S1E3 Corey-osity Unleashed with Lee Wolley

Welcome to Curiosity Unleashed, where we turn bold ideas into action and help businesses and leaders step it up.

We're your hosts, Deborah and Ken, obsessed with fresh takes, bold moves and shaking up the way we lead and work.

Alongside our amazing guests, we'll dive into the good, the bad and and the actual what the hell of the workplace. Served with a side of sarcasm and a splash of wisdom.

Oh, and fair warning, this is an adult podcast. Expect swearing like Ken just did, brutal honesty and the occasional dramatic reenactment of some of the most epic workplace fails we've ever seen or done.

So grab your drink, get comfy, and let's unleash some curiosity.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of our podcast where we have the wonderful, the awesome Lee Woolley joining us. So welcome. Lee, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's gonna be great. I've been looking forward to this. So, a little bit about Lee. This is when you're gonna blush as I talk about you. So Lee has been in hr for over 20, 25 years. You've been working most of your career in hospitality. You are an HR generalist and also an L and D specialist. And you've had senior roles at some of the largest pubs and restaurants and companies within the uk. You've developed and you've produced multi award winning career pathways, leadership development and high potential programs, as well as sitting on advisory bodies for apprenticeships and. And hr. You are so awesome that I've interviewed you at least once for my books. I think maybe twice. I think you've been in two of my books with case studies.

Definitely Rebel Playbook.

Yeah, well, because you are a rebel, but yeah, there you go. You live in Nottinghamshire with your wife, your daughter, and not just one, but two sheepadoodles. I've only met one because the puppy is new. Right.

Yeah. Lily's three months old, so you might hear in a bit.

Good. We welcome puppies to the podcast.

We're definitely dog friendly.

We definitely, definitely are. We might have our neighbors. I can tell their two dogs are outside, so we might hear those. It could be a bit of a dog party. So anyway, back to you. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey as a leadership development guru? I know you do lots of other things, but for today I want to focus on this aspect of leadership development.

Yeah. I don't know what makes people a guru. I think it's probably experience and being old.

No, it's more than that.

I originally trained as a chef Which I think is, is really interesting for leadership because it's, it is still unfortunately a very old school start of, of hierarchy and, and command and control in kitchens predominantly. So, so that was an interesting learning curve. I then ran my own pub steakhouse restaurant in North Teamshire for a few years and, and that taught me all sorts. I taught more of my most important lesson they've learned. Whereas you maybe make your mistakes on your first leadership role and then, and then start putting it right on your second one. So ran that quite successfully and then moved into HR where I've been as you said, generalist but probably specialize in L and D leadership development. And the past. Well for most of that I've been working for as you said, some of the larger pub, restaurant, bar, nightclub companies. Particularly in the last role that I've been in significant role for 14 years working at Stonegate Group and doing, carrying out leadership development and designing career pathways there and, and driving leadership within the business is, is taught me a number of things and, and you. So you talk about this in, in Bad bosses ruined lives, but you quite possibly learn just as much about leadership from bad bosses as you do from good bosses because you have that, it gives you that drive of I don't want to do that, but I do want to do that. And we all fall into those pitfalls of sometimes doing some of that. And I find it really fascinating doing the survey that you do as part of your program and looking at with any test like that or profile like that, you get it back and you go do I do that? And if you're really honest with yourself, yeah, I do do that and sometimes I choose to leverage that and sometimes it's subconscious. But yeah, I think all my experiences has led me to that. Plus I'm a huge reader as well. I believe it's a discipline that we fall out of. So I do read, but I treat myself. I read a leadership or a work based book and then a fiction book and I jockey the two. So I go away in a couple weeks time and I've got my pile of books ready of reward and not that I find it a chore, but I think it's something that helps with leadership and thinking about how it changes as well.

It's interesting because when I met you the first time when I was interviewing you for Rebel Playbook and I came to visit you at Stonegate and you took me into the book closet, which sounds a bit funny but you took me into the book closet to show me all of the different leadership books that you had and I absolutely loved your, your passion for picking out books that could really make a difference for your leadership team.

Yeah. And I think picking a range of books and saying what it's for because there's a lot of good books out there but there's also a lot of rubbish out there and I think picking the right style of book, what are you trying to get over? So that's why we had so many. It wasn't about having a one size fits all but saying actually for. For new first time line managers situation the Ken Blanchard books are really simple to read. Quite parable based books that especially when you've not been reading for a while get you back into reading. So they're quite interesting ones. You know a one minute manager books we used to use quite a bit. But those parable based books as opposed to getting on to more I suppose detailed reading on our leadership programs when you were getting up to, to the more senior levels. So I think it's that and then I have a range of people because I we saw some really interesting discussions with my team because we used to do a reading list every year but we used to. It wasn't just one person's opinion what goes on and there's a couple of books on there that if I'm really not, I'm not there anymore. So I can say I didn't like. I really, I really didn't have a lot of time. I won't mention them now, it's not fair. But a couple of books I didn't have time for but it was their choice and they got something from it so why shouldn't that be on there?

Yeah. So there we go. So tip one and then Ken, I'll let you move on to the next question. Tip one, think about how you can weave books into your leadership development. And I love your point about not just books that you like but books that other people find useful because we all have different perspectives.

Yeah. Can I add a little tip to that as well?

Yeah, sure.

I believe any book that's got three tips, three gems in a word is worth reading. So I use, I used to use a neon marker but I now use little neon strips. And if I find a gem in a book, I put the little neon strip on and if, if it's three, I've got three in there. I think, I think that's worthwhile because then when I go back to the book I haven't got to read the whole thing. I go what do I like about this book? And you know, my favorite at The Moment has 37 tabs in it, so that tells me that. So I think I've been recommending a certain book for a few years now, so. So I think that's worthwhile as well about thinking. Okay. Because when you get onto another book, you forget maybe the gems that you got from it. So I think those little tabs are worth a couple of pounds of pocket money to invest in.

Good advice.

Absolutely. I love the idea of ongoing education. A lot of people, it strikes me, at least in my previous companies, they've gone through uni, they've got their degree, they've got the job, they've worked hard all week long. Why do they need to read more? And there's a marked difference between reading about doing your job better and just getting the current job done. So no, that's really exciting stuff there. Thank you for that. Now you mentioned that you do L and D focus on leadership development, but you also touched on how leadership has changed. So before we talk about the leadership development, what changes have you seen in leadership, especially between generations of workers?

Yeah, I mentioned a book that I like and my favorite book at the moment talks about the differences in generations, but also the similarities in, in generations and what makes us similar. And in the book there's a survey of 50,000 people and basically says the top three motivators and the bottom three motivators are the same across all four and now five generations in work. And Herzberg, I suppose will be very pleased with that. Going back to his two factor theory and Maslow etc around what MOT motivates people. But that number one motivator, that sense of being leader, what I'm doing is, is worthwhile. I don't think that changed but the, the leadership style, if you think about the I suppose generation gradually finishing work now with baby boomers, it was a lot about command and control and about top down and, and tell rather than sell. And I think that when where the generation that I am with Gen X is, that started to be questioned and you started seeing a lot more leadership that was flexible, a bit more autonomous. And I see that with, with, with the people of sort of my age and a little bit younger than that. I think leaders are still expected to be leaders, but actually it was okay to have specialists and allow that delegation and not always having to have all the answers. I think for what I've seen in my time tutoring leadership and reading leadership is the big change then goes into, into the. Where the millennials come in because you see EQ evolving enormously. Emotional intelligence coming into leadership and that ability to converse with emotions because school started teaching that or talking about that and it wasn't the stiff upper lip anymore, it was the ability to talk about emotions. And therefore if I'm coming from school, I haven't talked about emotions, how I'm feeling and being able to express that I want to be able to do that at work as well. So I think you saw EQ coming in massively and then some of the other changes. I think you'll have seen yourselves with this purpose driven leadership of what's my purpose? Inclusivity starting to rear itself in the early millennials and particularly in Gen Z. And then this flexibility and collaboration and the whole idea of actually the expertise might not. Doesn't have to be that person, it might not even be in our department. Where's that flexibility? And company is particularly good at horizontal promotion rather than just vertical. So Tesco taking some of the Walmart mentality of we're going to actually promote you across departments before you move up. So you're getting that breadth. And then I think with Gen Z you start hearing words more and more that are now daily parlance with diversity of leadership, inclusion, needing that tech fluency. I was talking to some Gen Z employees at a previous company and they were saying millennials think they understand tech because they learned it, we were born into it, so we understand tech. So that that ability for leaders to be tech savvy and tech fluent, but also empathy and that expectation of let me innovate, don't control me, give me that freedom and let me innovate and come up with a solution. My leader needs to be there for me, but doesn't have to always have the solution. And I think that led across the four generations and obviously with Gen Alpha coming into work very, very soon, will you. I think you'll just see, I'm only guessing you'll see an extension of that. But the more of I need my line manager to be there doesn't necessarily mean face to face. It might be online, but actually let me get on with it. Give me the freedom and allow me to make those mistakes and support me when I do. So I think we've seen that with leadership but. But obviously that's a generalization you differences across all of that.

Absolutely.

Is that a good enough quick summary, Ken?

That's a very good quick summary. I love the idea of horizontal movement in the organization. Before you go up to give you a little bit more perspective, a little Bit more understanding of where the whole organization is. You don't just come up with the idea of being in this one department and approaching things with the needs of that one department. I think that's really admirable.

Yeah, I think that retail are maybe ahead of the curve on that one and you might argue because they've got that opportunity to do that across the different departments, even on the shop floor. But I think other industries are picking that up quite quick and saying, actually we develop better leaders if they've got a breadth of experience rather than just a specialism.

Absolutely. I've tried to get that going in my departments, but my departments were always too small. And we have six people and we have six jobs and who's going to move left and right? We can't do it. Just let's just get the job done. So, yeah, no, I'm pretty envious. That sounds really good to me. I'll head it back over to you, Deb.

No, I was just going to pick up on one of the points that you talked about, and I absolutely agree, whether it's leadership development or other aspects of people, is that there's more similarities than dissimilarities. You know, at the core, what we're looking for are the same, but the main differences are based off of our expectations. You know, what. What we were taught. So to your point, I grew up in the command and control world. Absolutely. You know, my boss, that's how my boss expected me to lead. You know, you're the boss, that's what we pay you for. You go out, you tell people how to do it and things have evolved, you know, more to the whole servant leadership. So I think the expectations definitely impacts the different generations, but also where they are. I don't know your thoughts, but, you know, a lot of people say people new to the market are just. They're so selfish and they think it's all about them. I was the same way. You know, what am I, 30 now? Yeah, 20 years ago or whatever it was that I went into the workplace. So part of it is, you know, where you are in your career, especially from a development perspective.

And that's a really interesting point is. I mean, servant leadership, the idea has been going for a long time. And, you know, Jonathan Livingston Siegel, Jonathan Livingston Steagall's book's brilliant on the whole idea of servant leadership. But I think it's part of it is just about being nice. And sir, you know, if you're not serving someone, serve someone who is. And the whole idea of I, I'm here to, to help my team and, but, but I think that in some businesses and some industries, almost the job that that leader is doing is so busy. You get this. I don't have time to lead and it doesn't have to take a lot of time. And, and I think it's really, I don't, I agree with you. I don't think the differences are that different across generations in terms of what motivates us or, or what irks us. I do think there's a difference in, in what maybe some of the newer generations have to put up with. We didn't have to put up with social media and the pressure of that. And so when you hear people talking about resilience, maybe the new generations aren't as resilient as we used to be, but, but then they're putting up with so much more pressure than we used to have to. So rather than saying that, using that as in a geography term, understanding that actually that gives them, okay, they might need to work on resilience, but they may have other skills that we had to work on, but they've automatically got. So I don't like this generational finger pointing. I do like the idea of let's work out. There's so much more that gels us rather than the differences we've got.

Yeah. Focus on what brings us together and then leverage our differences. Which is a nice segue into my next question. So you had mentioned our book already. Part of the book is what we call the great boss building block model. And it talks about all the different building blocks, all the different tools that. Oh, Ken's pointing. If you're watching this, Ken's pointing. And it looks at all the different tools that we as leaders need and we intentionally put in place six what we call foundational ones, which are more of the behaviors. And you started to touch on this already. Things like respect, trust, authenticity, vulnerability, empathy and compassion. And from the surveys that we've done, we've been a bit disappointed that companies are still not focusing on giving leaders tools to develop. So I know you've done it in the past. You know, can you give any, any insights or tips on first of all, why companies should and then how they can do that?

Well, yeah, I think that the, probably the answer to this is it's easier to teach technical skills. Right?

Absolutely.

Easier to do, to talk about technical rather than, I don't like the term soft skills because I think they're a lot more harder, They're a lot more difficult. But the whole idea, that's why we called them foundation.

We did not want to call them sound. I agree with you completely.

But I do think they're hard to train or to coach or to teach because it's down to the individual. For me, one of the most successful programs that we instigated in the previous company was a program on trust. And there's a lot of books out there on trust at the moment. But the whole idea of if you can genuinely get trust going as a currency and not just a feeling, but actually quantify it and work out that. Actually, you know, when I talk about quantify it, have a culture where it's okay to challenge. A culture where it's okay to say, why are we doing it this way? A culture to say, actually a culture where it's safe to go to somebody, we've got an issue. Yeah, we need to talk about this and feel that you're not going to get a pushback from a senior person for doing it of saying, we need to sort this relationship out. Now, that involves having vulnerability. It involves having. It doesn't involve having trust. It involves having that security that it's okay. And I think that that is where companies start getting not only a good work culture, but it speeds everything up.

Yeah.

Lack of trust and lack of acceptance of feelings slows things down.

Absolutely. Yeah.

When I'm not going and then, then go, okay, it's okay to do that. So. So I think that. I don't know if I've got tips of how you. You do that, but I do think you have to build them into. Into programs. But I suppose the tip I would have having just count to myself there is don't have them as separate subjects. Have them in everything that you do. Because as soon as you say we're going to do a session on vulnerability, you certain, certain switch off. But. But actually we're going to build that into anything that we are either delivering, however it's delivered.

I think it's really important how do you integrate it so, you know, even how you design your HR program. So, for example, I was designing a recognition program at a previous company and we intentionally built trust into it. So instead of them coming to me, big bad HR for approval, I trusted them, I gave them the rules, I told them what to do, and I wove trust into it. And I think if we do that as leaders and also as a business, I think that it creates that culture that you're talking about. And I absolutely agree that you move faster. If I think about relationships I've had in the past with people I trust and people I might not trust. It takes a lot longer to do it when there's no trust because you always have to go and check in with them, look over their shoulder. The person is nervous, they're not going to get it right. You know, I don't have data on it but it at least two or three times longer it takes to do something when there's no trust involved.

Yeah. And, and why are we checking, why are we checking up on people? And I'm starting to fall out of love with, I'm probably late to the table here, but fall out of love with six month and annual appraisals because I do like the idea of how's your year gone? But why are we waiting for a six month or an annual appraisal to say we've got an issue or reverse, you're doing really well or this person has said this about you. What do you think? Why are we waiting for that? For me, nothing in an appraisal should be a surprise. None of my team, I would surprise in a six month annual appraisal to say hey by the way, you've been crap this year, we will be having that discussion or you've been brilliant this year. And the thing is a bit trust comes into that as well. And I, I think that's changing HR practices where you start saying look, I want everyone to be having one to ones but even that I spent a very short time at a recent company looking at their one to one documents and they were daunting. So I just changed it to a document that a coffee cup in the corner and it had three questions on it. How are you doing? What's your next, what you're next working on and what are you not getting from me that you need from me? Three questions on the sheets called coffee and chat and that's it. And you start building them up every few weeks you've got the appraisal done. So I think there's a, I think there's an element of looking at all of our documents, whatever I call it HR practices willing current leadership and saying why are we doing the things we're doing? Is it because we've always done it or does it have value? And if it has value, how might it be different? And I love the one of my favorite, I love quotes, one of my favorite quotes is Walt Disney of if it's not broke, break it. I think we, we sit too far, too too quick to sit on something and go well it's not broke. Yeah, but how do you know if it could be better? And again, trust. There it goes back to the trust piece of actually it's okay to challenge a process, a system, a document. If you think if you've got a better solution.

Well, I mean, you mentioned my book that I wrote, the Rebel Playbook. That's what it's all about, challenging it. As you were talking about that concept of the six month and the annual performance appraisal, it made me think of an analogy to bring it to life. It'd be like breaking your leg or breaking your arm. And the doctor says, I'll see you in six months to put the cast on. So for the next six months I, I just want you to hobble all over the place. If that's not going to slow you down or cause more problems, I don't know what is. So, yeah, thank you for spurring on that analogy.

On the flip side of that, can you imagine being the employee that walks in on a one year appraisal in December and to be told that, oh yeah, remember back in January when you did that thing and you did it wrong? Well, you've been screwing up all year long. I just haven't been telling you about this. Can you imagine the load of brownie points you have to try to earn at that point to, to dig yourself out of this hole? Yeah, I, I, I just, I, I just want to applaud 100%, Lee, about the idea of regular one to ones. I, I was trying to do them with my people every week if I could, every two weeks if I couldn't and if there was an issue, I told them then if there was a praise, I told them. Well, if there was a praise, I told them as soon as I could. But if I didn't get around to it before the one to one it came out then. Absolutely. I just don't understand this whole annual thing at all.

So the next tip or challenge is if you are doing only six month and annual review cycles, change it, shake it up and change it. Yep. Anyway, Ken, your question next, that's a serious gem.

If anybody's listening. Put a neon sticker on that one right there.

A Lee Woolly sticker posted.

Absolutely. You have to come up with some branded stickers, Lee. Yeah, right. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that companies make when it comes to developing their leaders?

Oh, gosh. Look, Deborah said in the intro, I've been lucky enough to sit on some advisory boards and I have the joy sometimes of judging some of the competitions in hospitality. And I was recently judging the innovation awards in training and I was judging the smaller companies because it wasn't fair for me to the bigger companies because I've always worked for them. And there's some great stuff in there. But I started looking at it and it really helps you look at your own programs as well and go, I'm just about to give them some critique here. And yet we do the same thing. So I've been thinking about this question actually, because it came up in something else and I think that having said the difference in generations, I think one of the problems with leadership programs is expecting a one size fits all. So I was talking to one of my old team that's moved when I left, moved to another company. And the company that he's with is saying we don't use outside leadership programs. Not even just a company, we don't even use outside leadership programs. I thought that's a little bit myopic because some of them have been going so long and so well because they've got real value. And then I was reading a piece on LinkedIn of a lady I follow saying why leadership programs don't fail. That's why I start thinking about this program, why leadership programs fail. And she was making the point that all leadership programs fail. And I think, no, they don't. But where in my opinion she was going wrong was expecting that leadership programs are one size fits all and fix everything. You mentioned the foundation blocks and the model in your book. I'm a big sucker for models. I like them. But you get a lot of people saying I don't like models. The idea of model is to get is to bring a concept to life. Yes. And actually make it tangible and visible. And I think that you then in any leadership program and the models, you then take them away and make them work for you. And whatever works for you, you take away. So the one size fits all. When I've been teaching leadership, I always say if this doesn't work for you, there'll be. Go back to my three points thing. There'll be at least three things in this program that take away and use them. But if this document or this tool doesn't work, then the one I always used to talk about saying give this a go was something called wigs. Wildly important goals of saying at the start of your week, you're going to notice this power of three thing coming in of what's the three things you've got to achieve this week right above anything else. Because that should guide what you're doing in your week. Yeah. Now for me, that's really hard to argue against. Yeah. So most people took that one away. But if it didn't, there are enough things in the program if it's a decent program, so don't try and make it. Everyone leading the same way in a one size fits all would be my, my first piece to answer your question. I think also as tutors, leaders, coaches with leadership, we need to be sell rather than tell. We need to be selling the idea because if you don't want to buy in, don't. They won't buy in. You can't force someone to do it that goes back to command and control. So sell the idea in. Why this works. I think everyone turns up to a workshop or whether it's face to face, whether it's online, whether what's in it for me. We're human beings, we all know what's in it for us. So right at the beginning or even on the invite, this is what you're going to get from it. Yeah. So. So this, this tell rather than sell. I think I've got five points I want to make on this one. I think that whatever we, we teach or in a book or anything has got to get the chance to be embedded. So if you think about, if you think about you want to change someone's behavior, research says it takes between 19 and 21 times to change a habit. And I know 20 sits between there, but, but 19. So quite nicely, that's three weeks if you do it once a day. Yeah. So if you want someone to truly change something they're doing, they need three weeks to do it, to try and bet. So I always say when I'm teaching leadership is give this a go. Give us a real college workout for three weeks that doesn't work for you, then drop it, but at least give it a go for three weeks. So I think there's that, that piece around not allowing that time to embed and I suppose linked with that is thinking that when we teach them in once, that's going to be it. My favorite one is coaching is we all do coaching whether we know it or not, from, from starting to line manage people all the way through to directorships. But we don't learn coaching once. And all the different types of coaching, we learn it as we go through. And for me, if we're teaching our younger generations coming through or, or a skill, if we're sticking on leadership, even skills, technical skills, you don't sl it once you've got to keep learning it. So I think there's that, that embedding piece there and then I think my other one is the other mistake we make and you see made is we still promote people for knowledge on a specialist subject rather than their ability to manage a team or lead. And I think that there are companies and I would lord IBM with this as doing this have now started promoting people as line manager and non line manager. So you can still progress but especially that in technology some people are never going to be line managers or nor want to be line managers. So you can still progress but you won't be a line manager because you've had that discussion or you will be. I think there's some legs in that as well around, around thinking about it because I think we underestimate the skill. We go they've got great knowledge in that subject matter expert, we're going to promote them and they absolutely fail because not because of the technical ability because they don't know how to lead a team.

Now one of the things that I think it was the third point you were talking about not giving something a chance to embed. One of the things that I've seen when I'm trying to get something across to my people is I'll say have a go at this and they'll go, they'll walk away and they'll try it the one time and they'll come back and throw it back on my desk and go that didn't work, I'm not going to do that, that's impossible, I'm not going to do that. And then that's it, they walk away. Why is that? Why don't people give it a go several times? Is it a corporate culture thing that like you can't fail?

I don't know if you take. It's interesting if you, if you look at change I, I read a lot on change and you take William Bridges change model he talks about saying people usually start on neutral if they ever go at something and it fails or they got told off for it, they're not still in neutral. They're then as you sort of mentioned Ken, they're actually in the anti bottom so I'm twice as likely to not give it another go because it hasn't worked and I think we forget that sometimes of going well they gave it a go, they'll give it another go. No, no, they've actually moved backwards. So there's a piece I talk about a lot and I actually use ropes on the ground and do this as a big model and go and talk to about comfort zones. Everyone talks about comfort zones and mentions comfort zones but don't really understand it. But we live in comfort zone and human beings, our brain protects us. It tries to keep us in the comfort zone. You know, the model you learn in the stretch zone and you don't learn in the panic zone. In fact, you go into, into survive or into fight or flight. And quite often we don't go with them. They're in that panic zone. But in stretch, if you want to learn a new skill, we need to go with them or help them understand it's okay to make a mistake. And I like I always used to use a video of Southwest Airlines in America. It's so simple. And Herb Kellerer, who was the CEO at the time, he should say if someone makes a decision, if a team member makes a decision that leans towards a customer and they get it wrong, no matter what it costs, no matter what happens, they will never get discipline for that because they were doing it for the right reason. If you imagine the culture of that of knowing it's okay, I did it for the right of the customer, I got it wrong. But actually we're going to learn from that. And you know, I like, you know, in, in black Box thinking, brilliant book where they talk about the actual idea of the black box is to learn from it and then not have that same mistake again. And it talks about in the book of why in the medical profession so many things go hidden because they're worried about what will happen if it comes out. Imagine if you have black boxes in, in hospital because he couldn't. It wouldn't work. But. But the idea is saying how do we learn from that? And I think therefore Ken, long answer to that's why in, in corporate culture, quite often it doesn't work is because the fear of what's going to happen, then going back to that trust piece, there isn't the trust that it's okay to get it wrong.

Yeah, I think that's. Go ahead, Deb.

Sorry. No, I just wanted to jump in and add another element. And it goes back to something that you said earlier, Lee. Change is never going to happen if somebody doesn't have the what's in it for me? Because you're going to fail a couple of times, but if you don't think about and focus on what's going to change, it's not going to make a difference. I'll give you a perfect example. I just recently did a food intolerance test and Was told that the one thing that I needed to give up, at least in the short term, was cow's milk. I love my skim milk latte. I absolutely love it. And the first time I had my oat milk latte, I hated it. And I was ready to give up. I was ready to go back to my skim milk. But I thought, I'm doing it. The what's in it for me is that it's better for my health. And it's probably been a couple weeks now and actually I'm fine with it now. So my point was you have to have the what's in it for me or no one is going to persevere for those. I think you said three weeks of painful, ucky, yucky change.

Yeah. I also wanted to underline the importance of being able to fail. I have been in organizations that said we simply cannot fail. Failure is not an option. Well, if you, you make a mistake and you learn from it and you do it better next time, then it wasn't failure. It was learning, it was exploration. It was actually innovation. A lot of companies I've been at say yo, yes, we really want innovation, but do exactly what I say and failure is not really an option.

What did Edison say when they said you failed 2,000 times? And he said, yep, I've just found 2,000 ways not to make the light bulb.

That's yeah, great. I'm going to jump onto the next question. Yeah. Okay. So it's just a little bit of a controversial thing. When we were talking in the pre one, we were talking about some of our frustrations in the L and D world and people listening might have these frustrations. So I'd love your thoughts on what can we do about it. Things like when money gets tight, the first thing to go is, is L and D. So just curious, you know, your, your CEO comes to you, your head of HR comes to you. What can you do to show them the risk of dropping L and D?

Yeah, I've had fortunate situations where it's not been the case and situation where this has been the case. And look in business at the moment, it's, it's probably not been as tough as this for a long time and more headwinds coming in. Two weeks time with the NI reduction and I am talking, I love it. A lot of my team have gone off to senior roles elsewhere and they are phoning saying, what do I do? We're having everything cooked and it does seem like the low hanging fruit to cut when, when things are tough but, but for me, I think goes back to what's made you successful. If you've got an L and D strategy that's developing people and those people are then flourishing because of that common, gosh, common sense says you cut. But actually if you really think about it, you should invest more when times are tough because your people might be demotivated, you may lose people you don't want to leave. So you don't, you want that continuity and still have them. And I know if CFO is listening to this, they might not agree with me. I was lucky that you have a brilliantly people focused CFO at Stonegate. But actually think about what you've built and that culture you've built and that legacy you've built by developing people. What message does it send? For me, it sends panic. We're in trouble. We don't actually care about people. And Deborah, you mentioned earlier in the building blocks there around authenticity. So for millennials and Gen Z, authenticity is absolutely paramount. Well, how authentic are we being if at the first time of tough trading we cut our people development? And I think add to that as well is I always balk at this idea that it's my money and we're spending it. It's not my money. Yes, it's the business's money. But I'm not a cost, I'm not a cost of business. CFO would differ. I'm not cost the business. I'm helping enable people in business, helping line managers develop their people to keep them, to give us that, those promotions in the business. So I think sometimes we go HR spending this money. Well, we are because you're asking us to and we are because it's benefiting the business. So I think you really got to think about, I think, I think about the benefits and, and what messages it sends when you stop, when you stop spending that money. However, what you might want to do is think about where am I best spending it. Because I also think that I've been in businesses where we spend a lot of money on. I, I believe in a meritocracy and I think that if you put the effort in, then you should get developed and you should get promoted. If you're not prepared to put that in, why should the investment be there? So I'm not all for. Everyone should have its bends on them at all times.

Yeah. And I think it's a little bit of also just taking a step back and thinking. You said it at the beginning. What do I need to focus on? So if times are tough, maybe we need to lean into certain development areas and maybe we need to take a step away from others. So it's all about, to your point, spending your money wisely. So not necessarily cutting it, but looking at what's going to help you through this difficult time and. And set you up. It'd be like, you know, giving somebody some fancy new tool and then not telling them how to use it. You know, all you're doing is setting your people up for failure if you're not going to do that development. So, you know, there's tons of data on the ROI of L and D, and I think that if you're getting the pushback, bring that out. You know, things like if you don't develop your leaders, it's going to impact productivity, you know, it's going to impact sales, it's customer service safety. I mean, those are the types of things. And go to the CFO and say, you know, are you willing to risk that? Is that really what you want in this situation?

Yeah, I agree. I think that one of the things HR&L and D have got better at and need to continue getting better at is the HR metrics. And there are, as you say, there's so much out there. But I think working symbiotically with finance and saying, what is this adding, even if it's as simple as this, reduction in team turnover equates to this saving, whether that's a saving of having to recruit people, whether that's the productivity those people give because they understand and have been there longer. There's a direct correlation between team turnover coming down and productivity and profit going up. So I think working with finance teams is huge, and understanding metrics and not having whole rafts of them, but saying, here's the half a dozen metrics that we're going to measure because it adds value. I think we also have to get more commercial as a department.

Absolutely.

I love the idea of getting the message across in the language of the person you're talking to. So when you're talking to the cfo, don't try to relate it just to the actual people. Relate it to the money, because that's what the CFO is thinking about.

I'm laughing, Ken. Only because I worked for a retail company and anytime I go to the board for money for a program, I would explain it as, okay, each store only needs to be able to sell one more pair of jeans every day, no, every week for me to do this. But by doing it, they're then going to be able to sell 10 more or whatever. I put it into their language. And the CFO would love. When I come into a meeting, they're like, here she goes. It's the Jean girl. She's got that analogy going. But it worked.

I was fortunate. I mean, I'd always worked for PLCs before I worked for Stonegate and Stonegate was owned by pe. And you always have this concern because of the press, and they were brilliantly amazing, but they actually worked harder than I did in terms of working out the return. And they worked. Not just worked out on the return in terms of profit, but also the reputational benefit for the business. And even to the point where, towards the end, they were saying the number one question that investors ask now is, where am I going to get into trouble in terms of which businesses or what things might come out that actually don't support the values that we stand for? And they were saying that actually a lot of what HR departments, particularly L and D departments do is add to that, to that reputational benefit for investors. And I think we should be leveraging that as well. It's no bad thing, it's a really good thing. I said, here's our story, here's what we do, here's how we invest in our people. But, yeah, data metrics, HR metrics, I think, are becoming essential.

Now, unfortunately, we are running out of time. And it's a real shame because I'm really enjoying this conversation. But before we wrap things up, what's one piece of advice or a key takeaway or three?

He likes the number three. He likes number three.

Yeah, yeah.

That you want to unleash on our listeners. Yeah. Something they could take, run with and maybe even brag about at work tomorrow.

I'll give you an inner three. I just thought of something that, when I was discussing with Deborah, in terms of prep, I'm talking about the last question in terms of training people. The last thing I'd say before I give my tip is I had a conversation with a manager, real old school manager, and I told you this, Deborah, and he said, yeah, Lee, I don't train my people because they leave. And I said to him, yeah, but what about if you don't train them and they stay? And I think that's one thing we need to think about, is it's easy to say we're not going to train people, but, wow, wouldn't you rather have people that leave with some knowledge rather than people that stay with you with no knowledge? So that's. But, yes, my tip, please.

Sorry, can I add on to your analogy. Or they're limping around for the year that you're going back to the broken foot. They're limping around for a year because you haven't trained them. So anyway, sorry, go with your tips.

But my tip is actually not one of mine. It's borrowed from one of my old team, but it's stuck with me. So she was my brilliant digital learning manager and it came from digital learning. But actually I think it, I think it lends itself to any sort of development. And she was saying there's this term that's coming in more and more and it's the three A's. Have you heard about these? So there's. So your training needs to be accessible, asynchronous and adaptive. And this was about E. This is more. This was actually about online learning. But I'm going to equate it to all sorts learning. So accessible. So why does the training only get to be available when my team can deliver it? But actually why don't we make it accessible? I'm all in for blended learning, whether that's face to face. Sometimes face to face is best, sometimes online is best, sometimes reading and self directed learning, but making it accessible and adaptive to what suits that learner. Yeah, so it doesn't. Some people are absolutely petrified by classroom learning. So how do we make it accessible? Whether that's phone, laptop, podcast, face to face. So accessible and adaptive for me, go together. The whole idea of asynchronous training, of why can it only go at the pace that my trainers can go at or our GMs can go at. Why does a trainer have to be like that? And now for me as a, as someone that's developed a lot of career pathways, I'm very proud of them. That's quite scary for me because it's always been at the pace we decide bite sized chunks. How do you eat an elephant? When my trainers schedule the workshops or when I schedule the workshops and my digital manager was talking to me about this, I'm going, no, that doesn't work for me. And I was still thinking, wait a minute because I'm thinking about me, what about the learner? So how do I make the training accessible, asynchronous and adaptive to this, to this. These newer generations that have had that at school or gradually had that school where they can go at their pace, people that learn slower can go slower. Those go getters can go get and then go and embed it into their job. And I think for me, researching those three areas online could be some of the best few minutes you spend over the next few months of looking at how if we stop take the ego out of it, how do we make sure our training is accessible in any format, how do we make it adaptive to that learner and at the pace that they want to go at?

I think the big takeaway for me in what you said also, and it's so obvious but so many times we don't do it, is to think about the learner, think about your customer. And I think too often in HR we don't necessarily do that. And that involves going out and talking to your learners and understanding what's the best way for them. So adding on to three A's if they could roll it and wrap it all together with the idea of starting with your customer and understanding their needs and then delivering something that aligns with the three as, that's where the magic happens.

Very good.

Perfect. Well, as Ken said, we would love to continue this conversation for the next two hours, but yeah, not sure that'll work. We'll just have you come back another time. But no, we've really enjoyed this. I think you've got some great insights as far as where have we come from but also where do we really need to go? And you know, my challenge to everyone is to, you know, think like Lee, get out your post, its real ones or virtual ones and think about where do you want to go and what are the three A's that you want to, you want to change. So yeah, thank you so much Lee.

We really appreciate you both again.

Thank you Lee. Much appreciated.

Take care.

And that's a wrap on this episode of Curiosity Unleashed. Huge thanks to our amazing guest and of course to you for tuning in.

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