Episode #3: Leadership

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Welcome to the IBM Keep It Simple Technology Podcast, where each episode we discuss technology but in a simple way. We keep the explanations simple, but what we spend our time on is emphasizing what this technology means to you and how you can best utilize this technology for you and your business. Your host, as always, Thomas Anglero.

Welcome to the Keep It Simple technology talk show. I am Thomas Anglero, Director of Innovation for IBM in the Nordics, and today we are going to talk about leadership. Today is Friday, March 20th, 2020. Wow, 2020. Special day, and we have a special guest. Our special guest today is Anna-Sofia Risåsen. She is a special guest, and, and when we're talking about leadership today, I thought there'd be no one better than Anna-Sofia. Anna-Sofia was the former managing director for Capgemini in Norway. She's been an executive at, uh, Microsoft, and now she's a senior executive in the Nordics for IBM. With responsibility for one of IBM's largest Nordic customers called KMD in Denmark. And with so much executive experience, with so much experience leading people, I thought on 2020, we would have Anna-Sofia come and talk to us about leadership. Anna-Sofia, are you still with me after that very long intro?

Yes, I'm here, and thank you for inviting me.

Well, thank, thank me after this thing is over. So look, we are on Friday, March 20th, 2020, as I said already 3 times, and I think that's really important. This is the first Friday at the end of the first week of quarantine during these corona days, right? And people will be listening to this episode anytime in the future. And it's the content that we talk about is extremely relevant because how— what should a leader be thinking now? Right? So right now you have some leaders who are at home and maybe in the future they're not at home because they're quarantined. They're just at home and they're wondering, how can I be a better leader? Right? So let's start off with in terms of leading, because you've led a lot of people. How many people have you led, you think, over your career? You've led a lot of people in a lot of different companies.

Yes, you're right. I don't know, actually. It's a very good question. I should probably try to count it at one time.

Um, and that, and that shows, that shows me you're not very American, that you're Norwegian, because as an American, I would have that number tattooed to my chest. But, but I know you've, you led a lot of people. So let's go specifically to the first big, really interesting question. I'm— let's go through a scenario to make it really easy and applicable for everybody. I'm a leader, I'm at home. Of course I care for my employees, or maybe I want to care more. Maybe I'm having difficulty to how to care for them. That's a difficult concept for me, right? What are some of the things I can be thinking now? What are some of the first things that come to mind for you?

I think right now it's important to be in touch with all your people. To be in touch, I guess, almost on a daily basis, to check in in some way to see how they are. And also to be calm, I think it's important because you have to keep everything going, get everyone to focus on their work and what they're supposed to do, but also focus on their families and doing what the governments tell us and follow the rules. So everything we have to keep— I think the leader, we have as a leader, we have to keep calm and not make people even more stressed.

Okay, but then let's break down what you just said. Now you said they should check in, and I think let's define what you mean by check-in because that's really important. Yeah, some cultures in the world Well, let me use my own personal experience in the past. When my boss checks in with me, that's not a very nice experience, right? So please be more specific about what do you mean by check-in. How would you check in?

It's different ways, I think. I mean, if you have a— one day maybe you have a meeting which is your regular team meeting, but the next day you don't Then it could be just calling, calling more often and ask, how are you? Do you need some help? And is there something you want to discuss with me right now? And I don't think all those calls have to be for 30 minutes or a long time. It could be small, like a couple of minutes, 5 minutes, and just to follow up. And I think it's very important now that we do that almost every day with our team. Hmm.

Let me give, I have a, let me give my own advice on that. And I'd like, I agree with you completely. Um, but I want to go a more softer approach, and I think it's good to have different approaches because everybody's different, right? Um, in these trying days, or if you have a team member who you are aware of, they're going through a difficult situation with their family, maybe somebody's sick or something happens— something's always happening— I think when you have these check-ins that I would recommend, if it's in your personality and you're capable of doing it, to begin the check-in, or let's say to begin the discussion— calling it a check-in is so insulting, actually— to begin the discussion with the soft stuff. Like, how are you doing? How are you doing really? Before you get all to the business discussion. Because if you do the business discussion first, good morning, Johan, how are you? Yes, yes, yes. Did you finish what I told you to do? Yeah. Okay. Oh, by the way, how's your family?

Yeah.

Okay, great, great. Talk to you later. I mean, that's horrible, right?

Yeah, I agree. I agree. You should really start with the personal side because people now, they react so differently to this, what's happening in the world right now. So it's very important that you as a leader have the feeling with each person, how they're doing and how they react. In that way, you help them better. So I agree with you.

Absolutely. You, you know, you've probably, you've led a lot of people and you've had to deal with a lot of employees who've had difficult, say, family or personal situations. As a leader who has an employee who has a difficult personal situation, in your experience, um, is that difficult for you as a leader, or is it not as hard as people think it is? Because I know a lot of people— not a lot of leaders are hesitant to go there. They'd rather just have a short, quick phone call, talk about business, and not touch that part, because either they're afraid, they don't want to be disrespectful. But what about in your experience? What, what do you— what, what have you done?

Yeah, no, I don't think, I don't think it's difficult. I think if you talk to people, they will share with you if they want to share with you everything, or they just want to keep it very personal. And also in that way, people react differently. So I think you should ask the leader, ask them, you should take time to ask them that question, both how they're doing and also how much do they want to share with you and discuss with you. Because that could also be very different from people to people.

So you're saying be very upfront with that question, right? I know you're going through a difficult time. Uh, how much are you willing to share with me? And also, I guess you should use a qualifier and say, I am your boss, but in this situation, that has nothing to do what I'm asking you. I just want to know, I'm trying to make you comfortable, and if you like to share a lot with me or nothing, just let me know so I can respect you and your boundaries. A good— would that work?

Yeah, I think so. I think that will work. And I think that's the same also when we're not in this situation, when we're in the office, it's exactly the same.

Explain please.

It's not a big difference between the situation right now and the situation when we're in the office in normal times, because also there some people want to share more than others. I think the difference is that now you don't meet the people by the coffee machine or walking down the hallway at work. Now you have to call them and ask them and talk to them. That's the difference. And you cannot see their body language as you can when you're in the work yourself. And you can sometimes read the body language, how they're doing, and you can ask them. That's the difference now with the situation we are in.

Yeah, you know, and I see a flip side. I see an advantage to that because they can't see my body language either, right? So If I'm a leader and I'm a bit insecure, or let's say uncomfortable with the soft talk, right? I think this is a great time now because we can't see each other's body language and they can't see me cringing or curling my toes on how uncomfortable I am because we have to do soft talk because it's not really natural for me. But then that makes you more comfortable to say those things, saying, "Hey, how are you? Is it okay to talk about this?" And as I say this now, I'm clenching my fists, right? Because I'm feeling this uncomfortableness thing in saying that. But that's the beauty of not seeing each other, that you could actually say those words the right way while your body can have all the natural reactions you can have.

Right, exactly. And then of course you can turn on the video camera if you want to. Yeah, share more.

Yeah, but I, I, I, again, I'm going to disagree with you. I love this. This is giving different sides, right? So I think sometimes having just an audio discussion— I mean, let's look at the old school way before there was video. It was just telephone. How many people fell in love over the telephone? How many people kept their relationships going over the telephone? It's just voice. Voice is powerful, right? Video adds a different element to it. So it's okay to just keep it audio, and it's okay to go video. But I, I think audio is extremely powerful. And also, that's why we're doing a podcast, because audio is powerful, right? Audio sinks very, very deep. Ann-Sophia, um, when people start— leaders start going back into the office, and we don't know how people to go back into the office, are we all going to go back off to office one day or a group at a time, we're not sure, some of the things as a leader that you think they should be thinking about, right? Because where I'm going with this is that, is this potentially a new opportunity to reset the team, reset yourself, um, give people a new opportunity to reestablish their personality? I mean, or is this just business as usual? How do you see it?

I absolutely think it's a way to reset. You can use this to reset your teams. Of course, when we come back, we have to— when we meet the first time, I think everyone will discuss this. This will be the big topic. And then it can be for some days or some hours, we don't know. But it will be each person needing to discuss it differently. I think as a leader then, you have to both— both you have to recognize that people need to discuss it, but also you need to get back to work and structure and get everything going, to have your business going. So this has to be something that you are aware of or think about when you get back to the office, that you do both sides. You have to get people back to the structure and the work and, yeah, the phase of the normal day.

You said a lot of things that I want to break down, right? Keep it all really simple. You first said that people are going to talk a lot when they get back. And I'm— again, I want to challenge, is it possible to do that talking prior to getting into your office so that when everybody finally gets back in the office, they don't live in front of the water cooler, if you know that expression, in the first days back? And that's extremely inefficient. Is there something we can do prior to that, or is it probably more human nature that when we finally see each other physically, we need to do that water cooler talk.

I think if we do the sync we talked about earlier and do it regularly now with our teams, we will discuss it and people have discussed this in those syncs. So they don't have so much need to be by the water cooler when they come back. That's helping on it. I think also when we go back and see each other again now physically for the first time, We will need to discuss it a bit before we get back to the normal structure of work. Yeah, I think also we can use this to get to know each other better as teams and as people, and the leaders can use this as an opportunity to get their teams closer together.

Yeah, and I think what you touched on now is really important. Use this as an opportunity to get closer together. First thing, as you said, the first thing to think about is That's now. Don't wait till you call back to the office to have that talk like, "How did it go with you and your family?" Why don't you just have that call now? Let's be brutally honest, right? Families right now are struggling because they're being forced into quarantine or being forced to be with each other. And usually that's saved for a vacation, that chaos, right, of being stuck with the husband, the wife, the kids, and all this, you know, things that happen. So nobody was planning for that. So a lot of families are stressed right now. So let's look for everybody listening. You're not alone, right? Everybody's going through this stress. So maybe this is a good time now to reach out and call a colleague and say, hey, can we set up a business meeting? So that colleague be like, oh yeah, thank God, give me a couple of minutes away from the chaos that's at home. Great. And then during that call, you could just discuss it. How is it going? That's a good way to bond, don't you think?

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, you touched on another thing before, which was, um, when you get back to work, getting things back going. As a leader, how do you get people focused back on work, right? Because you want to go from— I guess it's a bit of being inefficient now because everybody's working remotely, and now you're going to be back in the office and stuff. Any advice on how to get people focused as soon as possible without coming off as a, you know, a bad leader, let's say, right? A boss, not a leader, but a boss. Any advice there?

No, I think what we already have— we have meetings, we have governance, we have teams. It's just to get it started. And I think we are doing it right now as well. I see with the people I work with, the teams, everything is going on. We are— luckily, we are in an industry where we are used to being digital, being on meetings, on Webex, on Teams. So we are— the day is not so different for us in our industry and our work as it is from some other businesses.

You're talking about the art industry, right?

I'm talking about the art industry, yes. I see in the way on— in how I work right now, everything is going on, things are continuing. All the meetings are getting on video or on audio like we are doing right now and not physical meetings, but everything is going, everything is continuing. And then of course there's extra check-ins, extra discussions because of the situation. So that's good. So in that way we are lucky, more lucky in the artist industry than some other where they had to probably spend more time to get things started again, then we have to do.

Yeah, there's one more topic I want to discuss before we end this part, this podcast, this episode, doesn't matter. And, and this is a very touchy subject, but I think it's appropriate. And that is that, um, a lot of people during this crisis and going forward into the future, right? Again, I said the date already several times, this is March 20th. 2020. Going forward with the global slowdown or shutdown and so many companies going bankrupt or putting people on leave for a very long time and families and less money than normal and people will lose jobs. And we had, before all this happened, we had the threat of AI taking them with people's jobs. Now when we come back to the office, who knows how things are gonna be.

Right.

Um, this is a hard question, at least for me, but you have a lot more experience than I do. As a leader, you're gonna have some hard discussions with people when you get back to the office, right? Do you have any advice? Because, um, I know you've had to, uh, let people go in the past as a leader. I think every leader has had it, but you've worked with some big companies and some big groups, so you have some experience there. Any experience for people listening who are maybe not, not a lot of experience or uncomfortable like I am right now, given the situation, and you have to let people go, do you have any advice for them? What to think about, how to, how to go about that?

Um, I think that's as usual. Um, as a leader, you have to look at the business, you have to look at the plan for the next months, the next year, which people and teams are going to work on that strategy, and then you have to decide what to do, what changes to do in your business. That's not different in this situation, I think. The difference is, of course, that we don't know how the business will go and what will happen in the next couple of months or weeks even. That's the difference. But just letting people go or even hiring more people, that we also see some companies and also we are doing right now, It's that strategy and business discussion and looking at what's coming from the customers. So I don't think that's a big bit. I don't think that that's a difference right now for how you do it. Of course, the circumstances and how the business is going is very different.

I think that's a good answer. And I like the fact that you said that the hiring part, right? Because with all this change brings new opportunities. And everyone listening should have that mindset that this is a new opportunity, right? The expression is when one door closes, another one opens. And I think that's the best place to end this episode. Anna-Sofia Risåsen, leader amongst all leaders, do you have any last words you'd like to bless us with?

No, I just say Take care of each other. That's what we have to do as the world is right now.

I think that is wonderfully said. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending the time and listening to the Keep It Simple Technology Talk Show. Anna-Sofia Risårsen, executive, senior executive at IBM in the Nordic countries, I thank you very much. This is Thomas Anglero saying thank you. Take care of yourself. Be safe, be healthy, be smart. Till the next time.