Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Exploring the A-Z of Management | with Bev Kaye

Foreign. Welcome. It is January 2013, 2021 and the world has gone crazy. As my next guest just said to me a few minutes ago, my world, my little world, is doing just fine. My big world is insane. And many of us feel that way. Whether you're in the US looking at politics and you are in the world looking at the pandemic, it can feel a bit crazy. So I want to bring it back down to earth and we want to explore a topic that I think is timeless. It's a fantastic topic. It affects nearly all of us, if not all of us, and that is on management and leadership. We're going to be talking about how you got to love him or you will lose him. I want to explore the A to Z of management here on the show today. Quick recap to those of you who perhaps might be first time listeners. The Shortlist is a weekly show that goes out live on LinkedIn and YouTube, is available as a podcast on Apple and Spotify or wherever you find your podcast. And you can find more about the show@socialtalent.com the shortlist where you'll find the list of all our previous episodes and the lineup of our future guests who are joining us over the coming weeks. So do join us there if you're subscribing. If you're listening to us on podcast, please do subscribe. If you're watching live, I'm going to ask you to join the conversation as we go on for the next 45 minutes, minutes or so. We always welcome our live listeners. You're great. You give us great questions for our guests and comments. We love to call them out and involve our guests in answering them. So please do so today as well. So career progression, I guess for many of us, if you've progressed in any way through your career, typically we think of career progression as an upward strategy. You know, how do we get up, grow to have our own team, perhaps be the boss, manage. And that's typically how we see progression, that it's all about going upwards and this isn't necessarily the only way. And our guest today is going to explore this topic with us because increasingly we read about how different generations increasingly want more responsibility, they want more challenges. And traditional managers, let's say, and leaders might be feeling like there aren't enough promotions to go around, there aren't enough managerial positions to go around. And I think that is an outdated way of, of looking at progression and opportunity. But as we've seen with the Pandemic, the world of management and leadership has been turned upside down and it's really shone a light in the last 10 months on good leadership and poor leadership. And managers are having to really kind of look inside themselves and ask what do I need to do to succeed? Because many bad managers, as described perhaps by their teams, don't want to be a bad manager. I guess most of them don't want to be. They just don't necessarily know what the difference in good and bad looks like. And I want to try and dig into that with our guest today. And our guest is a fantastic guest who's coming back for the second time in the show. Absolutely thrilled to have her. She's joining us from the west coast of the US this morning and it is the fabulous Dr. Bev Kay. And Beverly has written many books on the topic. I first saw her speak a couple of years ago in Philadelphia talking about leadership and she blew me away with just insightful, kind of call them commonsensical approaches to leadership that are timeless, I think. And we can all listen to and learn from Bev. Good morning and welcome back to Social Talent. We have new content going live with bev K tomorrow. That is Thursday the 14th of January. For any of you with the Social Talent license, you're going to be able to explore some brand new leadership content and really get into the classes that Bev teaches. But for those of you who don't, and for those of you listening today, we're going to give you a smattering of that as Bev shares that wisdom. Good morning Bev. How's life going for you on the west coast of the U.S. how are you feeling today?

Well, just turned on the television and la where I am is going Covid crazy. The the hospitals, the ambulances are waiting in front of the hospitals and it is nuts. So I am not leaving this house or this room in my house.

I hope that's the same for for all of our listeners and audience. You know we're most of us are have stay at home orders just as the right thing to do. Like I'm joining you from Ireland which is officially we won something. We're the we're the worst country in the world for Covid cases. Yes, we won the prize this week.

We've been smuggling city in the world so.

A good joining of like minded people stay indoors. Listen to the shortlist. That's what it's all about. Bev, I'm keen to get started and we're going to get stuck straight into the news this week as I'm keen to get your Opinions on a couple of articles. Let's go with some news now. So first up, I really, really enjoyed actually reading this one here. It's from Forbes this week and they published a post called Leaders versus Managers in the Pandemic Era Workplace. For those of you listening or haven't seen this, give a Google to the Forbes article leaders versus Managers in the Pandemic Era Workplace. And it's written by a woman called Eisha White who is a chro of a large union based in the US as well. I know, I thought this was quite insightful as quite a deep post and it explores something that I'm I have a personal interest in this definition and the difference in language and a lot of people aren't as fussed about these differences. What is the difference in leader and a manager? They're the same to you. Bev, before we dig into the article, what what is your opinion? Before you even read this article, what has been your opinion, if anything, on the difference between those words, a leader and a manager? Is there a difference?

You know, I know everybody says there is and the difference they say there is is that a leader looks broadly and a manager looks at what's in front of them. And I think nowadays every manager has to be a leader, has to lead people, has to be the example that people want to follow. And maybe a leader might look broader. But nowadays I think even managers have no choice but to look broadly. And in the love of book we argued and argued, my co author and I do we use the word leader or the word manager. And in love we went with manager because we wanted to talk to the person who manages directly, other people. But you know, I personally have a problem with the separation of the words because of that, I think every leader manages and I think every manager leads. So that's just the Bevke way of looking at it.

I love that. And you're referring obviously to your best selling book, Love or Maloose Them. And if you haven't already downloaded it on your Kindle or bought the book, I thoroughly recommend it's a great read.

You can't buy it yet until another week.

Ah, the new edition is coming out, Drew. In another week, a week or two. That's brilliant. But I'm sure people can reserve a copy. Beth.

Oh they can. And yes they can. Yes.

And it's interesting because I had this kind of conversation a couple of years ago with our team here when we talked about, you know, building more content for what is traditionally called hiring managers. Right. And you know we had a, we had a great guest on last week, Joanna Fendel from Flex who spoke about a really again similar interesting topic on the difference between performance and potential. And if I was going to contrast two words as well, because we're talking about, we were talking about two words and what they meant and how they were different last week. This week we're starting with two words and are they different as well? I think it's the same. You know, manager certainly is described that Forbes article is more focused on performance, get the job done, meet requirements. Whereas I think what they're saying is a leader, it goes well above that. And I think that was the argument Joanna was making in terms of the framing of performance versus potential. Potential is, you know, somebody goes the extra mile, but it's also, it can have to take that argument. Someone with potential is someone we make a manager make a leader. And so I guess you probably want to, to your point, see both attributes. You need performance, but you also need to bring something else and try and you know, bring your team up, as the article argued, develop them more, you know, expand their horizons and support them. One thing that I really like, Bev, and this is probably more pertinent to this year maybe was the piece that the article mentioned around. Great leaders have an awareness of the kind of the bigger macro environment of, of their team. They, they, they kind of have a sense of what's going on beyond the work. You know, they want to know how is the person coping, how are they dealing with things, what's going on, their life. They actually are the type of person who realize that sometimes it's more important to put time into, you know, non work things, just getting together, having a chat, seeing how people are because that in the long run helps their team deliver more. I think that was a nice kind of piece of insight I really did like from the article. What do you think?

Yeah, I agree. And again, I think everybody is responsible for potential. Like maybe managers even more so maybe that I never thought about this way. But you know, a manager is the face of the organization to the individual. And if I put my people in a little box like career wise, if they can't see themselves as having a future in the organization in my current world, but I mean in the organization as a whole and as a manager, the thing that will kill potential is if I hoard my talent and if I keep them too close to me. I think we want talent in the organization and not everybody will stay. But if a manager holds on too tightly, they could lose that Individual for the sake of the whole organization.

I think it's an excellent point. It brings us a nice segue perhaps to our second article, our second news article, which comes from the Be the Business blog. And it talks about a look at the management style changes made by successful business leaders. And this article primarily focused on small business leaders, don't get me wrong, but its main argument is that we all have a style and great managers can adapt that style. Do you think that style and what you mentioned about holding on too much, do they correlate? Are there certain styles that lend themselves to holding on and not thinking of the interests of the employee and developing them for the greater need of the company? Is that a thing you come across in your experience and what is your general kind of opinion on management styles and how they can evolve?

You know, that style feels like the old command and control, like I'll tell you what to do, I'll tell you how to do it. And it is a micromanagement style. And I think now what all the management books, leadership books are saying is that you have to treat each individual as an individual. It can't be command and control across the board. You have to understand what makes each individual tick and we all tick differently. But if, if I think my manager is interested in me at the human being me and, and what I'm going through now and what my desires are for the future, I'm going to stay pretty loyal to that manager. And if that manager opens a new door for me and I go through it somewhere else in the organization, I'm going to remember that that manager. It's like I say, let your people grow, not just let your people go. And I'll remember.

I think it's a really interesting point in terms of that traditional command and control old style approach. Bev. Right. I was listening to a piece recently, there's a podcast that was talking about management styles and it talked about, you know, what is typically considered a male management style, which is the command and control type. Right. Historically. And then it contrasts that and it uses gender perhaps incorrectly with maybe more female management styles, which the original author was saying is lends itself to more the love and stuff. And the author of the, that was on the podcast was saying, hang on a second. There's lots of examples where you see it across genders. It isn't a gender thing. And I have the great argument was looking at, let's say army generals. There's many army generals who obviously do the command and control. It's a very military type approach. But it talked like leaders like Colin Powell and others who I think were much more in the camp of the love camp, who genuinely took an interest in their people and prioritized those things. So even in the military, where you might, you know, think there's a leadership style that suits the military, you know, there's tons of examples of great military leaders who, who have adopted the style that you were probably more. More suggest we should, which is more along the lines of the book of Love. Merlos. And would that be fair to say?

Yes. Yes. In fact, let me talk about that word love. And so the book, this is the sixth edition that's coming out. The book has been around for 20 years. And in 1999, when the first one came out and we talked with our publisher and we said we want the title to say love them or lose them. He said, as a good publisher would, well, do you think in a bookstore a guy would walk in and pull a book with love in the title? And we said, it has to be that word because that one word encompasses all any other word we could name. You know, it encompasses be kind. It encompasses understand. It encompasses care about. It even encompasses say hello in the morning, say how are you doing? All of that. And we say in the book it is about love. Even if you don't use that word, substitute any other word but punchline. It is care about them, talk to them, listen to them, look into their eyes, even on a screen. And in a time of COVID it's. It's saying, how are you doing? And really meaning it and waiting for the answer. And I'm going to send you Johnny, I don't know where you'll put it out, but 26 ways to say how are you doing? So that any to a remote employee. So any busy manager who says, I don't even know how to. How to ask that. So we give you 26 different ways to say how are you doing? Because that's what you have to do is inquire into them as individuals.

But tell me this, Bev, right? You know, my opinion would be that leaders and managers aren't. They're not. They're not afraid of asking the question. They're afraid of the answer, Right? Because they're not sure what will come back. And they maybe don't have the confidence as to what to do with different answers. Like, what is your experience having talked to so many leaders and researched this topic? Bev, what typically comes back and what do you do with some of the different. You can give Me some examples of the categories of answers you might get and then what role should a leader play in trying to help that? Or do you have general guidelines on, you know, how to deal with some of the perhaps more difficult responses you might get?

Right. You know, I'll go to another book on stay interviews and we talk about it in Loveem, but we wrote a whole book about the stay interview and the stay interview says ask your people what you can do to keep them on your team, not at the exit interview when it's usually too late. And the big fear of managers around saying what can I do to hang on to you because you're really important to me is what if the person comes back and names something that I can't deliver? Then the conversation's over. Like what if the person says a raise that would mean so much to me and you can't give it? I say tell the truth, say I cannot deliver on that now, but I'll try. But I know right now I'm not going to be able to. So tell me what else matters because I want to find something I can do within my control to keep you on my team. And I promise every manager globally listening to this that if you ask what else three times, you will get something that you can control and if not, you can send me hate email. But it really is, I can't do that. But I want to do something and it's probably something, I don't know, you know what?

But it's, it's such simple advice. But you're so right. You know, I think it's the fear of conflict as people might, might see it. And I don't know what to do. But if you think about it, and to your point, if you're just transparent, transparency is better because the alternative is that they never tell you what they want. You can never clarify that for them. So they have a, an expectation that they could get a pay rise. Then they're frustrated that you aren't giving them one because you've never told them you can't. You know, that's the alternative, I think. But I just want to stop for a couple of comments here. By the way, we've got some listeners who are joining us and just have some good comments on a readout for your bev. So Sinning Chan is saying great managers in her experience advocate for their direct reports, whether that's keeping them informed about the current org priorities, providing career opportunities in or outside the org, or taking an interest in their personal lives. You know, I think that's a really good point.

I love it. I absolutely.

I mean another great one.

They advocate behind closed doors. They don't advocate to show off. Yes, they. And they see all the opportunities to advocate and there are many.

We have another great one here from Vashali Singh Vishali is saying every individual is different, hence understanding their personality with how to ensure how to managers how to manage work more efficiently. That's. That's so true. So true.

Absolutely. And, and I in love. We give 26 ways to show different ways to show how much you care. And you know, Johnny, you said the, the, the A is for ask and it's ask your people, you know, what they need, what they want. And the word ask is true for the individual too because the individual can't say guess what I want. The individual has to say, here's what's important to me. You know, if I could take Fridays off, I would be able to do blah blah, blah with my kids or whatever. Ask. And for the manager it's ask. So that's so easy and yet so hard.

Talk to me about the lose part, Bev. Right. So we talked about the importance of love or whatever words someone was more comfortable using replacing with that empathy, understanding, etc. But losing them, you know, it remind us of the impact of losing a team member and, and the reasons why people typically leave.

I, I'm just writing down a note to myself to remember. I, I think that lose does not mean lose them to your unit. It's talking about if you lose them, lose them to your entity, to your enterprise, help them move somewhere else. Give them what I call mobility, mobility talent mobility within your enterprise. And yes, occasionally you will lose them to a competitor. Occasionally you will. And then it's how you manage the losing conversation. Like I believe there are two things there are elegant exits and respectful returns. And if you use lose them elegantly meaning my door is always open, let me know how you're doing, you can always come back, etc. They might. And they might also tell friends how elegantly you let them go. So that's all part of the equation.

You're so right there. It's something that, you know, I wish I was better at. I try my best. I should do more, which is, you know, making sure that you, you recognize that you've had a great bond with somebody for whatever many years they worked with you and the fact that they want to leave your team or your business, it doesn't mean that you're, you know, you're not friends anymore. And it's. It's being respectful of the human being. You know, it's like they're still a great person, and they just aren't a great person in your team anymore. But losing them to your business, that's a really important one, because this is a problem for a lot of leaders. You know, they may think the person is happy in the company, and, you know, the best opportunity for that person is to perhaps explore a new team. They want to go into another role, but they feel they have almost the right to block that. How often does that happen, Bev? And how do you handle an issue where you really feel you can't lose them from your team? But that person doesn't want to leave the company, but they do want to work in a different team because they need to expand and explore their horizons.

You know, that is. And I've been talking to colleagues, the subject of hoarding your talent, keeping them too close is a tough one because maybe it's a systemic issue. In other words, are organizations rewarding managers who move their talent around? Are they saying good on you? Are they compensating for managers who grow talent, grow them for other places in the organization. And if we ignore that manager, like the talent focused manager, and we don't say, I see that four people who reported to you in the last two years moved elsewhere inside our entity, good on you. And here's a check would be nice, but at least the good on you. And when managers feel they lose out, like, I can't meet my quarterly goals, if so and so goes, well, then do everything you can to keep them with you and let them know that, you know, they'd like to move. And maybe that can happen down the line, but it's hoarding. It's hoarding.

It is. And I'm glad you spent a huge chunk of your career trying to advocate for this. This approach that isn't just about the only way is up as. As you've spoken about that there are alternatives and other ways to provide opportunities. We had Jerry Crispin on the show just before Christmas, and Jerry was talking about. Jerry's great. I love Jerry, and he's so full of wisdom. And he was talking about slight digression. He was talking about a new NASDAQ requirement that's come in for NASDAQ quota companies, an SEC requirement for NASDAQ quota companies that they'll have to start publishing board diversity information this year. But as a side to that, Jerry was arguing that that actually comes from an ISO document that was published in 2019 that contains much more than diversity metrics. It requires or suggest that business should be publishing other factors. And of the four recruiting pieces of information it suggests should be made public by public companies, two of them relate to internal mobility. And it argues that companies should be both showing the percentage of roles that were filled internally and the percentage of called critical roles that were filled internally. And if that comes to fruition, if the SEC begin enforcing that for all coded companies over the next few years, it might spur on a real genuine movement in this direction where, you know, you have the board's goals aligned with the talent team's goals to, you know, incentivize us to have a better number, a better score, if you like, which would be a good thing. Like it, you know, to be able to kind of from the board level go, we need our mobility number to be better. You know, what are we doing to try and each leader, each manager in the business, what are you doing to try and drive that mobility number up? That's a promising future if it comes to fruition, is it not?

Right. Right. You know, it's, it's like, I think as a parent, wanting the best for your kids, even if they don't go in the direction you want them to go. And I learned that from raising my own wonderful daughter. And she went in a very different direction than I would have wanted for her. And, you know, I learned kind of the hard way and let, let your people go. Let your kids go. You know, it's.

Another good quote from Magdalena Kozlowska, who said elegant goodbyes are very important to get other great talents on board.

Yes.

The recruitment world is small. And she says, when I'm hearing the candidate kind of heard from someone else who's not working for a company anymore, but they are recommending, recommending us, my heart is melting. And I think that's, that's, that's the upside.

I love that. I love that. Yes, yes, yes. And we're not teaching managers. What is an elegant goodbye look like?

Yeah.

You know, maybe one teeny hint is tell that person, I'd love to hear from you. Yeah, I'd love to hear from you if I heard that, you know, I'm leaving and he wants to hear from me or she. Like, I'd be touched.

It is brilliant. On the subject of language, we've got a couple of comments here on just the language you use in your book to go back to that bear for a second and sinning. Channing is saying, is it possible that the term losing may convey a false assumption that managers own people in the first place. But then we have Magdalena's come back with her opinion before I get yours, Bev, to say in her opinion, losing is adequate here because people are usually leaving because of their manager, not because of their company. So what are your thoughts on those two. Those two comments?

You know, here's how we 20 years ago, when we wrote the first edition, the McKinsey had put out the big war on talent report. And they said, people don't leave organizations, they do leave managers. And all of us nodded, but no one said to the manager, here's what you do, here's how you keep your people. So my. My co author and I were determined to write a book on the how. And I'll tell you what we always laugh about, she and I, is that we literally, we did research, we did interviews, we did all of that and we wrote what we thought was a great book. We wrote that book twice, and it bored us. So he said, how can we rewrite it so that it's an easy thing for managers? And I remember saying to her one day I had a dream that we organized the book according to the Alphabet. And we pasted the Alphabet around our A hotel room and we said, okay, what could the A be? What could the B be? We had trouble with the X, we had trouble with the Z. But we were able to say, the essence of ask is, you know, B is for buck. We said, the buck stops with you, you know. Yeah. Not on everything, but on more than you think. So I forgot what your question was. We organized the book that way so that a manager could open to any letter and get an idea. Or a manager could show their employee the table of contents with the A to Z names and say, which one of these do you want more from me? Just pick three letters and tell me how I could do more of that.

And I think that's just a really simple approach. I found that with the best advice in the world. If it's complicated to remember or access, people won't use it. Whereas giving them a simple mnemonic is fantastic. It really works so well. So well.

All my work has mnemonics. It has poetry. It has. And some people say, oh, that's too cute for leaders. And I'm telling you, leaders are so busy, the easier we give them the idea, the more likely they'll do it.

Can I ask you about another word in the subtitle of the the Loving Book, which is good because I think, you know, we've been Talking about making sure your people stay. But, you know, sometimes you. You know, it's not about everybody staying. You know, it's. It is really. The good people talk to me about that word and how we can differentiate and what to do with perhaps the people who don't fall into that category. And how do you manage those?

Right. Well, let me flip it into those who do. And I would say expand what you think of as good. It's like in my consulting, often I'm invited to work with high potentials. Let's do this for the high pose. Let's do this for the top people. And I would always say, what about the massive middle? There's treasures out there that you're not looking at. So I want leaders to expand in their heads what good means. So it's really what's the good in everybody, you know, and maybe this employee is not in my good category because he's in the wrong job. Maybe a move somewhere else is where his good would shine. So I want managers to expand on that word in their heads. And let's get out of hos. And you know, I say for all the hi pose, there are five times as many popos, and popos are passed over and pissed off. And I'm sorry to say that on global television, but it's my best way to say there is gold in them there hills.

You know, I love that I've been a popo. I'm not afraid to admit that. I'm sure many of us listening live will. Are not even live will recognize that they've been a popo and they've been a hypo. And you kind of go, how is the same person a hypo in one role or one company and a popo in another? They're the same person.

Right, right, right. It's that environment. It's that context. It's the Am I doing what I have passion about?

Yeah.

You know, am I doing it because I do it differently when I love it than when I hate it or clarity?

Bev. Maybe it's just like I'm doing so many things, I don't know which one I should be doing or focusing on. Because my leader hasn't been so clear to me. She hasn't back to the communication issues, hasn't communicated. Communicated with me, hasn't articulated that this is her expectation. This is what I should be focusing on. So I just don't even know if I'm good or I'm doing so many things and getting no feedback that I just feel Deflated. Tell us some letters you have around engagement. What are your favorites that would, you know, think about engaging our employees that the popos we could turn into hypos.

You know, well, one is my other love is the C in the book is for career and that's how I started in my own work. That if I am not in a career doing work that matters to me and you know what I want to say to the audience. We always think about a skills match. Do I have these skills for this job? And I think more than well, skills are really important but values are important and interests are important because I could be in a job that demands my skills and I'm good at it. But I am bored silly using these skills. And now there are a lot of organizations trying to do better skill matches. And, and the big thing in the world of human behavior and human capital is can we name more skills and are technical people recognizing the importance of the soft skills. And so that's a major movement. But I think it's am I interested? And then do I value what I'm doing? And I think if those are missing a great skill match maybe isn't enough.

Yeah. You know, it's a great comment here from Sinning Chang. I like this. Reminds her of that TV show Undercover Boss where senior execs are surprised to discover high potential workers in low, lower level positions.

Yes.

Yeah. You know, the diamonds in the rough. I, I guess this is. Isn't this the job of a leader to spot this talent? The job of the chat as a leader isn't just to. To your point you could expand your definition of good. It isn't just to to have a list of hypos and work on them. Your job is to spot them to find them. And that doesn't that come from the conversations going back to that starting point? Having empathy doesn't start with the how are you? Isn't that how you try and get to the bottom of engagement and figuring out why they're not engaged and trying to get them back in and get the best out of them?

And it goes back to a is for ask. Ask them how are you doing? And do you like I ask people when the alarm goes off, do you want to press the snooze button or do you want to say I got so much I want to do and it will feed you health wise? The W in the book is for wellness and that's another big movement in human capital. And if I'm in work that I love, I'll tell you I'LL be healthier. I'll wake up in the morning happier. And so I put those things in the same box.

I spoke this morning to a good friend of mine who's been in her job six and a half years and she works in a very fast paced, tech oriented business and she said this Christmas, this holiday season, the whole business seemed to take three weeks off. They just shut down. That's never happened in their business. They've got a huge amount of business in Asia. They, they've, they've always just worked through, there's always somebody online, messaging, even you try and take the time off. It's always been busy. Said this year was the first time it ever happened and he said nothing, nothing, nothing went wrong. Things, you know, still worked fine. There was nothing missed by that three week of absence. And for everyone, the wellness, you know, boost they got from being able to just take time off because everyone took time off was huge. Do you think, do you think this legacy will stay with us, Bev? This legacy of the focus of wellness you've had in the last 10 months?

Oh, I hope so. But let me go back to the three weeks off. If that manager was following the A to Z's, the manager would ask what did you love most about your vacation? What did you do that you like, made you smile from ear to earth? It might be two minutes. Oh my gosh, he plays the violin and he had more time to, you know, any chance you have to learn more about that employee, I think is important. Three weeks is wonderful. If three weeks, case closed, back to work, ask. Anyway, I veered off your question.

No you didn't at all. I have another question though to ask you, Ben. It's opinion I'd love to get from you here. So a lot of, a lot of leaders and managers that I talk to still have a lot of individual contributor responsibilities. Right? There's kind of, to me, there's a spectrum. You've got a manager who's generally a manager. They don't have an individual output. They completely lead through their team and it's through the efforts of their team. As managers who still have a lot of stuff that is their job, they have an individual contributor role in the team and they manage the others, especially the small team or they're an early career manager. If you're in the kind of category of still having individual contributor responsibilities and managing, how much of your time should you focus? Is there even a rule of thumb of hey, you should still spend about this much of your time on understanding and Talking to your team versus doing stuff yourself. What's the right balance, do you think?

But I think if you spend time on the person, it will make your individual contributor responsibilities easier because you will know what you're doing that someone else could be doing and loving it and growing from that. Like, I'm a, I'm a manager, I've got a team and you know, I want to know. One of my people just showed me a scrapbook she made, you know, for her partner and it showed me what creative graphics. And I would never have known that, but I stopped and I looked at every page of this gift she's giving her partner and I, I saw, ooh, graphics. Oh, I could use you for that. And maybe that's, maybe the other word is notice. Notice things that maybe you haven't noticed before.

But it does start at the beginning, which is A. Which to me, if you take nothing else away from this, from Bev, the A to Z, the A is asked and that's really important right now. I'm going to ask not to bring on screen. Just for those of you watching the book is love them or lose them. I'd recommend you you you check it out at all good bookstores if still stores are open near you or find it online wherever you purchase books, Love or Malus. Getting good people to stay. The latest edition, the sixth edition will be at March 2, 2021. So hold on for that new edition. There's loads of new changes and, and updates that Bev and colleagues have put into that. So do check it out. Put your order in now, you'll have it by March 2nd and that's a really great read. And those of you who are social talent users, you've the benefit of Bev come into your platform tomorrow, that is Thursday the 14th of January. If you are listening to this live, you'll have lots of content in there. So do search for Bev by author. You'll find her new courses which take you through the A to Z. Bev, I'm going to ask you to, because we're at time, would you believe already, to move to one last piece of advice. You've got 26 letters of advice in your book, but perhaps can you sprinkle one more on us? A piece of advice you can leave our audience with to add to our shortlist of tips from our guests today. And I know you've done, you've given us one before, you've got so many in your books. But what would that be? What's on your mind today?

So here's what just popped the last question I answered. I think I said managers need to, to, to, to notice, you know, what's in front of them. And, and years ago I, I wrote something that said, in essence, here's what you have to do around notice. You have to recognize, you have to verbalize and you have to mobilize. Like I have to recognize, gee, Johnny is smarter than I ever thought. I got to use those smart, you know the field, Johnny, really well. We have to talk about your career. But, but I, so I recognize then I have to verbalize and I, Johnny, you know, have you thought about yourself as a big speaker in human capital and not just recruiting? So recognize, verbalize and mobilize. And you know, Johnny, I have somewhere that you should speak and I'm going to introduce you to the person you need to know to give a talk there. And so it's that simple. Recognize, notice it, verbalize, talk about it and mobilize. How can you make a connection for that person?

I love that. Recognize, verbalize and mobilize. I love that. That's really simple. We can all take that away. We can do that for somebody else. We can do that hopefully for one of our team, one of our colleagues or recognize, verbalize and mobilize. They're the ingredients of notice. Bev, it's been such a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. We're going to chat again later on because we have so much more to chat from. It's, it's been great having on the show and I will talk to you later and thank you to all of you for listening. Don't forget to check out Ben's book. Don't forget to check out our future episodes of the shortlist at socialtalent.com forward/the shortlist and come back next week. Next week's show. I, I'm really excited about as well. We've got a fantastic guest and it's a good friend of mine as well, John Vastilica. We've had John on before. Had great feedback from John. He is arguably the, the top presenter on the social talent platform because he just talks common sense and he's got great energy. And John is going to be sharing with us his five biggest lessons he learned from my from his smartest hiring managers. That is going to be next Wednesday, the 20th of January. It's a big day in the US 20th of January. We know it's inauguration day, but John's going to be joining us live from Seattle as well to give us his feedback on those five best kind of pieces of advice or tips he learned from those hiring managers. So do join us next week. We can't wait to have you back. Thanks for Bev. Still getting great feedback and comments from all the live listeners. Hope you've enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe on Spotify, on Apple, and if the bigger world outside is still crazy for you, don't forget you can focus on the smaller world closer to home and try and make it a safe, good place for you and your colleagues. Take care. See you next week.