importance of psychological

Chris: 00:31:01

safety and resiliency and working together as a collective whole.

Chris: 00:31:06

Okay.

Chris: 00:31:06

And those are all Extremely important, of course.

Chris: 00:31:09

But I feel that the approach of, okay, if you're focused on education if you're

Chris: 00:31:14

focused on engaging the team, if you're focused on empowering the team, then

Chris: 00:31:18

it leads to all those other things that you want to see for a successful team,

Chris: 00:31:22

for a high performing team, and it's, maybe it's a unique spin maybe it's

Chris: 00:31:28

somewhat new, somewhat different approach.

Chris: 00:31:31

Then say, okay here's a laundry list of all the things that you need to do.

Chris: 00:31:34

Instead, you can just say, okay spend time coaching them spend time empowering them.

Chris: 00:31:39

How do you do that?

Chris: 00:31:40

Make sure they have the right tools.

Chris: 00:31:42

Make sure that you trust them make sure that they're engaged, but how

Chris: 00:31:45

do you engage them by making sure that you're giving them training and

Chris: 00:31:49

learning opportunities by trusting them?

Chris: 00:31:51

It solidifies a lot of other ideas into more digestible and more

Chris: 00:31:57

actionable nuggets, which someone who doesn't have much experience as

Chris: 00:32:01

a leader or someone who's struggling to get the most out of the teams.

Chris: 00:32:05

They can say, Oh, okay.

Chris: 00:32:06

I can understand that.

Chris: 00:32:07

You want to educate them.

Chris: 00:32:08

You want to spend time training them.

Chris: 00:32:10

Got that.

Chris: 00:32:11

Okay.

Chris: 00:32:11

You want to empower them.

Chris: 00:32:12

Okay.

Chris: 00:32:13

You want to make sure that they have the right tools or

Chris: 00:32:14

they have the right resources.

Chris: 00:32:16

Okay.

Chris: 00:32:16

I can understand that.

Chris: 00:32:17

I got that.

Chris: 00:32:17

Easier to understand, I think, and that might, I don't know if it's a

Chris: 00:32:20

book, but it could be a Ted talk.

Rob: 00:32:23

Okay.

Rob: 00:32:23

So my whole thing is unified is that where you talked about the concentric

Rob: 00:32:28

circles, it's ironic because that is the logo I use for unified

Rob: 00:32:33

because I see that we are a self.

Rob: 00:32:36

And then we are a couple, and then we're a family, and then we're a work

Rob: 00:32:41

team, and then we're a social group, and then we're a nation, and so on

Rob: 00:32:44

and so forth, like the universe.

Rob: 00:32:46

That's very

Chris: 00:32:47

Japanese.

Chris: 00:32:47

That's the Japanese concept.

Rob: 00:32:48

What I see is you could have engaged, you could have educated,

Rob: 00:32:51

you could have empowered, but in a self like an individualist culture.

Rob: 00:32:56

What I'm not seeing is how that knits them together as a

Rob: 00:32:59

team, which is where I think is

Chris: 00:33:01

that comes down to, I think the leader, and there's lots of small things

Chris: 00:33:06

that the leader can do which fall under those three ideas, but a lot of small

Chris: 00:33:11

actions that they could take, which over time create a collective cohesive whole

Chris: 00:33:18

I don't think it's any if you do this.

Chris: 00:33:19

Then everyone's gonna say, Oh, we want to work together.

Chris: 00:33:21

I don't think things don't work like that.

Chris: 00:33:24

And I don't see that happening, but for example we did this in my last

Chris: 00:33:28

company where we had something simple, made a Slack channel and in the Slack

Chris: 00:33:32

channel, people talk to one another and people talk to one another, but

Chris: 00:33:36

it didn't have to answer right away.

Chris: 00:33:38

You could answer when you needed to answer because you're doing other things.

Chris: 00:33:41

I trusted you to do those other things.

Chris: 00:33:42

So people would ask questions like, Oh we got this one customer asking,

Chris: 00:33:46

or this one client asking da.

Chris: 00:33:48

I don't know what to do.

Chris: 00:33:49

And I would see it and I would wait and wait for somebody to answer.

Chris: 00:33:53

And somebody would eventually pipe in and say, Oh yeah,

Chris: 00:33:56

take a look at this and this.

Chris: 00:33:58

And let me know if you have any questions.

Chris: 00:33:59

And little by doing those sorts of things that they started to come together and

Chris: 00:34:05

trust one another and rely on one another.

Chris: 00:34:07

But it started with me having that expectation and providing

Chris: 00:34:11

the framework for them.

Chris: 00:34:13

That's what someone would have to do if they worked in a

Chris: 00:34:16

team or in a company in the U.

Chris: 00:34:18

S.

Chris: 00:34:19

or elsewhere.

Chris: 00:34:20

You can't just dictate, we're going to work together.

Chris: 00:34:23

You can't just pull out one idea and say, this is the action we're going to

Chris: 00:34:25

take and now we're going to be a family.

Chris: 00:34:27

Family is the wrong word, I know, but we're going to work together as a whole.

Chris: 00:34:30

It's a lot of small actions.

Chris: 00:34:32

And then, okay, putting them under the idea of educate or under

Chris: 00:34:36

the idea of empower or engage.

Chris: 00:34:39

Thank you very much.

Rob: 00:34:40

That's an interesting because you corrected yourself from saying family,

Rob: 00:34:43

but yeah, I don't know why I said that.

Rob: 00:34:46

Have you seen the Netflix?

Rob: 00:34:47

No.

Rob: 00:34:47

Idea.

Rob: 00:34:48

Yeah.

Rob: 00:34:48

So I wrote a

Rob: 00:34:50

post some time ago about a family isn't a good model for.

Rob: 00:34:54

No, it's terrible.

Rob: 00:34:55

Yeah.

Rob: 00:34:55

Because it brings in a lot of dysfunction.

Rob: 00:34:57

It makes, it's like the idea of.

Rob: 00:35:00

It's like the idea of unconditional love the floor to relationships and people

Rob: 00:35:04

become stuck in like abusive relationships and they go, Oh, but I love them.

Rob: 00:35:08

So Netflix has explicitly said, a couple of people have shared it and I've seen

Rob: 00:35:13

it, they're not trying to be a family.

Rob: 00:35:15

They're trying to be a high performing team.

Chris: 00:35:17

Makes

Rob: 00:35:17

sense.

Rob: 00:35:18

Which I, yeah, which I think is a a great model.

Rob: 00:35:21

You probably don't know soccer, but I'm a Liverpool fan, which

Rob: 00:35:24

is a soccer team in England.

Rob: 00:35:26

And they have a German manager came in actually he's leaving this year, but

Rob: 00:35:30

he's been there nine years and Liverpool were a great club when I grew up, they

Rob: 00:35:34

were the best perhaps in the world and.

Rob: 00:35:36

for 30 years, they've dropped down.

Rob: 00:35:38

He came in and his whole thing was unifying everyone, the teams, the fans,

Rob: 00:35:43

the behind the scenes and he's had huge success that would be my example.

Rob: 00:35:48

That was Ted Lasso did that if you watched that TV show.

Chris: 00:35:51

Yeah, I'm sure it was based on, a lot of real life examples.

Chris: 00:35:54

But, yeah, he came in and, a dysfunctional team which wasn't

Chris: 00:35:57

doing well and unified everybody.

Chris: 00:35:59

Small gestures, small words, small actions that stacked little by little over time.

Chris: 00:36:06

To create a team, which functioned well together.

Rob: 00:36:09

Okay.

Rob: 00:36:10

What would be your example?

Rob: 00:36:11

What would be the model that you would aspire to recreate?

Chris: 00:36:15

Oh, Ted Lasso was a good show.

Chris: 00:36:17

It was interesting to see how he did that.

Rob: 00:36:19

Would that be the model, like the shining example of your,

Chris: 00:36:23

Oh, it's probably a model that everyone, or A lot of people have seen

Chris: 00:36:26

the show or at least have read about the show that they could relate to it.

Chris: 00:36:29

But I don't know, real world experience.

Chris: 00:36:33

If you are in education we often say being A manager or a leader in

Chris: 00:36:40

education is a lot like herding cats.

Chris: 00:36:43

Everybody has their own idea of what works for them in the classroom.

Chris: 00:36:48

Everybody has their own idea of what's important for them

Chris: 00:36:51

and what they want to focus on.

Chris: 00:36:53

And for them, they're in the classroom, they're responsible for the success or the

Chris: 00:36:58

failure of their students in the class.

Chris: 00:37:00

And that's all that's important for them.

Chris: 00:37:02

And so if you have some guy behind them saying, we need to come together,

Chris: 00:37:05

we need to do this, we'll be better.

Chris: 00:37:06

It's less relevant or less important because they're

Chris: 00:37:10

responsible for their class.

Chris: 00:37:12

They're standing up in front of 20 students or 30 students.

Chris: 00:37:15

And if what they're teaching doesn't work, if what they're saying, goes

Chris: 00:37:20

off poorly, then they look stupid.

Chris: 00:37:23

They look unprofessional and then they lose, they can lose some

Chris: 00:37:26

of the respect of the students.

Chris: 00:37:28

So for them, that's the most important thing.

Chris: 00:37:29

Being a manager and a leader of teachers for quite a while, it was Bring them

Chris: 00:37:36

all together and having them realize that if you shared ideas, if you shared

Chris: 00:37:40

resources, that you, your classes would be better because this other person has

Chris: 00:37:46

more experience doing this other thing, or has insight on this other thing

Chris: 00:37:50

is he went off and did a conference.

Chris: 00:37:53

Last year, he was gone for a week and did a international conference in

Chris: 00:37:57

San Francisco for language teaching.

Chris: 00:37:59

And he comes back and he's got these ideas.

Chris: 00:38:01

He can share those ideas, facilitating that little by little

Chris: 00:38:05

where there's there's, sharing resources where everyone can use.

Chris: 00:38:09

You make the teacher's room a place where Ideas are being thrown around.

Chris: 00:38:12

And, as a teacher myself, I would be the one instigating

Chris: 00:38:16

what are you doing in the class?

Chris: 00:38:17

How's it going?

Chris: 00:38:18

Have you thought about this?

Chris: 00:38:19

Oh, and someone else say, Oh, no, actually do this other thing.

Chris: 00:38:21

I did this the other day almost the same resources and it worked really well.

Chris: 00:38:25

The students loved it.

Chris: 00:38:26

And the guy goes, Oh, okay.

Chris: 00:38:27

That sounds great.

Chris: 00:38:27

I'll try that.

Chris: 00:38:28

And it works.

Chris: 00:38:29

And it's real world where you're bringing these, Teachers, you're

Chris: 00:38:33

herding cats and getting them all together to work as one where they're

Chris: 00:38:38

sharing ideas and sharing resources and asking questions to one another.

Chris: 00:38:42

So that's my model.

Chris: 00:38:44

Ted lasso, okay, probably more famous, more familiar.

Chris: 00:38:47

Everyone's seen the show.

Chris: 00:38:48

But it works on the same principles, I think.

Chris: 00:38:51

And then also in Ted lasso and my real world experience as well, it's stepping

Chris: 00:38:55

back and okay, I have the answer.

Chris: 00:38:57

I have a great idea, but I'm not going to say anything because I want someone

Chris: 00:39:00

in the team to pick up the conversation or pick up the responsibility.

Chris: 00:39:05

And it happened in Ted Lasso, happened in, my teams as well,

Chris: 00:39:08

where I don't say anything.

Chris: 00:39:10

I, earlier I talked about Slack where someone would ask a question.

Chris: 00:39:13

I had an answer.

Chris: 00:39:14

Of course I have an answer.

Chris: 00:39:15

I wouldn't say anything waiting for somebody else in the team.

Chris: 00:39:19

To make a comment or give a suggestion and if it's wrong, okay, then I would

Chris: 00:39:24

pipe in and say okay, why don't you do this or check that, but I would wait for a

Chris: 00:39:30

while to see somebody else picking up the baton and running with it rather than them

Chris: 00:39:36

relying on me that would be my, example, I

Rob: 00:39:38

guess that must take some What's the word?

Rob: 00:39:41

Patience.

Rob: 00:39:42

Maturity.

Rob: 00:39:43

Patience is the right word.

Rob: 00:39:44

Yeah.

Rob: 00:39:44

Patience is really the right word.

Rob: 00:39:46

And I guess for many leaders it would be difficult to, yeah it's about,

Rob: 00:39:52

yeah, growing in maturity, isn't it?

Rob: 00:39:54

To be able to lead in that style.

Chris: 00:39:57

Going back to your example of the movie theater.

Chris: 00:39:59

Why people act like that when they're in positions of authority, to be honest.

Chris: 00:40:04

They're newly promoted and suddenly they're, strict and intolerant.

Chris: 00:40:09

They would never act.

Chris: 00:40:10

They were never, raised like that.

Chris: 00:40:12

So if you think about what's your first experience of being in a

Chris: 00:40:16

team, you could say the family, your parents are, they're supportive.

Chris: 00:40:21

Yeah.

Chris: 00:40:21

They listen to you.

Chris: 00:40:23

They ask you questions and engage in active listening and give you suggestions

Chris: 00:40:27

so that you discover things on your own.

Chris: 00:40:29

They let you fail sometimes all the stuff that we talk about as, ideal.

Chris: 00:40:34

leadership, your parents did, or hopefully they did.

Chris: 00:40:38

But then when we are promoted, suddenly we don't do these things, we go out

Chris: 00:40:42

there and bark orders, we complain, we say, Oh we can't do these things.

Chris: 00:40:46

Because if we do, then they're going to want more money.

Chris: 00:40:48

And we're not going to give them more money.

Chris: 00:40:50

So just better to, keep expectations low.

Chris: 00:40:53

I never understood that.

Rob: 00:40:54

It's funny, because that's exactly the response that I had.

Rob: 00:40:58

At that point it was, because the people that were barking were often

Rob: 00:41:03

people that had risen up, they'd been an usher or front of house

Rob: 00:41:08

and then they'd become promoted.

Rob: 00:41:09

But I think that, that is how a lot of Leaders behave because they've seen others

Rob: 00:41:14

do it and I think if you go back to the factories, like 100, 150, 200 years ago,

Rob: 00:41:21

the factories, it was like literally cracking a whip and get on with it, get on

Rob: 00:41:25

with it because that was what was needed.

Rob: 00:41:28

In a different context there's a breaking point where that no longer works, but

Rob: 00:41:32

also I've worked in the school, so I can appreciate the, how difficult

Rob: 00:41:36

it must be to get teachers as a team because it is very individualistic.

Speaker: 00:41:41

Yeah.

Rob: 00:41:41

And there's A rule that you can't, that within their classroom,

Rob: 00:41:45

the teacher is the boss and you and so they all have their own styles.

Rob: 00:41:49

The school I worked in was quite a deprived area, catchment area, and

Rob: 00:41:54

many of the examples were shocking of parents and parents did talk like that.

Rob: 00:42:00

So sometimes.

Rob: 00:42:02

But I don't think that's really the problem with a lot of leaders.

Rob: 00:42:06

I think the real problem is a lot of them see this old throwback and.

Rob: 00:42:11

It's the lack of knowing anything else to do the lack of the self consciousness

Rob: 00:42:16

of I'm supposed to lead I'm supposed to know this, maybe a little bit of imposter

Rob: 00:42:21

syndrome, which makes leads to that and which I do think I agree with you.

Rob: 00:42:26

I think it is about, we have to engage with to educate and we have to empower

Rob: 00:42:31

for people to grow through that.

Chris: 00:42:33

I think people that are promoted also they're thinking

Chris: 00:42:36

about the movies that they saw.

Chris: 00:42:38

There's always the classic Hollywood.

Chris: 00:42:40

The writers of Hollywood, they've never been in the business.

Chris: 00:42:42

They have no idea how business works, but it's just this trope that the manager

Chris: 00:42:46

is this, horrible boss and, he cracks the whip and that's what they think.

Chris: 00:42:51

If you're lucky enough, if you graduate, for example, and you get your first

Chris: 00:42:55

job, and you work with a team where the leader Supports you and helps

Chris: 00:42:59

you and guides you and that becomes your baseline, then, you're set.

Chris: 00:43:04

You can go anywhere and you become a great leader because you've got

Chris: 00:43:08

the you have a firm foundation and you know what you need to do.

Chris: 00:43:12

Otherwise, yeah you're promoted.

Chris: 00:43:15

You don't really have a model with which to work.

Chris: 00:43:18

People should go to the bookstore or, buy a book or read online a list

Chris: 00:43:23

of some podcasts, but we all know that they don't necessarily until

Chris: 00:43:27

they're really struggling take those actual steps and companies don't

Chris: 00:43:31

put enough effort or, incentive.

Chris: 00:43:34

They don't train people ongoing to become better managers and better leaders here.

Chris: 00:43:40

Okay.

Chris: 00:43:41

You've been promoted and okay, go to this training.

Chris: 00:43:43

It's, two hours tomorrow afternoon, and then you'll be all set.

Chris: 00:43:47

Let me know if you have any questions and that's the extent of their

Chris: 00:43:50

training and they're just left to figure it out for themselves.

Chris: 00:43:52

And it shouldn't be like that because again, studies show like when people,

Chris: 00:43:57

when new managers are developed and trained ongoing before they actually are

Chris: 00:44:02

promoted after they're promoted, that they're more likely to be successful.

Chris: 00:44:06

And if they don't, then I know something like 40, 50, 60 percent of

Chris: 00:44:11

people fail as a first time manager within the first year and a half.

Chris: 00:44:14

They don't cause they don't know what to do and they're not getting the

Chris: 00:44:17

support and the training that they need.

Rob: 00:44:19

And often it can be a leader is constrained by their personal

Rob: 00:44:23

growth, personal evolution, and if they're worried about competition,

Rob: 00:44:28

if they're, whatever personal things can be that sometimes leaders don't,

Rob: 00:44:32

they don't help up the next level.

Rob: 00:44:34

They don't empower.

Chris: 00:44:36

It does depend on the company culture as well.

Chris: 00:44:38

You should think that, okay if I'm supporting the team and the team is doing

Chris: 00:44:42

well, we're going to hit all our targets.

Chris: 00:44:43

We're going to hit all our KPIs.

Chris: 00:44:45

But if the company is solely focused on numbers and that's what they're measuring,

Chris: 00:44:51

then you start to crack the whip and focus just on, The numbers doesn't matter if

Chris: 00:44:57

these numbers are, impossible to achieve.

Chris: 00:45:00

This is what I've been told to do.

Chris: 00:45:01

My boss is barking at me, so I have to go bark at my team.

Chris: 00:45:04

Cause if I don't hit those numbers, if the team doesn't hit those

Chris: 00:45:07

numbers, then then I'm in trouble.

Rob: 00:45:09

And it just perpetuates the more stress there is, the less

Chris: 00:45:13

capacity people have.

Chris: 00:45:14

Yeah, definitely.

Chris: 00:45:15

That's a hundred percent correct.

Rob: 00:45:16

Typically what kind of person would be, or company

Rob: 00:45:20

would be looking to engage you?

Chris: 00:45:23

I think for a person for people somebody who is.

Chris: 00:45:27

newer to management somebody who maybe has been managing for a few

Chris: 00:45:32

years and wants to get more out of it.

Chris: 00:45:35

Those sorts of people there, there's so much room for growth.

Chris: 00:45:40

There's so many opportunities that they can achieve so much.

Chris: 00:45:42

And I think that at the moment, that's where I could probably help

Chris: 00:45:46

people the most, or I feel more confident, most confident with

Chris: 00:45:49

helping people the most in that area.

Chris: 00:45:50

In terms of companies again, same you have new managers, you have new

Chris: 00:45:55

leaders, you need a workshop with these people for these people, then I'm

Chris: 00:46:00

someone who would be able to come in and build the right training program.

Chris: 00:46:05

So that they're not just getting an afternoon's worth of education.

Chris: 00:46:09

It's something that's.

Chris: 00:46:11

Ongoing so that there's different modules, for example, over a course

Chris: 00:46:15

of X amount of time, and each time you come back, there's more opportunities

Chris: 00:46:19

to review and reinforce again.

Chris: 00:46:22

So that it's an ongoing process because as I said earlier, companies make the mistake

Chris: 00:46:27

of, okay, we did an afternoon together.

Chris: 00:46:29

Good job.

Chris: 00:46:29

You're all set to go, go lead your team.

Chris: 00:46:32

You're all set.

Chris: 00:46:33

And that's not the case.

Rob: 00:46:34

Yeah.

Rob: 00:46:34

It needs to be embedded.

Rob: 00:46:35

Okay.

Rob: 00:46:36

And where should someone reach out to you?

Chris: 00:46:39

LinkedIn, I think is probably the best place at the moment.

Chris: 00:46:41

I'm on there several hours at a minimum each day.

Chris: 00:46:45

And I, yeah, I'm responsive.

Chris: 00:46:47

I answer my DMS and I don't know if people can see my email address,

Chris: 00:46:52

but it doesn't matter because you can DM me and I'll answer.

Chris: 00:46:55

Yeah.

Rob: 00:46:55

Yeah.

Rob: 00:46:55

Yeah.

Rob: 00:46:56

LinkedIn does take time, doesn't it?

Rob: 00:46:58

Yeah.

Rob: 00:46:58

Okay.

Rob: 00:46:59

I'm

Chris: 00:46:59

only

Rob: 00:46:59

four.

Rob: 00:46:59

I'm only

Chris: 00:47:00

four months in or so.

Chris: 00:47:01

So yeah, it's definitely takes a lot of time.

Rob: 00:47:04

Okay.

Rob: 00:47:04

Thank you for your time.

Chris: 00:47:05

This was enjoyable.