Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: The engagement focused leader | with Dr. Beverly Kaye

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Welcome, welcome. Welcome to this week's the shortlist. It is March 3rd. Welcome to Spring. Spring is in the air here in the northern hemisphere. By God, we need it. We need to have some sort of view that things are getting better as we leave. We come to you from lockdown. I think all of us are still getting. Still stuck in lockdown, still getting quite pissed off at lockdown as well and wanting things to change. So hopefully there's some optimism. Hopefully the sun is in the air, the flowers are springing where you are, and you are feeling energetic. So today's show is how you gotta love them or you're going to lose them. Love them or lose them. Love them or lose them. What are we talking about? Your partner? Your best friend? No, we're talking about your team, your employees. We're talking today about the engagement for focused leader on this show. Are you new to the show? Quick reminder, if you're new to the show, this is a weekly show we broadcast live on LinkedIn and YouTube. Those of you listening live, we want your questions and comments, please join in. Those of you who are not listening live, you must be listening to our podcasts or watching a playback. We're a live show on YouTube and LinkedIn. We're also a podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you find your good podcasts. You can find more about the show, our upcoming lineup and our previous shows of 30 or 40 shows at this point by going to socialtown.com forward/the shortlist. And today's guest is coming back to us. She's a returning guest, but I'll tell you about her in just a second because in the last year, leadership has really come to the fore as a topic. And we're going to be talking today about leadership where whether you're a recruiting leader, whether you're a leader of sales, whether you're a leader of the organization, you run your own business, a leader of two people. But even if you're not, these are lessons that you can hold, hopefully learn when you are becoming a leader and even a better way to evaluate your own leader. So in this kind of newer world of work as it's emerging in 2020, you know, we are seeing how remote work, particularly in the lockdown environment, has really kind of driven high levels of uncertainty for folks out there, Right. And people are anxious. The anxiety levels are really, really high. And employees are really looking to their managers for guidance. And not just about how I do my work, but often about how I deal with all this stuff going on in my life. And we want to talk to you about what actions a great leader can take to keep her or his team engaged. I'm delighted to say. This week we're joined again by Dr. Beverly Kay, author, speaker, thought leader, fantastic person. And Bev is celebrating the launch of the sixth, yes, this sixth edition of her fantastic book entitled Love him or Elysem, which has just been released. You can find that on Amazon or any good bookshop that's open. And Bev is going to be taking us today through three clusters. If I'm not mistaken, Bev, that you've identified that engagement focus managers need to take on board, and they are development and growth, relationships and culture. And your advice, as you've had on the show before and as I've come to know over the last few years here, sage, worthy and deep in not just great experience, but actionable good practices that every leader should follow. And I'm looking forward to hearing more of it today. Bev, I wonder if you wouldn't mind starting by reintroducing yourself to some of our listeners who perhaps haven't had the absolute pleasure of hearing you on the show before and perhaps haven't invested in your books and understood a little bit more about the world you come from.

Okay, thank you. So I come from decades in the talent management arena, and I plan to stay till I can't talk anymore. And my work is in the area of career development, retention and engagement. And this particular the ideas in this book that I'm going to talk about first were published in 1999. So the book is 20 years old. And in the late 90s, McKinsey published something called the War for Talent. And there was a war going on for talent. I think there always was and there always will be. But they said, and everybody remembered this, people don't leave organizations. They, they do leave managers. And everyone caught that phrase. But where it was tough is we know that, but how do you do something? And for managers who haven't been given the how tos, that's what motivated us to write the book. And we struggled on how to write it to make a busy manager want to read it. And after several tries, we organized it according to the Alphabet. We literally sat in a hotel room and plastered the Alphabet on the wall and tried to say, what does our data tell us that could be A and B, et cetera. And Z was hard and X was hard, but we figured it out. So the whole Alphabet is mired in the many, many research approaches that we took, surveys and even interviewing people after they left an organization and saying, why did you really leave? So we were interested in why people stay, not why they go. So our surveys all said, what keeps you in your organization? And that's what we looked at to give us the data.

So, Ben, I'm dying to get into the three big kind of topics or pillars we're going to discuss today. We're going to do something different. We always take the news. But this week what we're going to do is we're going to spread the news over these three topics throughout the show. I think it's the best way to give a real focus on each of these. So I'm going to ask NA to play our jingle and we're going to get to our first news story and we're going to use that first news story to talk about the topic of development and growth. Over to you now. So in this first pillar, Bev, right on development and growth, what we did, we looked to an article that was published by Gallup back towards the end of January. And this article by Gallup by Rob DeSimone and Jennifer Robison, was entitled Three Employee Development Interventions for 2021. And the article was written from the perspective of we've just closed out 2020, people are making plans for 2021, and Gallup, in summary, are saying human development should be at the heart of initiatives to promote and optimize engagement and productivity. I'm going to guess you may have more experience than both of these authors put together, but talk to me about employee development and interventions in the context of the development and growth pillar. And maybe start by maybe referencing, if you don't mind this article, but then maybe expand a little bit about on that pillar, what does development and growth mean for you? And maybe some of the A to Z that you uncovered in your research on this.

So I loved reading the Gallup article. I love that it says human development should be at the heart of of initiatives to promote and optimize. And a couple things that I circled in that statement. One was the heart of the initiative to promote and optimize. And one of the career issues I have, and I've always had is with the word promote and the development equals promote. And I've tried every which way to say it's more than promote, which conjures up up. So I written a book several different ways, but it's always been titled up is not the Only Way. And I like, I feel like I'm singing it from rooftops and still trying to get organizations to hear it, but because talent mobility now is the word that's being used and it's big. So when Sharon and I finished the book, it was 26 chapters. We said, how are we going to teach it? Because we also are into helping people learn. And we divided the chapters into three clusters and here's just a quick peek at the development and growth chapter. So there it is, all of these words and they probably make sense to you and they're probably self explanatory, but what I'm going to do is just hit three. I'm going to hit careers, I'm going to hit opportunities. And in a way I've already hit goals. But come back to me, Niall. Careers. And you know, I want you to know there's an S on the end of the word careers because no longer do we have one career, we have many and those many, some of which we never dreamed of. You know, I went to school to be an elementary school teacher and I didn't like kids, but that was what I did. And through a series, a surprise series, I ended up building an organization and building a career in talent development. So the idea of multiple careers and knowing for every manager out there had a talk to your people about their careers. And if you've never had a manager of yours talk to you about your career, it's hard to talk to someone else. So that book has a great chapter and for any individual out there, it's not only your manager's job to say let's talk. It's your job too to have done some things, thinking and then say let's talk. And of course about more than one goal. And in the book we talk about having career leverage. And so for every manager out there who fears the career discussion, write the word L E V E R R and a little card in front of you and talk about lateral moves, enrichment moves, vertical moves, exploratory moves, things you can try gigs. L E V E. The first R is realignment. Maybe you put a brilliant engineer into a management job and you can see no, it doesn't excite them. Can they go back? And the last R is relocation, meaning maybe your organization and I fight for it to not be one, they want to leave. And now with talent mobility being so strong, I would send them into the organization first to look for what it is they really want before you let them go. And then opportunity. And I can talk about this in maybe two sentences. You're either opportunity minded or your opportunity blinded. And yes, I talk in riddles and poems and ways to make it memorable. I am opportunity minded to such a degree that I'm scattered because everything looks like an opportunity for me. Every elevator I step into is an opportunity for me. But being opportunity blinded means you shut down and you literally have blinders on. And when there's a reshuffle in your organization, your knee jerk is woe is me. Now what's going to happen instead of well, who are the new leaders, what can I do to let them know I'm here, etc. So I don't expect managers to do all of those, but I do expect them to say to an individual, which of these do you want me to do more more of? And that my friends, is a great way to start. And we will make sure that you have you can access a handout that names all of these. Definitely. So careers are critical. And Joni, I read some of your discussion questions and one of them grabbed me because, because you say why do you agree that focusing is an individual on individual strength is really good, right? That was one you thought up. And, and I thought yes, there's a strength movement. Know your strengths, Marcus Buckingham, etc But there is some research from the center for Creative Leadership. They have a book, I think it's titled the Perils of Strengths because if you concentrate only on your strengths and you take a strength to excess, it can get you and become your greatest weakness. One quick example is one of my strengths is that I'm really creative and I love thinking of new ways to do things. So I owned an organization, I was the CEO, we had a strategic plan and my leadership team had a hard time with me because I would always say let's do that, let's do that. And it's not part of the strategy. Beverly. So you could get too creative, which is what I, I do and still do. So, so those are, that's the essence of career. And Johnny, I wonder which I'm interviewing you now, which one, if you remember the whole constellation is your worst.

To bring that back up. And I'm going to call them out for our listeners who aren't viewing so right. Got careers, support them, support growth opportunities, mind them, mentor, be one link, create connections, hire fit is first goals, expand options, enrich, energize the job. So I look at those, I guess, you know, I, what I what I've I put focus on. So if I'm going to pick one that I in the last year tried to do more, I was mentoring and it's not something I knew much about more formally. Obviously I looked at my own team and tried to look at working with them. But we kind of did this when we went into Covid a year ago, Bev, March 2020. And we kind of had to say, listen, we got to pull back a bit. We don't have the resources. We anticipate. Maybe we'd have the resources to really fund the development of our team as much as possible. But we said, why don't we doing more on mentorship? And can we. Can we mentor folks who aren't in your team? And, you know, it's. It's. We're a year into this experiment and, you know, I think eight or ten of us took the role of mentor for somebody who wasn't in their team. And we've been working with those folks. And I tell you, it's. We've. We've met as mentors to share learnings about what's working for each of them. Because sometimes as a mentor, you run out of ideas and, you know, to say to somebody, be a mentor to Bev, they can't. You know, it's a responsibility that requires, dare I say, a job spec. And you need, you know, instruction on what does good mentorship look like. And we've shared that and I've learned from my colleagues and how they've mentored others and taken that feedback. And it's been a fantastic experience. Hopefully good for the people we've mentoring as well, just to kind of take a regular. And we, we in social talent do it on a weekly basis, weekly mentorship. And I've learned from. I've taken on a mentorship with, from. From our chairperson, and that's been really helpful as well. So I've been able to see what I need as a mentee and try to then think about what somebody I mentoring might, might get. So that's been the one that I probably chose a year ago, is the one I was weakest in not doing enough and worked on. But you might even bring it back to a point just to the, to the top of the point around. You said that people look at progression and upward mobility, and you mentioned, obviously the book up is not the only way. This resonated really well. I'll tell you a story, Bev. I had a conversation with a customer, and the customer was telling me how her team a year ago had signaled in an employee engagement survey that they wanted more career development opportunities. This leader listened to that signal and said we need to basically really invest in their training and education. And so she really kind of invested in their training and education and then resurveyed them a year later and they found that they hadn't changed their score on career development. She was stunned by this going, I put so much education and effort into them. So she started talking one on one with some of the team. And it turns out what they meant by career development was, guess what? Bigger solary, more job titles. And I just saw that how it was misinterpreted. And, you know, this was a leader saying, I don't have the ability to give them more job titles. Not everybody. I don't have the ability to give everyone a pay rise. So what do I do? And I put her onto your program, Bev, and said, you got to watch Bev's program on this. You got to listen to this. OPPA is not the only way. You got to look at the lever, lever principle. I said, you need to have those conversations, but you need to arm yourself with the right ability to have those conversations. And that lever framework is what I suggested she use because I said, you know, you're going to have an unhappy team otherwise. And she's got a big team of 60 folks, I think, in total. So, yeah, I think it's a very practical way to leverage those kind of conversations and a great framework to use and a memorable framework, which is important, Bev.

So I'll take 10% of that, whatever that conversation gave you.

We got a question from a listener, if you don't mind addressing it. And it's what I love. I know you've answered it before on a previous show, but I wouldn't mind you answering again. It comes from Jared Wheeler. Hey, Jared, great to have you on the show. And Jared asks Bev, can you speak about manager versus leader?

You know, Jared, this is a conversation all my colleagues are having and they're all saying there's a difference that leaders lead and managers manage. And different. I think it doesn't matter what you call them, that a manager has to lead, you know, has to, and a leader has to manage. So maybe there's not that much different. And you know, Sharon and I, in talking management throughout the book, we made that statement up front. And leaders have some certain responsibilities that managers don't. But when you take the two words, they both better be doing both or else they're not going to last long, I think. Well, that's a good question.

That's an excellent answer, Bev. Thanks for that. I'm going to just take a comment from another listener. Srinivasa, great to have you back on the show. Srinivasa and Srinivasa saying empathy, trust, motivation, tracking mechanisms, a mandate for managers. Maybe not tracking mechanism, but it brings me on to one point, which is, I think is your next cluster, which is relationships. And if I can bring up an article that was just recently published in Forbes Bev on this topic, 15 ways managers can encourage a mutual relationship of trust with employees. This is a great article that I think all our listeners should read. Actually, it comes from Forbes Coaches Council. So actually it's 15 pieces of advice from 15 different people. So that's what I like. It's got such variety, but they're all really based around, I think, relationships and how you build that mutual, which is really important, relationship of trust with employees. Love to know your thoughts on some of these, Bev, and how they fit into that bigger framework, that idea of relationships and the importance of relationships.

Right. But do you want to put up that cluster slide real fast and I'll just show you the breadth of them. So again, this comes from a ton of research around why people stay. And, you know, one of the biggest that surprised me was the word yield. Because when I read exit interviews, so many said I was micromanaged and I was never asked about my own skill set. And I was told, do it this way, I never felt the freedom to say, well, here's another idea. So that jumped out, truth jumped out, that I really want to know where I stand not six months later, but in the moment. A bit of feedback would really help. And so here's something interesting. In this book, we married inclusion and engagement because our publisher demanded it. Not that we want to do it, but we learned a lot and we thought that Dignity, Show Respect would be the chapter that most talked about inclusion. And when we did our research and we showed diversity, inclusion thought leaders, all 26, and said, can you pick five? Because we want to build a new cluster and. And we want to call it belonging. And I thought, great research, right from diversity thought leaders. And no one picked the same five. Maybe just that word dignity was amongst them, but the other four were different. And it taught us that inclusion and engagement are connected, whether they're pasted together, velcroed together or what, they definitely are connected. And the. The other word. And one of your questions that you sent me was, how does this form the foundation of trust? I think trust is the compilation of all those things. And the best writer on trust is Paul Zach. He's at Claremont. Paul Zach and Ken Nowak do great research on trust. And when I look through their Research. It all fits into the letters, the 26 letters. So I think any. And I wrote down a trust culture is driven by leaders and 70% of the variance, this is from Paul Zak in employee engagement is attributed to leaders. So it's leaders doing all these things. And I think that's just so critical and let's put it up again, Niall, if you could. So I'm going to ask you again, Mr. Smarty, which of these. Now you don't have to talk about jerk because we know you have some jerk behaviors, but I'll talk about that. But which of these do you feel is the hardest for you to do?

So for me, Bev, I look at know I'll read them out. Dignity, show respect. Jerk. Don't be one question. We consider the rules. Reward, provide recognition. Truth, tell it, Understand, listen deeper, yield, power down. I think for me reward was the one I found was the hardest. You know, understand, listen deeper. I'm an interviewer. I've had that instinct for 20 odd years. You do that question. We consider the rules. I break the rules constantly. So no, no problem. There's dignity. Massive believer in fairness all my life. So always try to show respect there truth. Maybe I'm a bit too truthful sometimes, you know, but I look at reward and I have to remind myself to stop and say well done. And it kills me because I know the importance of it. I know that every one of us craves it and I probably do as well. But probably, maybe I crave it in a different way and I haven't had a boss for so long as well.

Right.

I forget the importance of that. And you know, I see amazing work being done all around me by my colleagues and my team. But maybe I don't remember enough to just stop and say well done. So that's probably the one for me that I think I need to constantly work at. And I will probably have to constantly work after the rest of my career, but it's just so important.

It is, it is, it is, it is. And I think the subtitle is what matters more? Praise or pay? And I'll tell you, praise matters more. And that's many, many, many predecessors who've looked at that. But pay will climb up the ladder. If it's not fair, if it doesn't feel like it's comparable to other places, then pay matters and all the praise you give me starts to go down. And here's the thing with managers and this is the, the, you know, the managers, the why and the how, the why we all know already people need it. And I hear managers saying, well, I don't have to give it to my high potentials. They know their high potential. No, they might know it, but hearing it from you makes them feel so much better. And so pay over. And that reward comes in so many different packages. There's all kinds. And reward is only important if you feel it as a reward. You know, I remember sitting on a plane behind some folks, sales folks, who because of their sales were being flown to Hawaii. And I was listening to the conversation in front of me and one woman said to another, I wish they had given us a choice. In order for me to go to Hawaii, I need a babysitter. And I needed this and I needed that. So, you know, it just doesn't feel good. And I think that we forget that that reward is only in the receivers eyes. And I think that's critical. You know, Johnny, in the book we give managers 12 set and starters about how to give praise. And managers literally copy out the page and leave it on their desk so they can remember, you know, different ways to start the sentence. And not just, you did a good job. Bye bye. You did a good job by doing what you're like, what knocked your socks off, what was particularly wonderful. So yes, that is important. And I'll just say one word about the J for jerk because everybody asks about it. And when we brought the first book in, the publisher said, why do you need a negative thing? They're all kind of positive. And here's what we said. We have to have jerk. Because what we literally did, we took exit interviews that were written out. We asked if we could have them, we followed the person to the next company and we said, here's what you wrote. Why did you really leave? And they all said, well, my boss was a jerk and I couldn't stand it anymore. And we as good researchers said, well, can you describe that word? And they did. And they gave us like 50 jerkitudinal characteristics. And the way we deal with that in our workshops is we say to managers, have you ever had a jerk boss? Which of these things did that jerk boss do and what did it do to you? And when they start saying, I stopped giving ideas, you know, I dragged myself into work each day, it answers it. And then we can say, and how are you a jerk? So Johnny, privately we are going to have that discussion.

So I'm going to bring you back to our third grouping, right, which is culture. And our news article comes from Harvard Business Review. It's a very recent Publication by HBR by Denise Leonard. And it's Company culture is everyone's responsibility. With your good friend Kevin Oaks on the show last week talking about company culture, I know he's got a new book out on renovating culture as well. But what's your perspective on culture and where does this HBO article fit in in terms of it being everyone's responsibility? I think it's. I think they're trying to compare it to maybe a more traditional view that it's top down and it has to be leader led, but this is more. It has to be infused across the company, but critically, not. Not in such a way that it's no one's responsibility. It's like there are clear own, clear levels of ownership and responsibility at every level in the organization isn't just, you know, fragmented. What's your experience and research on this? And tell me about, you know, what parts of the Alphabet did you zone in on for culture?

Okay, could you put it up again? So, gosh, they're all important. You know, here's what I'm seeing now in the remote work environment. I am seeing information pop gigantically that I want to be in the know. And I don't know if you're bringing us back, if you're not bringing us back, when you're bringing us back. The rumor mill has never been stronger. And I think now in a remote environment, space is like jumping out because people are working, many of them, in different spaces, in spaces that are hard, in spaces where they've got kids and commotion going on. And if managers don't say, how's it going? You know, is your home space working for you? Is there anything I can do to make it better? I think that would be really important. And I'll also give you, Joni, I might have given it to you before, a list of 26 ways that you can touch your employees remotely and what to ask them. And it's questions about all 26 that might help the team out there. I don't think anyone can be engaged all the time. Impossible. But if you're not engaged any of the time. And culture has a lot to do with it. You know, the, the picture I once saw when someone was lecturing on culture stuck with me. And it was a big iceberg. And they said everyone thinks the part sticking up is culture. It is, but is not as much as the part underwater. And it made me think about all the things we subtly do and we subtly condone others doing. And that's the culture. And a lot of people are talking about it now. And, you know, maybe the big thing is now managers don't see people in the hallways, we don't walk by their desks, you know, are we stopping in, you know, to ask how's it going? And that's part of culture. So it's all important. But that information and space. And the other one I would see is jumping at now in front of us is wellness. Wellness, meaning every point of my life, the stress I'm feeling now and how it's upsetting me, it's not, do I have Covid or not? It's bigger than a bread box and it's important now.

It's funny, they're exactly the ones I would have thought you would have touched on. And information, it's a big issue. Just the lack of it. Lack of clarity of information and the assumption that everyone does understand and they may not. They may not have, you know, picked up on the slack message or read the email. And understanding if it's been, you know, it's been sent, delivered, but hasn't been understood is a big challenge as well. The wellness piece. I had several conversations on this. We had a guest on our, our Monday all hands, the first Monday of every month, Bev. We have a guest contributor who comes and we deliberately. We haven't invited you because we generally avoid people who are on our platform. I'm really sorry. We actually want to make it special to our staff that we're kind of. It's not the people that we're using in our product. It's really, we just brought this person for you and only you. And it's also at 9am Irish time, so I'm not going to wake you one in the morning, you know, but we had a great, a great presenter this week and we talked about that wellness piece and we talked about how people have distractions on how to manage the distractions. And distractions can be a negative word. But, you know, distractions could be you have a family member sick or you're worried about your kids or are you being a good enough parent. And it's kind of saying they're really important things. But it's, it's all of those things exist for all of us and they, they stop from getting your work done and doing but completing things, which causes you more stress as well. And really it's about how you manage those. And that whole focus is so important. And we've gravitated internally in social talent towards more and more conversations that genuinely are about wellness on a first Monday because It's just so important and affects all of us and we're all struggling and it's just creating that space to address it. I think a few years ago, Bev, definitely the first time you probably wrote the book, it maybe wasn't accepted that you would have those conversations in work. It's the employer's responsibility to even drive those. It's just, it has to be these days, doesn't it?

Right? And you know, it's funny, at the back of the book we give three or four other books that are right on that topic that are of course written by my publishers, authors, but they all expand on on the topic. And you know, in my own office what we do is we always say how was your weekend? And then we always really listen to how the weekend was because it tells you your mood, you know, for coming in. And we have a rule that if you're having a bad day, announce it because otherwise we're going to read everything else into it. And that's, that's harder. It makes, it makes life in the office harder.

It's a really good point. And it comes from. There's a whole bunch of things that tie some of these things together. Bev, you know, one of the topics that we didn't get to talk about was psychological safety. I know you and I have spoken on it before, which is actually not something that is top down at all to the last point. It's something that exists within every single team. And you can't say that an organization has, has or doesn't have psychological safety. It is on a team level. It's the importance of middle managers. I think that was brought up in the second article we touched on today that middle managers are unbelievably critical in driving culture, driving change. And their relationships with their teams are so critical. Oftentimes we think of the leadership and executive and then we think of the individual contributors. We forget about this massive middle management who are just so integral to any of this change and are the day to day folks who show up for their teams actually implementing the, the actions or promises of the organization or are the face of the organization to most people in a large company. And it's, it's just trying to reach those folks and recognize the importance of those. I do like that culture piece being. It's got to be across the board. But you mentioned earlier as well, Bev, in the career kind of development conversation isn't just up to the leader slash manager. Depending on your perspective on that. The individual has to take ownership as well, and I think that goes for culture as well. It's not just about culture. Happens to me. Throw the culture at me. I either like it or I don't. It's like we are all invested in culture. We're all invested in career development. It isn't a one way thing. It isn't a, you know, shine this upon me and if I'm happy, I'll stay and if I'm, I'm not, I'll leave. It has to be two ways.

And in fact, we did write the sequel to Love because managers said to us, is it all on my shoulders? And we said, duh, no it's not. So we wrote another book called love it, don't leave it, 26 ways to get what you want at work. And it says it's your responsibility, miss or miss Team member to ask for what you want and to follow up on it, etc. I think at the time it came out, which is years ago, organizations, we did a whole training program on it were we're saying, oh, now managers are going to get asked for more things. And well, yeah, and so it did not sell as well as it should have.

But it's funny, I think it was one of those, I think it was the article from HBR when they focused on middle managers, Bev, that we looked at a few minutes ago that brought up the point. It said, you know managers, when you're having a conversation, let's say one is the trend, obviously that engagement conversations aren't once a year thing. And anymore it has to be much more regular than that quarterly, monthly, weekly, whatever it is. But it said always start by asking, you know, what do you think of me? And what can I not say? Not what do you think of me? What can I do to help you? And we got a great comment from Julie west who's listening live. And Julie's just saying that her boss asked that very thing, what can I do to help you do your job better? And she says she still remembers it from 35 years ago. And that's a, I think good boss.

And hopefully he listened to, to what you said, he or she, Julie, and said, well, I can't do that. My hands are tight on that. But tell me more because there's always more you could say to him to find something he could do.

Good question, 100%. It's a great question, a great comment coming in and it's great. I think 35 years later, I think not enough managers are doing that. So Bev, remind us just in summation those three kind of clusters, what were they again in terms of being this kind of engaged leader, engaged manager. Remind me of those three clusters again.

I will. So not only will I'm going to surprise you, not only will I remind you, but the clusters. The clusters are the Alphabet and they are.

And sorry for those listening to the podcast and who weren't viewing this, Bev just stood up and showed me a brand new T shirt she has with all the letters of the Alphabet and a big heart and love going through them. So I love with I love you. Brilliant. I love that. Bev. I love that.

So, and let me say so their development, their relationships and their culture. But let me mention quickly, there are four letters that we couldn't fit into one of those clusters and we realized they were success drivers that they had to be is the A, the B, the N and the Z. The A is for ask. Every single one of those requires that a manager asks a question. The B is for buck. And every one of those demands that the manager do something if they can. And if not, they ask the what else Question or they say, I can't do that. The N is for numbers. If any manager around this world doubts that this is important and, and worth your time, then just run the numbers and you'll see how expensive it is to lose talent. A B and the Z is Zenith. Zenith means you'll never reach it because you got to do it over and over and over and it's different for everybody. So. And you know, any company out there, you can choose four or five letters, maybe the initials of your organization teach that. And we do, of course have training programs and everything else to go with it. So follow the ABC and you can get a home run.

I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Congratulations on the sixth edition of the book again. I think it's wonderful. It's great to see this kind of evergreen content that just resonates over the years with folks. It's fantastic. And I'm so glad to have you back on the show. We'll have you back again. I know I've asked you twice already. Going to ask you a third time because you've only done it even in the show. But any last tip you can leave our audience with today to add to our shortlist.

You know, I would, and this is just hitting me, I would say manager, think about what you want from your own manager to do a better job. And number one, tell your manager that and then start the conversation by asking your people, I looked at these 26 and I realized I'm not so good at or I want more of. Tell me what you want more of. That's a great conversation. And so it's all about conversation.

Oh, it's great. And the better woman for a conversation. Bev, always love chatting to you. Thank you for joining us this morning. All the way from, from California, from your home. Are you in Santa Barbara, LA this morning? Where are you today?

We're la, LA this morning.

Well, I said I hope the day is good to you. Bev, thank you so much for joining us again. It's been a pleasure to have you. We'll have you back on the show again and good luck with the sixth edition of the book. If folks want to buy the book or read more, Amazon, where else can they get it?

All over all the different. All over.

Love Them or Lose Them is the title of the book. Dr. Beverly Kay is the author. It's a pleasure having you on the show, Bev. We'll have you gone again and next week we are welcoming you back to another great show. Please do come back next week on Wednesday 10th March, we are going to have live, if you can join us at 4 o', clock, that's UK time, Ireland time. That's going to be, gosh, I think midnight in Singapore. Or you can join us at 11am on the East Coast, 8am on the West coast of the U.S. we're going to have our good friend Torrent Ellis, diversity strategist and author and host of his Sirius FM show in the US Joining us. Talk about international voices, Ask particularly diversity stories from around the world. We've had such a big focus on diversity and equity in the last year, a lot of it coming out of the US that we wanted to try to take a moment and just look at a more broader perspective of different levels of diversity and equity and from a more global perspective, what's happening around the world? What are the other aspects of diversity, perhaps don't get as much perhaps airtime as gender and race do at the moment. And not to take away from either of those, but just to really bring some more color, more of a story to the other, perhaps less talked about areas of diversity, inclusivity and equity. So delighted to basically have Torren join us next week if that's of interest to you, which it should be if you are a human being, come back and join us. You can check us out in the live show or you can watch the recordings or find us on podcasts on Spotify or Apple. As always, you can find everything you need to know about the Shortlist Show. Subscribe to further updates by going to socialtalent.com the shortlist. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with your hopeful Spring morning, Spring Afternoon, Spring Day. If you haven't tried it, you should try next week, listening to the show through just your auditory senses on your earphones. Take a walk with us. Or if you have the time, join us live. We'd love to hear your questions and thoughts for Torin as well. Until then, have a good Spring Day. We'll see you next week.