The Shortlist’s 2021 retrospective: Best guest advice

You're very welcome to this special edition of the Shortlist. My name is Johnny Campbell. I'm your host of the Shortlist and CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And we're feeling nostalgic this week. It's December. It's only a few days away from Christmas. It's our penultimate shortlist of the year. And with over 40 unique episodes recorded and in the bag for 2021, we felt it's about time we look back at some of the best advice that we've been given for our shortlist of advice. Over the course of the last year, every guest we've had on the show has contributed immensely to the shortlist, each giving their own piece of unique advice at the end and graciously imparting pearls of wisdom on all the topics that have shaped this incredibly uncertain and strange year. So to dive into this cornucopia of insight, I'm going to be joined by our very own Holly Fawcett. Holly's our director of content here at Social Talent, and you may have heard Holly present. She's a guest presenter on this show as well. And we're going to be pulling out some of our favorites and discussing the kind of nuggets of advice in relation to some of the major themes that we've seen shape the conversation over the last year, from D and I and well being to the changing world of work and talent. Hello, Holly. It's great to have you.

Hello. Hi. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to look at all the. All the great pieces of advice. As you said, there's some really, really, really great nuggets in here.

That's our first show together as well, which is wonderful.

I know people have this weird theory, Johnny, that you're Mrs. Doubtfire, because we're never at the same time.

I can tell you stories, but I won't. I won't start now. That's gonna be a whole different show. But speaking of shows, I'd love to start off, Holly, with your favorite you can think back on. I'm not assuming you've heard every one of the 40 episodes we've made this year, but does any episode particularly stick out for you? And if so, why?

I did listen to a lot of them this year, so I was on maternity leave for six months during this year, for those of you who don't know. And I managed to listen into quite a few during, you know, quick nap times or whatever else. It was quite nice. My favorite one while I was away was with Alison Daly. And I really loved Alison's approach. So Alison runs an organization called Recruiting Innovation, and she has built a really incredible and highly scalable tech recruiter program with us at Social Talent, but also as a curriculum for her own and for graduates through recruiting Innovation itself. But her approach to technology and diversity and adversity as well, I just found was really, really insightful to see, like just that vision of how recruiting and talent, how it connects to every single part of the organization. It was really, really inspiring, particularly for those who are kind of feeling a little bit uneasy in their job and recruiting or want to get into talent acquisition, want to get into recruiting, because she really did sell it as being this incredibly exciting place that people always fall into. And then her amazing call to action at the end to join and be part of a graduate grant program that she has to become a fully fledged technology recruiter. Saw hundreds of people sign up to that, which was incredible. But really, I just loved her verve and understanding and passion for diversity in technology in particular, considering that it tends not to be as diverse a place as we would like it to be. I just found her insights and her outlook just really, really insightful and really eyes.

I only caught up with Alison yesterday. This exact time yesterday I was catching up with Alison Quincy. So I would love that that was your favorite show. But what I want to try and do, and for those of you, by the way, who are listening, who are not joining us live or not seeing the video, myself and Holly are dressed in our Christmas jumpers and Holly even has a Christmas tree in the back and I am already roasting hot. So I'm going to probably take this off. So please do not be offended if you're watching the video feed and hopefully it will mess up our audio. What we want to try and do, and we'd love to get our audience who are listening live to join in and perhaps share your favorite moments from any of our shows this year are your comments or responses to some of the quotes we're going to read out. So we're going to try and focus on four themes that we really, when we look back at the archive we looked at the episodes for four themes, really jumped out at myself and Holly as being, you know, paramount across all of the episodes and obviously more, some more focused on these than others. I'm really going to take you through each of those themes and we've teased out some of the best quotes that we thought were relevant to those themes and we want to reshare them with you because sometimes maybe you had to jump off at the end of a short list. You didn't quite catch the quote. And maybe you listened for 39, 40 minutes and missed that last 60 seconds. And sometimes the goal was in the 60 seconds. And we want to reshare that with you. So I'm going to jump in with the first theme that was woven through a lot of the episodes throughout the year and that was leadership and particularly leadership best practices. And we've all looked at leadership in the last two years during the pandemic because the pandemic has put us such a focus on leadership. And it's been commented upon by many of our guests that in their organizations, leadership has being questioned over the last two years at an individual level. Folks who are leaders for a long time were having to relearn how to be a leader and perhaps develop new traits that they weren't even aware were traits that leaders needed to have and we all believe really will be needed to needed all the way coming out of the pandemic. Right. If there is such a thing. So I'm going to jump in with a few of those and just mention some of the folks who, who gave us some of the most insightful quotes. I'm going to jump in with the beginning of the year, Joanne Fennell. And Joanne, who joined us from Flex, the massive big outsourced design and electronic manufacturer, 700,000 employees. Juan joined us in the US and she said be comfortable with having smarter people in the room. You want to progress and grow, you need to surround yourself with smart people and lean into feedback and learning. And that's, I think echoes a classic quote around hire people smarter than you, which is something we discussed on the same episode. And that really stuck with me. It was started starting the year last, in January last, you know, have smarter people in the room. But the real bit that got me was lean into it, lean into the feedback and learning, which I thought was really, really interesting. Kind of around the same theme within leadership. We had Kelly Jones on a from Cisco. Great episode with tons of insight. And she told a fantastic story about the first time she was on vacation after she taken her leadership role. And I tried to get everything ready before she went so that her team wouldn't have to worry about anything when she went and how her, her manager at the time took her aside and explained how that wasn't right and that wasn't going to develop anyone. In her quote I'll read out was recontract with yourself about how you get work done every time you jump in to fix a problem, you're taking away someone's opportunity to learn to be you. I, I, I, I snipped that video, Holly, and I don't know if you were there. I showed it to seven of our leaders who perhaps didn't see the call because she really hit on something. And it's, I don't think it's an obvious thing. Right. Some of, some of the quotes here, whilst brilliant, it might be stuff that people is obvious to some of us or you've read in a book before in a different way. I really thought Kelly's quote wasn't obvious. You know that when you think you're doing the right thing by making sure everything's done and ready, you are taking away the opportunity for someone else to learn to be you. Like, I just thought that was, that was really interesting. I, I know I've been that person. Right. I know about you, Holly. That resonated a personal level. I've been the person who tried to cover and do this, do the stuff, and I consistently thought I was doing the right thing. And hearing Kelly's story was like, I'm not. That's not doing the right thing. What were your thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, I had to in preparing for going on maternity leave and going away for six months. I suppose for anybody who's going away for any period of time, whether it's a two week vacation or an extended leave for caring reasons or even just, you know, I'm going off traveling the world for a little while and I'm going to leave my role and allow, allow others in my team to take over for me. You know, that preparation, that ramp up to make sure everyone's ready and everything is done and everything's in place so that it's just paint by numbers after that, like the temptation to do that is so high and gosh, when you're extremely pregnant, as I was, and I kept going as well, I went more than nine months, you know, the temptation is to really try and make sure everything is completely smooth so that nothing could ever possibly go wrong. So when you come back, everything's going to be fine. But no, I completely see Kelly's point because the opportunity for growth is in that gray, it's in that wrinkles, it's in the adversity of, you know, something not being quite right. And the only advice I was able to give my direct reports upon leaving was we don't know the answer either, so we'll figure it out together. If you come up against it, it's perfectly fine for you not to know the answer because we don't either. And it's just a case of we will figure it out. We'll figure it out. And I'm very glad that that did stand to them because they all went in with that mindset of, sure, figure it out. In the end, it did work out quite well. But absolutely that temptation for like, everything is every dot, every I is dotted, every T is crossed, everything's perfect. Because people don't want to maybe see where the bodies are varied in paperwork or whatever. Just, you know, that opportunity to grow and learn is immense. And in this day and age as well, when, when you need to hire people smarter than you, you know, that's, that's when things are going to grow as well. Not just for them to grow, but actually for things to grow and things to change. Because doing things the way they always have done is a very dangerous way to continue doing your business.

It is. And there's two more sub themes that relate to. Relate to that they're going to call out. One was bring two quotes together here. Actually, Steve Mayer, who came on the show, he's with Procore, and he joined us the day that Procore floated on the New York Stock Exchange. And he just rung the bell and ran over from the NASDAQ to an office building in New York. But he closed out the show by saying, be open to your own errors, mistakes and learnings along the way and make sure your team sees your vulnerability. Which I thought echoed a theme we've talked about, about being vulnerable as a leader and the importance of that to create psychological safety, which has been a big theme over the last couple of years. And it kind of fits nicely with Kevin Mulcahy's quote. And Kevin joined us a few months ago and said, don't be so sure of yourself whether you're right or wrong. Be more explicit in showing the assumptions you hold. And if you remember, Kevin was an Irishman living in Boston who had just come back to Ireland for a few months for family reasons and talked about the, the power of assumptions as a model for kind of, you know, to look at your business and look at your plans and, you know, rather make all loads of different plans just in case something might happen, is focus more on the assumptions and watch that the assumptions change. But saying, you know, this surety, that this is what's going to happen, that we've modeled it this way or that way, we talked about be more explicit in showing the assumptions you hold, which again is an element of vulnerability, I think in saying, you know, I don't claim to have all the answers because I think the traditional leader was expected to have all the answers and she had to come up with these things. It's saying, I believe this will happen based on these assumptions, but I know these assumptions may change and it may be incorrect. And so therefore you work on the assumptions. So I think those, those two went hand in hand. And lastly on the leadership quotes and again, two that go nicely together. Clark Powers joined us from World Vision. And Clark as a gentleman, absolute gentleman. And he closed with one of the most unique comments, which was each person is a masterpiece. Valuable, a treasured work of art. If you look at and treat people that way, you'll be a better leader. Which I just thought was beautiful framing. Right. And it just brings that, you know, be more vulnerable, but the heart and just stop and look at your, your, your people as masterpieces. Right. It's just. Was a treasured work of art. I love that framing. And it kind of goes as a companion piece to Colin Donnery's quote, which was only in the last few weeks when he joined us again. Colin Donnery, who works both in the. With Tourist Noah, which is an agency that helps get folks back to work in Ireland, and then frs, a group that has a recruitment agency and RPO business here in Ireland as well. And Colin joined us from, from Italy where he just begun his holidays.

Florentine holiday.

Yeah, from Florence. But he closed out with giving people confidence is almost like a superpower, but on the other side, undermining confidence is so negative and can get out of control with managers and leaders. I think both of those speak to the humanity piece in terms of, yes, vulnerability in the first piece, but the humanity was really, really important. I think there are two traits that we're looking for more in leaders. But I'm going to ask you, Holly, maybe to move on to our second theme and pick out your best quotes.

Sure. So our second theme is on diversity, equity and inclusion. And we had a huge range of speakers over the course of this year give phenomenal advice specifically around DE and I, but also some of those who spoke outside of DE and I, whose, whose advice just really resonated so well with this theme. So the first one goes back to actually my favorite episode of the year, which was from Alison Daly. And her piece of advice for the shortlist was get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That discomfort is a prerequisite for growth. So it's, it hugely speaks back to what Kelly Jones was saying and also Joanne Fennell also being comfortable with having smarter people in the room, but being comfortable with being uncomfortable was really important, especially around diversity, equity and inclusion. Matthew Jeffrey spoke to De and I about stories and Matthew being a really, really an incredible subject matter expert around employer branding, but saying listen, just listen to your team stories and their views and expose yourself to new ideas. Which I think was quite, quite interesting. Torin Ellis also, you know Torn being such a phenomenally almost pastoral speaker. And Torrin, if you're if anybody's unfamiliar with Torren Ellis and just Google his name, Tor Nelson, you'll find a lot about him and a lot of his great speeches that are almost sermon like. But his pieces of advice are so action oriented that I really loved this one which was what do you do now? If you're not willing to raise your voice? You are complicit. You're part of the issue essentially the black call to action. If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem. So what do you do now? I thought was really really was really great. And lastly from Salma El Rodani that every time you're speaking look at those who aren't and invite them into the table which I felt was also quite a nice, a nice action action task to in combining with with Torrent what you do well Salma is very very easily just every time that you are speaking see who else could be here, see who else's perspective could be shared here and use that platform to share with others. I felt was really powerful. There were so many stories from different people throughout the year that brought in from you know, how to open opportunity for others in terms of Sama also Siobhan Sweeney as well from Open Doors which is a mentoring program and bringing people into different areas of work. And we're working with Open Doors at Social Talent to help shape and create new people into recruiting into recruiting careers. Again a place people can happily fall into and do really really well. But looking at what those organizational barriers are, her lovely piece of advice was look at the barriers particularly at entry level jobs into your organization that that broken first rung of the ladder is often the one that people trip over the most once they're on the ladder. They can get there but getting into the first rung can be the most difficult thing. So loads of actions I think that people had within their advice that people can take very simple small steps as well as Torrens kind of rallying rousing cry of you know, if you're not here to solve the problem, then move away.

I agree. Torin and Sama together remind me that probably two years ago, maybe before the pandemic, I really didn't personally have much concept of allyship and privilege, and only in working with great people like Torn and Salma and hearing other great speakers and those who joined our platform in that period as well. Holly. It opened my mind to that, like, starting with Torn, it's not good enough to sit on the sidelines. You can't sit on the sidelines and say, well, I didn't cause the problem or I didn't say anything. It's like we didn't do anything to fix it. So therefore, you are complicit. I think the world has moved in that direction to say that inaction is complicity. And then Salma, who's, you know, done so much and educated me through the trainings on our platform as well, and the talks I've heard her give and as a guest on the show a couple of times as well, you know, to be conscious, always conscious of others who's not speaking, who didn't get an opportunity, and leveraging your privilege, if you. Or what privilege you have in each context to again, back to Torrent, to actively do something about it. I think maybe those two things go well together for me that a lot of people who. Who are not willing to raise their voice as. As Torren said, I think a lot of folks didn't know what they could do. They didn't know they had a superpower to fix things. But when you combine that with the introduction of the idea of privilege and allyship, you start going, oh, I can do something. I can stop the conversation and, you know, lend my privilege to somebody else to make sure their voice is heard or to give a perspective or to stand up for somebody or to whatever, you start to see that as a thing you have where maybe folks didn't think they had that. I think those two concepts together work really nice. So don't sit on the sidelines, because we all can leverage some level of privilege to try and help others be conscious of it and be active, therefore, in that. So they. Those two themes have resonated massively for me in the last two years. Yeah, great quotes.

Yeah. Also, the piece around privilege was such an interesting conversation, particularly how Salma frames privilege, because it's. Sometimes it's. It can be easy to dismiss and say, I don't have as much as somebody else, therefore I don't have any, when really, you know, we all have something in the Bank. Right. There's, there's, there's some piece of currency there that we have that we can, we can own and also we can share. But simply being a voice, even if it isn't a terribly powerful one. And actually this goes to the last quote from Joanne Lockwood that, you know, don't just. She had a really interesting quote about, you know, one tiny snowflake doesn't make an avalanche, but lots of snowflakes together really do. And that's it. You know, even a small voice with, with little privilege or little amplification, when lots of people do join together, it becomes a cacophony of sound. It becomes this incredibly powerful force that people can't ignore. And that's kind of what happened this. And last year, you know, lots and lots and lots of voices suddenly realized that when they spoke together, big things will happen and we harnessed that privilege. So Salma's understanding of privilege being such a thing that it is, you know, we, every single one of us have a piece of privilege somewhere. Some more than others. Yes. And if you do have more than others, then it is, I think it's your duty as to Torren's point, it is your duty to step up and share that. But even if it's something so small, by sharing it with others, your voice I think becomes louder. You know, you gain agency, you gain power. And that's incredibly powerful. I think for, for, for anybody who, who feels that they just, they need, they need a platform of some kind to be able to stand up and do the right thing.

I'd agree. I agree. I'm going to move on to our third theme, the interest of time. Honey, we got four to get through. There's been so many quotes. And the third theme we, we identified when we sat down and looked at these was well being, not surprisingly, probably. But it's been a big theme since the pandemic and terms of Me hinted at it in the leadership quotes, making sure you're looking after some well being. And we had some, some great people on, including some of the folks you interviewed and had the privilege of speaking with as well. Holly and you know, Linda kicked it off. Linda Jonas, for those who don't know. Linda. Linda currently lives out of Germany and she's one of the speakers on the social sound platform. She joined the platform this year to develop a fantastic leadership program with her colleague and friend Jason Lawrence. And they were teaching folks how to be leaders in a remote world or a hybrid world. And a fantastic program that we in social talent went through as well. And on a leadership group which was really, really insightful. And Linda's advice was it's really simple, but it's quite powerful. Take time out from work. Stepping, you know, stepping away from work for extended periods gives you clarity, I think was her point. And it was a simple thing, but take time out from work. And I, I did it today. I had a meeting scheduled and I was just, my brain wasn't working after lunch, which wasn't working, I things to do and I stopped and I asked my colleague, could I shorten our meeting from 60 to 30 minutes? And I didn't nap, I had 20 minute nap.

And napping is brilliant. Good job.

Yeah. I think we should all encourage you to have naps, right. When you get a bit older, in your 40s, 50s, whatever, you know, it maybe becomes more, more important art. When you've, you know, young children who are keeping you awake at night, you need more naps. But take time out and don't feel guilty, like, encourage it, like, and support each other for doing it. I think that's really important. Right. And some other great ones that back that up. I look at Michelle Guy Bergeray. Michelle works with the International Committee for the Red Cross and he said sometimes if you want to do more, stop talking about work, take care of people in a sincere, transparent way and look to build trust every single day. And that was a theme we just heard over and over again, Holly, I think, you know, during the year, which, you know, again, Mary Collins, who's another presenter on Social Talent Platform, joined us towards the latter end of the year to say, in this post pandemic world, we need to focus on building radical empathy. Right. So that empathy and Michelle's point about take care of people in a sincere, transparent way, you know, I think that's just so important. We've seen it. The leaders who've shone in the last two years, they have parked the work and said, yeah, all right, and how can I support you? And not because they were told to or they read an article and Forbes that said that because they just cared. And I think we all have been allowed to care in the last two years and hopefully that never changes. That's been a big change. You know, you were, you're meant to leave your personal baggage at the door. That's what I was taught. I was going into workplace and not by any particular workplace, just culturally. I thought that was what you do. I don't know about you, Holly, but that's kind of been the way it's like you have work and you have home and, you know, please don't bring your personal baggage to, to the table. Whereas great leaders like Michelle and Mary are saying, no, you have to have radical empathy. Park work for a second. These are people first. You're working with their colleagues, their friends. They're as, as Clark said in our, in our leadership piece.

Right.

They're masterpieces, treasured works of art. And there's overlap there, of course. But what are your thoughts on that change in the world where we have given license to everybody to actually show, show that they care? What do you, is that the thing you see everywhere?

Well, the ones who are successful, yes. I see them do that for sure. But also there has been a reckoning for managers very transactional level who actively don't do that. You know, who put the. No, I need you to work this shift. Like, I don't care that your grandpa, that your grandparent died or that you're sick with COVID I need you to do this. You know, and I kind of, I kind of know where they were taught that because I was also taught that in my first management role, I was very, very young. I was 21. And I was basically told exactly the same as you, Johnny. You know, you leave your work, you leave home at the door, and this is work. And also these aren't your friends, you know, even though you were their friend two weeks ago when you were their colleague, now you're their manager and you, you can't be their friend anymore. And so you have to have this switch of being a manager. And that was dreadful. It was absolutely awful. But those types of incentives of. No, no, no, you really have to be quite firm and you need to say, you know, you have to be an agent of the business. I was told that phrase, agent of the business so often. I really know what that meant specifically. Not in the long term context, that's for sure. Right, because being an agent of the business also means looking after your people with that radical empathy that Mary Collins is talking about. Because that's what's most important from a long term perspective. But like I was, I was only reading a buzzfeed article earlier today. Please forgive me for reading buzzfeed articles, but certainly this one was about how these managers are essentially like a holes, right? They're just like, here's like visual proof of text messages that they've sent their people when they're, when their parent has died or grandparent has passed away and they therefore can't make it to work or, you know, can't find childcare. Oh, I'm just really sorry. That's not good enough. You know what I can do? It's a pandemic, for goodness sake. And the schools are suddenly closed, you know, like. And we only had that last week here in this country where we had a big storm. And as a precaution, all schools and all child care facilities in the areas that were affected by the storm were just closed by the government overnight. Very, very late notice at night time. And every parent, I think, in the country was like, oh, no, what are we going to do the next day? What do you do in that circumstance? You'd be a human. You be a human and like, the work will get done. It mightn't get done right there and then, but it will eventually. And people love their employers and their colleagues who support them because that's really all that makes most sense there is, to just treat them like humans and they will act like humans and they will do the right thing.

I remember January of this year again, this is in a lot of countries, I think, but in Ireland we went home for Christmas and our children came home for Christmas and they didn't go back to school and the schools remained shut for many months. And I remember the first week of January when we kind of came back to work in social talent and we had our plans for the quarter. We just sat down as a leadership team and said, we're not going to get all this done because our team, for different reasons, they're going to have to look after their own kids, help look after other kids if they've got siblings or friends who have kids. And we just have to accept that we're going to have to reduce our expectations because this is life and we'll get over it and we'll catch up and it'll be fine, or we'll just have to move all the deadlines out, whatever it is, but you have to be more realistic. And I'm going to close on on this topic with Peter Colson from Spotify, who you interviewed, Holly, and his quote was, it's all about relationships. Ensure you stay human, the technologically advanced world. So we had three themes so far. We had the theme of leadership, the theme of diversity, equity, inclusion, theme of well being. What was our fourth theme that you teased out? Our final theme, Holly?

Fourth and final theme was around proactivity. I think in this pandemic kind of time, you know, it's tempting to just kind of button down the hatches and just beaver away at things, but actually doing so stuff in a much more strategic, proactive way. Well, ultimately, you know, going slow to go fast. That's. That's a huge theme that came out this year. And some wonderful pieces of advice from people as varied as Dr. Beverly K to Theo Smith, who spoke about neurodiversity. Really, really interesting pieces of advice here. So Bev K's advice was that you have to recognize and you have to verbalize and you have to mobilize. Nick Johnston, who came to us from the Middle east, he was in Dubai at the time. I think he's. Yeah, he's now known Dubai. Sorry, he was in Abu Dhabi. Was that. Sometimes you just have to jump in the pool and get on with it. Kevin Oakes, this is a really interesting conversation that your culture has changed in this pandemic. So be proactive and shape it to be the culture you want and you want to see in the future. Kingsley Aikens, who is the networking master, absolute networking master, and has been to more countries than I can count with Enterprise Ireland. To promote Ireland as a destination for foreign direct investment was to always remember something small about people and turn cold calls into hot coffees. It was quite, quite nice. Keo Smith was just doing. The reality is that we can achieve far more than we think we can. And I think this past two years has definitely shown us that when we put our minds to it and we just, you know, as Nick said, if you just jump in the pool, that actually we can get far more done than we think we can. Jen Lambert's will start from a place of. Yes, again, a positivity piece. Jer Finn. In this particular conversation, Jer Finn, at the time was the head of HR and people for Twitter. Don't underestimate your influence and potential impact right now. I genuinely believe we're at a moment of outsized impact that will affect how we experience work for decades to come. But it could be seismic. So all of those are like, they're neat little pieces around productivity. But ultimately there's a lot, I think, that, you know, where organizations have shaped themselves. They've grown organically to be the way they are. We've organically developed diversity problems in organizations. We've organically developed inclusion problems in organizations because that's, you know, they weren't designed that way. We kind of fell into this kind of routine because everyone else was doing it that way. But now we have the opportunity, even legacy organizations, to course correct, like, massively course correct. And this is a huge opportunity for us to go right. We're Just putting a stop to it right now. And we're going to do things radically differently. We're going to jump in the pool and believe it or not, we can do this. And even in our organization, I've known this firsthand coming from that position of the beginning of the year when I was saying farewell to everybody to go off for six months and everybody else was stuck at home with children to be teacher on one side of the desk and parent and employee on the other. And then we had to move things out and get things up. We still got things done. You know, we still. We didn't change anything. We just moved the timelines. But ultimately things still got done. And weirdly, we found that extra capacity or we reprioritized and realized that that thing over there wasn't really that important. And you only get that with perspective. You know, you only see the wood for the trees when you have to radically prioritize things. And sometimes just getting along, getting on with it ultimately will be really, really empowering. And that seismic shift that Jer was talking about, that outsize impact, that having this radical, like, stop, start and going, nope, we're changing huge direction here, and we have that opportunity to. And everyone else is just following along because they can and they want to, and they're seeing this as an opportunity as well. I think all of those pieces loosely ring together into something of productivity. What do you think, Tony?

I think as March 2020 becomes a little bit further away, we can forget easily how strange it was. And that proactivity piece, just how I've never seen people as proactive as they were in those first three months. You know, if you didn't understand what proactivity meant before, then, you certainly did after going through that. Whereas, like, you just to figure stuff out. And when our business, we're like, we can't get into a studio to film training content. We're a training company. We make content that for our customers. How the heck are we going to do this? We figured it out. You know, just. That was a small example. But other companies and businesses did it fantastically, and families and everyone else and institutions and educators. I saw in Ireland, everywhere in the world, you saw things like garage forecourts, right? You know, your kind of petrol or fuel stations that were abandoned, converted into outdoor coffee shops and restaurants. There's several of them around, around the Dublin area where I'm living. And you go, wow, that's just. Wow, that's brilliant. Because people couldn't go indoors. It's like, well, let's create an outdoor space that has shelter. Hang on a second. An old petrol station that works.

Yeah.

Amazing stuff, right? Just kind of really proactive stuff. People started selling stuff out of windows in premises they would never have dreamed of doing and offering different services. We all became, you know, eaters of restaurant quality food that we cooked at home, that we bought boxes. Who thought we'd do that stuff, right? The productivity was just amazing in so many different industries. And in recruiting and talent acquisition, you saw recruiters who were, you know, downing tools for a few months. They had nothing to do. And the businesses that kept them, they engaged in onboarding, they built new HR processes, they helped folks get. Get new assets, delivered to new employees. Loads of things. It was just fantastic. And if you've worked and lived through that, you know, everything can be done. Whereas previously there was an attitude of, oh, no, you know, I mean, you can't be doing that. Right? But to come to Jen Lambert's point, start from the place of, yes, that's where we live now. Or Ed Nathanson in his episode, who gave a simple one, which was, why not? You know, we used to say, how? And I think after the first few months, the pandemic, pandemic. We said, yeah, we did it, then let's do it again. But ask him, you know, we've talked about the year so far, the themes. We've heard over 40 episodes. I'm going to bring it into next year. Right. I know it's always foolish to try and predict the year ahead, but I thought what we might do is take out themes that we think will persist or develop into next year, into 2022. If you're listening to this in 2022, you can tell us what they are. And I'm going to start right. You know, the theme that I've seen emerge this year is the theme of what's called esg, right. For those who are not familiar with that, it's environmental, social and governance. I never clue what ESG was an acronym when I first heard it, but esg, it really is the umbrella that incorporates dni, but it also incorporates, you know, social responsibility, environmental responsibility. And it's become a huge thing initially in the world of investment, probably started in when, you know, the investment world started looking at, you know, investing in more responsible organizations. People had a high ESG score. Banks and financiers started giving preferential rates for that. People started asking about, you know, a company's ESG stance. And more recently, employees are formalizing this and saying, we want to understand yes, your diversity and inclusion policies. But where do you stand in the environment? Are you doing good? Who owns your company? Who makes money, what you do with the money that you make? You know, all these different pieces that come under the ESG umbrella. We had Jerry Crispin on in actually the end of the prior year, the end of 2019, I think, or maybe it was a year ago. I lose track of time, honey. And Jerry and he talked to us about at the time a NASDAQ requirement that had just come in for reporting or publishing of your diversity levels within your board, which come in for NASDAQ quoted companies last year. And that will then, through an ISO standard that Jerry introduced to us, is likely to come in across multiple areas of esg. I'm hearing from leaders in talent and talent acquisition. They're saying that they might have been with companies 5, 10, 15 years for the first time ever. This year they've been asked to present to the board and to the CEO on talent stats, you know, because it's a big part of your environmental, social and governance piece, you know, are these issues. So I think that's where, you know, you talk about Jer Finn's quote about, you know, we're at a really interesting time and it could be, it could have decades of effect. ESG is one of those things. I think we're going to be a big theme. It's going to become bigger and bigger in our employer brand and you know, in terms of the metrics that we need to feed into the wider business at a board level because they're going to be needing to demonstrate these stats for a whole host of reasons, for shareholder reasons, investment reasons, employee reasons. So I think we're going to see D and I not just persist, but expand, you know, and be there more formally as a thing you just have to have. And hopefully to Jerfin's predictions for decades to come. So that's my first one. How about you?

I. Well, I just to pick up on that, I think actually just specifically around what are the assumptions that we come to this prediction with? Going back to some of our earlier quotes around why do we predict these kinds of things? The extraordinary shifts that have been made in the past two years based on from Larry Fink's annual letter to BlackRock shareholders and that investment fund, etc. Around long termism to activist investors inside absolutely enormous companies like from ExxonMobil and Shell suddenly going, oh, we're actually going to actively not produce oil anymore. Could you imagine that happening even five years ago? But now that these activists, investors are inside those organizations, they're burrowing in from the inside. And it's cultural change from the board level on downwards, but as well as employees, as you say, it's employees who want different things. But they've seen what's happened over the past two years and they've corralled that individual voice they have into a couple chorus of calls for something being really important. So definitely I think the ESG piece is just what is best for the long term. And in terms of what's best for the long term, I think hybrid working is here for the long term, right? It is here to say no longer are we going to be going to a place of work. I think we will go to a place of work for very specific purposes. If you are a person who delivers a service to other service users and that needs to be delivered somehow in person, then yes, of course that that's going to continue for you as a place of work. But ultimately the vast majority of roles that are moving into, into thought work rather than necessarily like service delivery and things like that, but the high end service economies that most of our, most of our organizations would start to move towards working remotely or from, you know, from outside of the, of the company, right outside of our address is because this is where your work gets done or where collaboration might happen. Might be inside an organization's like a headquarters of some kind maybe, or maybe this is like here's a rented function room in a location that happens to be convenient for more people than the offices. But hybrid working, as a generalist term of you could work from absolutely anywhere location is independent of the organization. And I think that's definitely here for the long term. And not only are like people refusing to come back to work or come back to a workplace more should I say it also speaks to diversity because suddenly it opens opportunity for more people when you have the ability to work from anywhere. And also it's more environmentally responsible. Right. We're no longer commuting long, long distances. We're no longer having to do you spend acres of time in, you know, alone in cars, through traffic, etc. So I think hybrid working is here to stay for more reasons than we think. It's not just the fact that it's, it's cheaper for a company to have less office space. It is actually fundamentally better for the world, I think and therefore it is definitely here to stay.

I totally agree. By the way, quick shout out to Jeremy Roberts who's listening live. Jeremy, great to have you listening into the show. And thanks for joining us. I'd agree on the hybrid working for sure. Holly. It's people talk. We're talking about when do we return to the office. You know, I saw some company saying 2023. It's like, what, why bother?

Why bother?

Just say like this is the way we're working. We'll have a combination of office, not office for the roles that do allow it.

Of course.

Course or can allow. But it's something you have to more accept. But it's still not solved. It is not solved for, for a whole bunch of organizations. But I mean, before I dig into that again, because, you know, we spent a lot talking about that in the past and it's a whole show or more. I think if we're to dig into it. My, my, my next and last prediction is probably around how we hire. I think because the economy's gone kind of weird and we have such a lack of in demand talent as in a lack of the talent that we demand to have in the marketplace. I think you're seeing organizations already have and will continue to further move into what we. It's often called skills based hiring or strengths based hiring. And I use that as a contrast to experience based hiring. As in you don't just hire. You can't hire somebody for most jobs who has the job title you're looking for and has the experience in a similar company just isn't happening. It's not enough talent out there. So organizations are being forced to say, well, what are the core competencies or skills or strengths required to be successful in this role? And we're going to be more open to people from different backgrounds who might demonstrate those skills and strengths. So it changes the way you have to hire, interview, assess. Of course you have to really change that. And that's easier for recruiting teams than it is for hiring managers. Right. But you also, as you said, there's an impact on hybrid working for things like D and I. There's an impact on this for D and I. More folks are being considered from more backgrounds. I was on a call this morning and we were talking about hiring recruiters and hiring recruiters who are. Yes. From different professions that probably wouldn't be considered before. But also a company were telling me that they're trying to encourage their current team's mothers and fathers to apply for jobs as recruiters and get trained up. Can I somebody say this morning, you know, there's a lot of untapped people in their 50s and 60s who can be great recruiters? I'm thinking this is brilliant. Right. There's loads of other places that you could go for. I'm going to call it. A couple of comments that are in here. Jeremy Roberts saying I'm doing a new job where I actually need to learn from peers. An office will be great for that but not necessary once I am ramped up. And this is the thing about hybrid Jeremy doesn't mean all remote. That's not, I think what we're saying either. You know, there's a time for in person, there's a time for remote and social talent. We recognize our team absolutely want to see each other. They just don't feel the need to see each other to do work. So we're really active in creating opportunities to go for lunch, dinner, catch up, but don't do work while you're doing that. Keep work in a way that works for everyone else, which for us is remote but not for everybody. It's a really good point. If you're newer in a business or you really need to learn off people, maybe zoom, just our teams doesn't work for you. And then George Larocque, think of the pressure they've relieved by putting pushing a return to the office 2023. It's much more pragmatic than trying to chase normal. You're so right, George. Right. And George, very well known analyst in the community and, and trend spotter for sure you're dead right. You know, it's kind of go away. It's like 2023 means sometime in the future. I think it doesn't mean 2023. It's kind of saying just stop talking about this for the next year and move on. Right. Normal is, is this, you know, why wouldn't this be normal? It's just different. Right. I was talking to somebody recently about, about, about a younger colleague who was, who didn't, didn't, hadn't worked in the world or it doesn't remember a world before 9 11. I talked about transport. You know, transport was very different pre 911 for me, for all of us who try, who traveled did air travel pre 911 it changed and never went back like the way that what people think of normal air travel to today, if you're of a certain age, that isn't normal. For those of us who are older who traveled before 911 it just became the way the world was moved on and this is the way we've moved on. We love masks, we love different things and vaccinations for a while it just won't be A big.

Do you remember a time when people were able to smoke in a restaurant or a bar?

I remember in a plane Holly. The first time I ever got in a plane.

I'm not quite old enough for that.

That's. That's maybe show my age but that was. And I hate smoking smoke and so I sit up the front of the plane. But to think of it, you're going to really half the plane we're smoking. It's kind of mental.

And they swap with one another.

Oh, I don't run out of time. Right, let. Let's jump into I skills and strength based hiring. It's there at the moment, keep going further because the market demands it. But it's a better way to assess talent. I'll move you to your last prediction. Hobby.

Well actually it quite nicely links in with. With a better way to assess talent talent and also comes to something that Jeremy had mentioned about that kind of transfer of tacit knowledge. So having a place to work can be really nice in order to do that. But we often think about promotions as being kind of. Unfortunately they often tend to be. They tend to be proximity based because we can see the visual like see that we can visually see that a person is achieving their work. And also we have a much more ability to build a relationship with. With employees when we see them in person. And therefore I think internal mobility is going to be a huge challenge over the next 12 months. In particular because a lot of people who are hired, let's say at the beginning of the pandemic for new roles or even in the last kind of in the last six months who are due or can be eligible for promotion inside an organization now or kind of are definitely ready to do that because they've definitely elevated up. They haven't been in an office. Right. They haven't had that in person relationship with their manager to therefore have other internal mobility opportunities kind of, you know, have that kind of career place or career conversations, internal ability is going to be a huge challenge. I think hybrid working is a manager's challenge rather than an employee's challenge. And internal mobility is one of the biggest ones for that because we just don't have the visual anymore. So we just need new ways to identify and nurture people's ability to be promotable and therefore get promoted. But similarly, you know that the age old thing that managers always have which is oh, I can't afford to lose my best person. I know she deserves a promotion but I can't afford to lose her where she is to Move over to this other amazing team because she's doing some such amazing work within our team. It is important, I think that obviously we keep as many people as we can for the organizations. The great resignation over the past year has definitely decimated talent inside our companies. And internal mobility, or lack of has been one of the biggest causes for that as well as just bad managers not being human. People be like, I quit, I move into somewhere else. So yeah, that's my prediction. Internal mobility being challenging next year.

Totally agree. It's. It's a new philosophy for talent. It's complicated. It takes a decade or so to fix in an organization. Potentially culturally huge. I remember talking, I spoke to the group of leaders this year and I mentioned internal mobility. They went, oh yeah, like people being promoted. I said, yeah, what else? Like that's not, that's not the end of it. To Bev K, one of our guests this year, her point, the only way is not up. You know, there's more ways to go. And yeah, we have a lot of talent hoarders out there and that's a typical leader.

Right.

As opposed to letting folks go. But there's not a thing challenges that you've got process challenges in the recruiting process, you've got leader challenges. In terms of their hoarders, they don't know how to support that, they don't want to support that. And then the individuals in organization often don't know where to go to find the jobs. How do you get a job internally? I've worked here for 15 years. How do I move departments? Is that possible? What skills do I need? It's complicated. Right. But that's the talent world we live in and the market forces us to do that. You have to, you know, look at your internal talent, perhaps over and above external talent and change that focus. A talent acquisition which often in the TA world you had separate teams, one for internal, one for external. External. I think you just, it's talent, you know, and you see more talent teams come together. We've seen this in the last few years, but I think there's tons there to work with. I think they're probably safe enough predictions where we're not just deliberately going after safe predictions. We do believe they are the ones. So the ESG focus hybrid working skills based or strengths based hiring and internal mobility. There are four themes. You heard them here and we'll see how they played out during 2022. Holly, thanks for joining me on, on this. You might stay with me while I close out the show. We're going to go from the future to the past. Next week for our final show of the year, I'm really excited about this. I'm gonna be joined by the wonderful Jerry Crispin. He's a principal and co founder of Career Crossroads. And more than that, he's the godfather of recruitment. And what Jerry doesn't know about recruiting isn't worth knowing. But Jerry's gonna be coming on to talk about the history of recruitment. And this is gonna be a fun show because Jerry was involved in a project this year where he worked with a bunch of folks, myself and some of the people who are listening here today to crowdsource what is the ultimate history of recruiting. And he shared it with me recently and it's fascinating. So you're gonna have an opportunity to hear him go through that, to find out things about this profession, this industry you never knew. Some of the root causes of some of the things that we accept day to day. You probably didn't even know about some of the milestones of the big companies, the biggest events that happened. That's going to be next week, just before Christmas. Wednesday 22nd of December might be your final day in the office. If so, do join us for hopefully 45 minutes of really interesting, insightful chat. That's at 4pm UK Ireland time. It's 11am on the east coast of the US 8am in the west coast. And you can find that by going to socialtown.com forward/the shortlist, go to YouTube Social Talent or go to my LinkedIn profile. Or you can catch the audio podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you find your podcast by Wednesday evening next week. So do join us for a bit of the past to complement the future that we've brought you here today. Thanks, Holly. Thanks to you for listening. We'll see you next week.