119 | Building Bridges of Trust: The Foundation for a High-Performance Environment | Lily Woi

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

That conversation that you have with the team in your company, that will help with, with safety, with trust, and recognition that actually it's not really a safety issue or a trust issue. It's just we don't talk about it enough.

Hello there, and welcome to this episode of Building Better Cultures with me, Scott McInnes. It is lovely to have you back. Thanks a million for joining. Uh, before we kick off with our chat with today's guest, just my usual little thank you to Workvivo, our friend, partner, and sponsor, for their ongoing sponsorship of the show. Uh, I certainly really appreciate it. And if you are struggling to build connections with your people, which I think a lot of organizations are, are in the world of hybrid working and post-pandemic working, then maybe having a look at a tech solution is something that's worth doing. So you'll hear a little bit more from them later on, or you can pop along to their website and have a look at workvivo.com. So today my guest is Lily Woi, who is a self-described— I love this, I'm going to steal this and start using it— a culture change catalyst, an author, and a leadership coach. And we're going to get really, I suppose, down to day on talking about some stuff around change, about how organizations can be more human, about transparency and leadership and all of that, that we'll get to in a second. But for now, Lily, hi, thanks for joining.

Thanks for inviting me, Scott. Excited to be here.

Nobody's ever said the word excited before, so that's great. You're very kind. You're very kind. Thank you. Listen, why don't we just spend— why don't you take 60 seconds to give us the quick Lily Woi story, where you've come from, your journey to date, and what you're doing now.

For sure. So what I always like to start with is I always like to say I'm originally from Malaysia, very proud of my country. I moved to the UK for studies, uh, about 10 years ago, fell in love with London, and I stayed on, um, to work. I'll be honest, when I first came to London, I didn't really like it, but, you know, I found this charm and I managed to kind of stay on for, for a Started out doing my studies in management in accounting and taxation, and I started my internship in corporate taxation. Had a really interesting career journey. Went from taxation into migration testing, didn't really enjoy it. Then I went into banking doing relationship management, didn't really think that was my cup of tea. I went into travel writing for a couple of months before I landed in consulting, doing, uh, being a transformation consultant for Deloitte in London. And when I was in Deloitte, I was their program and portfolio manager for quite a number of years before I start moving into change management and then into what I'm currently doing in culture change and leadership development. So working with multinational companies in understanding how they can really drive the change and the transformation they want by using and harnessing the power of culture and their leaders and their people. And the thing is, I had a really great journey in, uh, in Deloitte, really great company, but I was feeling I needed to do something more, something different. I wanted more freedom and more flexibility. So on the verge of quite a lucrative promotion I resigned, and I think that was still the height of the pandemic. I resigned, no regrets, to start my own company. And so now here I am, I'm working with senior leaders to really fully realize their change transformation by rethinking how they use culture and how they position their people as key enablers to drive the change they're looking for.

I was actually only saying to somebody yesterday, and I salute people who jump from well-paid roles with a future, with a paycheck and all of that stuff, who jump ship and go out on their own. I think it's an incredibly brave thing to do. I was actually only saying to a friend of mine yesterday, I've got a fridge magnet on the side of my microwave, bizarrely, it should be called a microwave magnet, I guess, that just says, "Life starts on the edge of your comfort zone." I love that. Yeah, I think it's so true. Let's, let's talk a little bit about your experience, because one of the things that I think is really hard to balance is this whole idea that organizations want to be high-performing. So everybody wants to have a high-performing organization. But then lots of organizations also want to kind of have this idea of a more human, people-centered organization. Can organizations have both of those things? And how can they do that?

The short answer is yes. And this is why I say I'm here to help people rethink the role of people and culture in business performance. What you have said earlier, it's how can we balance high performance and the role of being human-centric or people-centered? It's not a balance. It's, it's all interconnected and part of the same jigsaw, or the different pieces of the same jigsaw. Creating a more human-centered approach, it's often the key to enhancing performance and productivity. You're not able to have a high-performing organization if you don't focus on your people. They are the core to your success. And when I see companies often only focusing on high performance, and they say it's a do or die, we need to achieve, we need to perform, without focusing on their people, they typically have a short-term focus. And they are focused on the next 12 months, they are focused on this crazy expansion, and they do not think about the long term, about how to build a sustainable business and how to build a sustainable workforce. And then you tend to see performance starts to dip after 12 months. You see your key talents leaving, walking out of the door. And it's not about going to another high-paying company. They walk out of the door because they feel that you don't care. I am just a chess piece. In the company for you to move me around and for you to squeeze me dry. Hmm.

So it's that whole idea that the transformation, if it's more people-centric to start with, it's going to be more successful because we've put people at the heart of where it is we want to go, as opposed to trying to get to where we want to go and thinking of the people in that equation as secondary.

Exactly. They, they are the ones that is gonna get you where you want to go.

So it's very interesting that when we get into that whole idea of transformational change, whether it be culture change or business change or organizational change, whatever it might be, I think you're right. Putting people at the core of the change is, is absolutely critical. And I wonder, how do you balance, again, back, I suppose, back to that word balance, that combination of top-down change and that bottom-up change, because I always kind of, in my head, I always think that organizations who try and do that top-down change only, we're now changing you, it's never going to be that successful as if you say to people on the ground, well, here's the direction that we're going in, here's our vision, here's our purpose, here's our big objectives and our strategies for the next 5 years. What do you think we need to do? And what are some of the things that you can change? And I think I remember it was Peter Senge, the American author, that said, people don't mind change, they just don't like being changed. And for me, that, that quote very much talks to this idea of top-down and bottom-up. What are your views on that?

I fully agree in how you describe it. It's— and that combination of top-down and bottom-up change that you mentioned, the top, the senior leaders, they are here to give the clarity of the vision, of the direction of the travel. What are the key objectives, the priorities, how resource needs to be allocated? And they are the ultimate owners or the captain that is steering the ship. You won't be able to achieve the change if you don't focus on the bottom-up approach as well. Each of them plays its own unique role. Because the bottom-up change is where you're going to get the engagement, it's going to get the ownership. You're going to get people involved in telling you, I get it, I get the vision, this is how we're going to do it and how we can do it quicker, or how we're going to do it in the unique role that this company is in. You're going to get the diverse perspective that is needed. You're going to get the people who are actually doing the work for you who have more experience and more tailored knowledge of the realities of that change, telling you this is how it's going to get done, this is the best way to do it, this is how we can innovate and solve it for you. You need both. If it's all about top-down, you're going to get a very passive and complacent company because you are now need to spoon-feed them everything. And who likes to be spoon-fed after you grow out from it?

Nobody, probably, I suspect. Absolutely nobody. And it's an interesting point that I think there's a couple of things that strike me, is that that top-down change, when it's being done to people from a position which is maybe, let's unkindly call it the ivory tower, or the top of the skyscraper, or some faraway executive office, where they're not on the ground, but where they're perhaps making the decisions for what they believe are the best reasons with the information that they have. But the information that they have doesn't take into account the realities of what it's like for people doing that role every day on the ground. So, I think from that perspective, you know, just listening to people and giving them some of the accountability and autonomy to make change is very, very powerful.

It is. It is so powerful because they're gonna tell you they're going to point out the gaps in your thinking. So even at its core, the strategy, the direction, the purpose— if you don't invite conversation from the rest of the company to say, to question you, why is this the purpose? Why is this our strategy? This is my reality. This is what I see on a day-to-day it is— there's no alignment here. That's key, because to your point, they might be stuck in this ivory tower, they might be stuck having conversation at a really strategic and high level, but there might be a disconnect that they didn't know is happening. And you need your employees, your people that's doing the work, to tell you, hey, there's a disconnect. It's either we need to shift direction Or we need to understand, are we heading in the right direction in the first place?

And it's interesting because I think those types of conversations take a very specific type of leader to have, don't they? What are some of the leadership skills and capabilities people are going to need to have to be having those conversations, to be leading like that, do you think?

The word that pops into my mind is vulnerability. Being able to be vulnerable, because it, it is such an exposing conversation for that leader. Because in a way, if you look at it from this perspective, those senior leaders, they are hired to design the strategy, to deliver the strategy, to execute the strategy. And here I am putting all my cards on the table, letting my people, the people that I'm supposed to be leading, poke holes in it, to constructively criticize it, to say these are the things that you might not have thought about that you need to think about. It is a very vulnerable position. So having a leader to be able to hold that space, to have to have trust in their people and to elicit trust by and having an open, constructive debate. I think that's key.

But of course, those conversations build trust, don't they? So the outcome of those types of conversations, the outcome of being a more vulnerable leader, of saying, I don't have all the answers, that builds trust in relationships, right?

Exactly, exactly. And you need the leader to offer the olive branch.

Do you think there's a point in the work that you've done over the years, Lily? Is there a point or have you seen a point at which leaders are maybe being too vulnerable? They're maybe saying too often, "I don't know the answer to this. What do you think? I don't know the answer to this. What do you think?" Because people from their leaders still want to know that that captain of the ship, as you described it earlier on, has the steering wheel. Or whatever you call it on a ship, rudder, has the rudder and is able to steer the ship and does know where we're going. So is there a risk that they lose, people lose faith in them if they say too much? I don't know where I'm going. And where does that balance lie, do you think?

I think that's a really interesting point that you have picked up there. From my experience and how I work with people, being vulnerable is not always about saying I don't know. Or that, or in a way, that's not vulnerability. In a way, that's a bit of a defensiveness and evasion. I don't know, it's not my problem, you come and tell me what the solution is. To me, what I see vulnerability in having those conversations is, in a way, this is what I know, this is what I think I don't know, or that I'm unsure about, that I would love some clarity. What are some of the things that I don't know that I don't know that I need you to tell me and fill in the gap for me? And then, this is the problem, and this is the solution that I'm looking to get your insight on. That is the conversation the leaders need to be having. It's not about, I don't know, because that's not helpful to anyone.

No. So it's more about, I've got, I've, I've, I've got most of the answer. 'But actually, I need your support to help me to—' What you just said there, the unknown unknowns. What do I not know what I don't know? Um, that, that, that insight can be, can be very useful and very powerful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

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If we've got people going off, we've— we work in an organization of We're working with somebody at the moment, they've got 9,000 employees across the country. And we're saying, okay, well, we need to get some bottom-up change happening. We want to involve people in the change. How do organizations create the environment in which everyone's creating change that's all pulling in the same direction? Because in my head, right now, I've got a kind of a Laurel and Hardy sketch of them speeded up running all over the place. Not really doing anything, not really achieving anything, but just running around, getting really tired, being really busy. How do you make sure that doesn't happen? Where it's much more like maybe a rowing race in the Olympics, to use that analogy, where all the boats are pointing in the same direction, where we know what the lines are, where we know all the things that we need to do along the way, and that everyone has the skills and capability to be able to do that. How do organizations set up that kind of environment? What are some of the big building blocks that need to be in place?

I would say there's two key things that needs clarity here. One is more of the structural element, another one is more of the behavior element. So let me talk about the structural element first. The key is alignment. The alignment from the purpose, the mission, to the business outcome, to the values, to performance and objective. There needs to be a clear alignment and clarity on how different individual, different teams, what they are doing, they can have that clear line of sight. Is this— is how I'm contributing to the change, to the outcomes? And in return, those are contributing to the company living its purpose and meeting its purpose and realizing the purpose. So the alignment and having the structure there to create the alignment The other one is the behavior element. It's the cross-functional collaboration and teamwork. And usually this can be achieved by understanding who, who will be the key agents across the company that will be able to foster and encourage and play a more proactive role to ensure those touch points are, are in place, conversation are being held to make sure that we are all rowing in the same direction. So who are the connectors that you can be working with that's going to connect all the co-organizations together? Because the thing is, that is so hard, that is so difficult to, to achieve, because many companies are set up in its own functional silos. It encourages empire building, you know. My team is performing the best against, over XY, another team. So you really need to have the people and the behaviors to drive those cross-functional collaboration, to drive the right discussion, to try the right involvement from all of the right people to ensure you're heading in the correct direction.

And as a wraparound, what role does communications then play in all of that, around that alignment piece, around that behaviors piece? What, what's the role for for internal comms in an organization? So important.

If you have internal comms team, they play a crucial role in alignment, in clarity, in collaboration. They need to be involved from the get-go in helping to translate and make sense and translate all the strategic words to something that even the most junior people can understand. So, ah, You know, when I talk— when, um, the CEO talk about a 10% in market share, I get why we're aiming for a 10% in market share, other than, you know, increasing our revenue or achieving market dominance. Internal comms plays a role in helping to bridge that gap, in understanding what those, in a way, strategy mumbo jumbo actually makes sense to me as I need to do day in, day out my job. It also fosters— and internal comms have a really crucial role in making sure that there are different forums and different formats in how things are cascaded upwards and downwards or sideways. They hold a crucial role in making sure that they know what question is being asked or what lack of clarity that people have, that they need leadership to make sure that the right message is being cascaded, or the right answer is being answered, or right question is being answered.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that— I think what's really interesting, and it's funny you should touch on cascade there, I was literally having a conversation yesterday about cascade, and I've I like it to a point because it allows leaders to make that strategy, that strategy mumbo jumbo, as you called it, their own. They can own it. They can then explain to their teams, well, what the CEO said yesterday in that meeting that she ran, this is what it means for our team. This is the impact that we'll have. They can actually translate it and they can contextualize it for their teams specifically. I think always the challenge of the cascade is that as it goes down, if you do a true cascade from CEO to XCO to XCO minus 1 to XCO minus 2 to XCO minus 3 to all the staff in the organization, it gets a bit warped each time somebody hears it. And then each time somebody says it, and then the next person hears it and then says it. And it ends up sometimes I think being a bit of a shadow of its former self by the time it actually gets to the frontline. How can you avoid that happening?

Yeah, existing structures and systems are often the key blocker in transparency or in cascading information, both upwards and downward, because it gets through so many filters. One way that you can immediately, um, address it, because, you know, changing structure and system takes time, One way that you can be immediate about this, it's in all of your communication, in whatever format and in whatever style, there needs to be clear alignment and link to what the CEO has said or to what the strategy is. So that it's not about, okay, you know, You know what the CEO said yesterday? Okay, this is what it means. You need to do XYZ. You're just telling half the story. The conversation needs to be this. For example, the CEO said we're gonna do, uh, aim for 10% of market share increase. That 10%, this means that our department needs to focus on this to support that, um, trend. To support that journey, which means that our team needs to focus on X, which is going to help the department, and then which means you need to do XYZ to support the team that will support the department that will support that vision of the 10% market increase. So making sure that you're always referencing and helping them to say that this is that line of sight For that.

Yeah, it's interesting because the term that I use, I was joking yesterday with a client that if I had a pound for every time I said the term link and label, I'd be literally on a Bahamian beach right now. But that is what you've just described. How do leaders link and label their messages back to the overall corporate message? It's so, so important. Just continuing in the vein of that kind of bottom-up change, And just thinking about that a little bit more, there's a huge amount of empowerment needed. There's a huge amount of autonomy needed. There's a huge amount of accountability needed because empowerment's a one-way street. I can empower you, but if you're not then holding yourself accountable, if I'm not holding you accountable, then the empowerment is kind of an empty vessel. So why in your mind are those things so important when it comes to driving change in organizations?

Where do I start? Like, the list of benefits, uh, does not stop. I would say, first of all, autonomy, empowerment— to your point, it drives accountability, it drives ownership— as a start, because it gives everyone feeling like they have a stake in the outcomes, that they have an actual role to play in realizing the change. And having that investment, that personal investment, naturally would make you to strive and do better and perform and aim for a higher standard and driving that high performance we were talking about earlier. It will increase their motivation because they feel invested in it. It's like, oh, I want to see this through, I want to make this— make sure that it's a success. And that motivation would give them engagement, would make sure that they are focused on driving and making it successful. And having that autonomy, having the discretion and authority to, to decide what and how they need to deliver to realize that change, it encouraged creativity, it encouraged innovation because they will have room to explore, What are the different ideas? How can we experiment with different approaches? How can we take some calculated risks to get there quicker, to get there better, or to kind of even deliver beyond what we thought we can deliver? If I need to go on, there's also personal benefit in building trust and confidence because it's a signal that my leaders are trusting me to just get on and do it. And in return, I trust them. It also increased their confidence because, oh, they see something in me, they trust me to deliver. You, you increase your own confidence, you increase your own morale, which leads to higher job satisfaction as well and willingness to take on more challenge. So the cycle just continues. So the benefit is endless.

And of course, and I completely agree with everything you've just said, but of course in that empowered world, when you talk about innovation and new ideas and trying new things, of course, if it's being done really well, it invites a level of failure, of things going wrong because we're trying things and actually, oh, that didn't work quite so well. That failed. So we're going to go back and try it a different way. I'm not sure that that lots of organizations have particularly psychologically safe cultures in which it's okay to fail. What are your thoughts on that?

What are you seeing? Before I answer that question, I think it's quite interesting to point out that every day we fail at something. It might be a minor failure that we instantly figure out how to pivot and adapt that you don't even realize is a failure, but it's a failure. But when we talk about failure in this context, we always focus on the big failure. And those kind of failures, of course, it's going to be scary. Of course, you know, the safety— the feeling of safety is going to feel very, um, tenacious at best because there's no recognition that actually, in my day-to-day, in my weekly business as usual, in doing my work, I had failed so many times and no one said anything. No one kind of called me out. No one kind of punished me for it. That you seem to kind of blank out that side of failure and you just only want to focus on the big change. And My point is that lack of, um, awareness and communication or discussion about, you know what, I tried this thing this week, feel really bad, but I managed to recover, and this is what I learned from it. That conversation that you have with your team in your company, that will help with with safety, with trust, and recognition that actually, it's not really a safety issue or a trust issue. It's just we don't talk about it enough.

Yeah, interesting. And I think a lot of that's born out of— and in fact, a lot of what you've spoken about, Lily, for the past 30 minutes or so is around transparency, you know, being more open, being more transparent, being more honest. So I wonder, from a transparency perspective, what can leaders do to be more transparent with teams and with individuals in their teams? And what's getting in the way of them doing that?

I would say two things that's getting in the way. The first one is the proactiveness and the number of times you need to repeat the same key message in different ways so that everyone gets it. I think that's the first one. The mistake that I, I've seen often, it's if a senior leader said it once or twice or even 3 times, it's like that's this expectation that, yep, I have said it 3 times, they should get it now. But have you asked them, do you understand what I'm saying? Can you visualize what is this going to change? How would this impact your day-to-day? Having that 2-way communication, are you encouraged to, uh, the question that's being asked back on what you're saying to ensure that's that understanding? Because you have a diverse set of employees that is going to receive and translate and digest information very differently. And back to the important role that internal communications play in making sure that there is that consistent reinforcement of the message in different formats so everyone are able to kind of digest and understand. The second one that I think is not done enough or not done correctly most of the time to promote transparency is explaining the decision-making process. What I mean about explaining a decision-making process— explain the rationale on how you have gotten to that decision. So oftentimes what, what people do is when explaining the decision is, you know, they'll start with, thank you so much for everyone who contributed or have given their feedback. I heard from X team, Y team, ABC team, and then this is the decision that I've been with. You have not actually explained the rationale behind it. Why? The why. Explain the rationale. It's I have spoken to John who have told me this. I have looked at this data that I've gotten from, uh, X team. I have, um, spoke to Lisa who have given me this perspective. This is all the information that I've given, and assessing it against the business priorities, our business risk appetite, I have decided to do take this decision because this is the best decision that we can go forward with based on what we know. That is explaining the rationale behind the decision because that will invite another level of discussion on, wait a minute, I think you have missed out, um, XYZ again that actually plays a crucial role in your decision. And I think it's about kind of going down a deeper layer in kind of talking, telling people your thought process. That does not happen often enough.

Yeah, very interesting. Lily, I suspect that with, with enough time, like a week, you and I could just keep talking about this stuff forever. Unfortunately, we're out of time. But listen, I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much. Before we go, if people want to get in touch with you, where can they find out more about you, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, you can either find me on LinkedIn, Lily Wei, you can find me there, or come and check out my website, LilyWeiCoaching.com.

Brilliant stuff, Lily. I've loved the conversation today.

Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thank you for the invitation.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.