Are you ready to redefine your understanding of leadership? Join us for an enlightening conversation with our special guest, Sonya Law. With extensive experience in corporate and consulting roles, Sonya brings a fresh perspective to the evolving landscape of leadership. Our discussion uncovers the necessities of a modern leader, highlighting the shift from traditional command and control to a more collaborative and inclusive dynamic. Sonya passionately shares her experiences transitioning into consulting, underscoring the importance of self-belief and self-promotion in this new arena.
In the modern workforce, it's no longer enough to simply manage - our employees are seeking inspiration and growth. Our conversation with Sonya uncovers startling data from a Gallup poll, revealing that only 15% of employees feel genuinely engaged in their work. Sonya guides us through the importance of language and emotional connection as powerful tools for a leader. We explore how leaders can foster a caring, balanced environment, where both employees and customers thrive.
As we delve deeper, Sonya emphasizes the integral role of courageous and strategic leadership in ensuring organizational effectiveness. From the inspiring example of Lewis Gerstner’s turnaround of IBM to insights from the younger generation’s focus on skill acquisition over job security, we uncover nuggets of wisdom for every modern leader. This episode wraps up with the pressing need for leaders to support their employees and adapt their thinking to avoid legal pitfalls. Let's journey together through the myriad nuances of leadership in the modern world with Sonya Law. This is an episode you won't want to miss.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Are you ready to redefine your understanding of leadership? Join us for an enlightening conversation with our special guest, Sonya Law. With extensive experience in corporate and consulting roles, Sonya brings a fresh perspective to the evolving landscape of leadership. Our discussion uncovers the necessities of a modern leader, highlighting the shift from traditional command and control to a more collaborative and inclusive dynamic. Sonya passionately shares her experiences transitioning into consulting, underscoring the importance of self-belief and self-promotion in this new arena.
In the modern workforce, it's no longer enough to simply manage - our employees are seeking inspiration and growth. Our conversation with Sonya uncovers startling data from a Gallup poll, revealing that only 15% of employees feel genuinely engaged in their work. Sonya guides us through the importance of language and emotional connection as powerful tools for a leader. We explore how leaders can foster a caring, balanced environment, where both employees and customers thrive.
As we delve deeper, Sonya emphasizes the integral role of courageous and strategic leadership in ensuring organizational effectiveness. From the inspiring example of Lewis Gerstner’s turnaround of IBM to insights from the younger generation’s focus on skill acquisition over job security, we uncover nuggets of wisdom for every modern leader. This episode wraps up with the pressing need for leaders to support their employees and adapt their thinking to avoid legal pitfalls. Let's journey together through the myriad nuances of leadership in the modern world with Sonya Law. This is an episode you won't want to miss.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation To Joy today. I'm so pleased to welcome back Sonja Law. Sonja's been busy for the last little while and we've finally caught up with her. So, Sonja, good to see you Welcome back.
Speaker 2:Great to see you, ron, thank you. Thank you for the warm welcome back.
Speaker 1:Sonja is introduced in a blog post that I think went up tonight on a new leadership, which is what I'd like to start this discussion about, but from the perspective of where both Sonja and I come from or came from in the older leadership style. So I worked with a couple of caterpillar dealers and doing almost all the operational jobs and I went through the hiring and firing and the lack of performance reviews and performance standards and all of the rest of that stuff. It was pretty much a command and control world. Sonja, you had similar experiences with manufacturers and different distributors in Australia. Do you want to comment on where you came from on that?
Speaker 2:Yes, certainly, I think you're from similar worlds in engineering and manufacturing. For me it was in mining, in compressors, so engineering-based business. Typically, leadership was around giving orders and the people taking orders. Yes, it was quite mechanistic.
Speaker 1:It was really an old structure. It's been around forever, though.
Speaker 2:Yes, and things have changed post-pandemic, because people are re-evaluating their priorities in life. Some people, and also different generations, don't really respond to taking orders. We know in the talent shortage, the shift has moved to the candidate. Having more power about what type of work they do and particularly what leader that they work for is becoming more important. The leadership has a huge impact on your day-to-day, on your mental health and well-being and your career and whether you get opportunities professionally or personally. I think it's shifting.
Speaker 1:Maybe you can bring us it's been about three years since you left the corporate world and went into the consulting, directing, speaking world. Tell us a little bit about how that has been for you and how you've transitioned into that.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's been a huge shift because previously I thought if you just do good work and you be humble and work really hard, that's what will get you opportunities within an organisation. But when you move into this new space of working for yourself, you actually have to promote what it is that you do. So you have to step into that space of what is it that I really enjoy and how am I going to communicate that and who are my potential clients. So that's been a big, big shift for me, because you have to promote which would be more of an extravert, which I found very difficult, asking for the business and selling yourself right, Because I would always just humbly do good work.
Speaker 1:Well, give yourself a little bit of a credit for a second. You were doing human resources in mining companies and manufacturing companies, so you were kind of I'm going to call it the conscience of the company. When you now all of a sudden get out into the world, instead of being the conscience on somebody else's issues, you were the analyst on those issues. That's a different role. Not everybody can make that transition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you 100% have to have belief in yourself, you have to back yourself. But what I was finding is that when you're in a senior role, you're doing that one job, you're working for that one organization, you're limited really to your industry, but you're not really learning and you're not really sort of evolving. And I really felt like I actually outgrew my role and it was no longer providing me with the challenge and the stimulation in which to learn and to grow and I feel that I also wanted to give more, not just to my sort of immediate organization but to the industry and really give back. And that's what a lot of my speaking has been about at the HR summit the last three years in Melbourne, australia and Sydney Is for me to learn but also for me to give back to the human resources. Industry has been very rewarding. You know, yes, money is important, we need financial sustainability, but I think there's you know there's a lot of reward and actually, you know, honing your craft and giving back to industry after a great career.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people would love to be in that same position. People get stuck, they get caught in ruts in their jobs and they don't really consider that there's opportunities for them elsewhere. Yeah, it's really interesting and that's generational more than anything else. I think the younger people and I'm going to just put a cut on it 45 years and down and 45 years and up, 45 years and down and maybe it's younger yet they're not as locked in.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:As we were.
Speaker 2:They're more about the acquisition of skills and I love they 100% back themselves and literally they could be a consultant at any age. Everyone has value and perspective to bring. It's not necessarily something that comes with age. It often comes with perspective and different thinking. Hats and you know, always say good ideas don't just come from people being in an organization for 20 years. It can be from someone who's like day one and it can come from different departments and different generations and that's not always respected.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was very lucky. When I started out I was kind of the fixer. Wherever there was a problem, they put me to fix it and as long as I fixed it they kept me on employee. But a lot of people are hired, they're trained on doing the job. Then they're asked to get really good at the job and do it more effectively or more efficiently or faster or fewer errors or whatever. But that's it. Don't. Don't look over the wall, just do this job. I don't think the employees are interested in that anymore. If they ever were Younger, people don't want that.
Speaker 2:No, and they're really looking for leaders that inspire them and who they feel that they can grow from. So it's they're really assessing the leadership and the person they're directly reporting to, because they think, well, the job is the job, you know, I'll learn the job, I'll apply myself. But they're looking for so much more now from the, particularly from the leader, their report to the leadership and the culture, which I think is actually quite different.
Speaker 1:I'd almost like to say that every employee is a consultant in their own right to their company, but I don't know that many leaders are interested in that kind of view. I have an exercise that I call five things and it's a kind of a door opener to best practices that I say, okay, write down five things, and I give them a piece of paper and we take some time and it's typically a department and say, okay, give me five things that you would like to have happen with your job. That would make your life better.
Speaker 1:And when they finish that, then the next one is okay, give me five things that you do today that are a real pain in the butt. And then, after that's done, okay, give me five things that would make a big difference in how the company operates within that department. And then we take those five things in each of those categories, put it up on a white board or a flip chart or whatever and make the language the same, because they'll use different expressions. And it's amazing to me, sonia, how many items are on the same or on all three lists. And I look at them and I say, okay, so help me, it would make your life better, it's a pain in the butt to do and it would help the company. Why is it not done?
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of blank looks. I think that's got to be a real important part of the new leadership that you've been exposing. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it's. I always say to someone in my team what do you want to learn? You know, what is it that you want from this particular experience? Right, not necessarily the job, but this experience you know in the team, like what skills? That's what they want.
Speaker 2:They want that skill acquisition and those skills aren't necessarily just obviously work skills, it's like how you go about things. So you know the softer skills, the communication, the influencing. They're really craving the emotional intelligence and how you, you know problem, yeah, your problem solved, how you approach problems, how you think through them, how you communicate with stakeholders, how you influence them. That's what they're wanting to learn, because you know a lot of that they can't learn from university or some leaders won't teach. So you know especially that command and control. It's just you know here's the task, go do it, but not necessarily why or how it should be approached. So for me I always say I guess you know around those five things is you know what are the top five things you want to learn, and then I provide teachable moments as best I can within that structure.
Speaker 1:That's another list that I should add five things you want to learn. Yeah, yeah, you know it's everything about. What I've been doing the last 10 years, I guess is about helping people identify their potential.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's not necessarily something that people want to do. That's tough work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the deep work really.
Speaker 1:And when you're younger, you really have no idea what do you want to do. You know, I teach people what do you want to do when you grow up and I say, well, I haven't figured that out myself and I'm 76 years old. You know, it's kind of difficult because, as and as what you've gone through in your professional life, you're evolving, you're, you're moving in different directions, as when you say learning and growth that's, and curiosity as part of that and challenges part of that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I think I you know, I've said this since the beginning of time. Everybody wants to do a good job, but everybody can do more than what they think they can. The trick is to interest them in doing that. Not everybody wants to, but they could do more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think when we look at the Gallup poll, which tests world engagement, employee engagement, they're saying only 15% of employees are engaged in their work and the other 85% are just kind of coasting along doing the bare minimum, but really they're not feeling emotionally connected to their, to their work, which really demands a new direction, new leadership for leaders really to put the mirror up and, and you know, do a review of their leadership style, critical analysis about you know what, where the gaps are, and actually take action to actually close those gaps. Because, with the talent shortage and needing to attract people, but also to get that discretionary effort from your existing people, it's really important that we have well rounded leaders, because it all still flows from the top. I don't think that that's changed, but I think we need to look at, you know, leadership and how we do engage people so we can, you know, like you said, access their full potential.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm in the in these times I'm telling everybody I want to have the people that touch the customers at the top like take our pyramid or typical management pyramid, where the boss is on the top, flip it so that the bottom is facing the customers and the leadership. Their job is to support and provide for the people that are touching the customers. It's all about developing and maintaining a relationship, and that's person to person, and customer service, in my view, over the last 20 years has has disappeared. Part of that I can blame on the internet, but that's a bad excuse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's more than that, and I use a sporting example. So recently here in Australia, we hosted the Women's World Cup and Matilda's, our team, and soccer has only been around since 1991 for women, so it's fairly new game for us. Yet we achieved, you know, number four in the world, which is phenomenal, phenomenal results.
Speaker 2:It's amazing and I watched a lot of the coaches, you know, post match conferences and I listened to a lot of the girls. I Sam Kerr, who's a fantastic representative of the game and outstanding player and human being. The language she used was, you know, to the fans is we hear you, we see you, we feel you obviously always talking from the week because we're a team, but I think, you know, they wanted to create a fan experience essentially, and just even the power of words and the power of language from someone like Sam Kerr speaking in that way, she was able to emotionally connect with, you know, an audience with a fan base and a lot of leaders within organizations don't speak from the week and they don't emotionally connect with their customer, with their employees, to create, you know, that experience. And you know, if we look to sport in the way that was done, I think there's, you know, a lot to learn for leaders about.
Speaker 2:You know, having that, that style rather than well, here's sounds terrible, our boring strategy that no one emotionally connects with. I know one day we have 15% engagement, no one believes, no one even knows what strategy is, no one, you know, is engaged in the purpose of the organization and they don't feel anything. So you know, how do we as leaders, you know, elicit that emotional connection and essentially improve that employee experience and that extends to the customer? So if we take care of people, then they take care of customers. You know, it all kind of has a flow on effect. But you know, I mean I'm biased, but I think the great example of that Sports is a wonderful metaphor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you love sports, ron.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, in life we get. I think we need balance, and I don't think we're good at doing that, Because COVID forced a lot of people, a lot of us, to reevaluate things. So I'm going to split my life into three pieces. There's my career, there's my family and then there's myself. And over my career, which has now spent more than 50 years, the first thing that I would drop was myself.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because that's easy.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You don't even know that it's not important that I exercise or it's not important I go for that walk or whatever it is. And the second thing if the pressure on the job or the need of the work becomes intense, the family suffers, and I don't think the younger generation, I think they've seen this, I think they've grown up in it and I don't think they want to have anything to do with it.
Speaker 2:They're 100% correct and smart to think like that. They think from have I rested enough to work? Have I got enough, if I've got enough balance in my life? And it's a really healthy perspective, because I coach leaders in a one-on-one coaching scenario and they always say to me they just abandon themselves or their health goals because they're time poor, they're overwhelmed and they've become burnt out.
Speaker 1:essentially, yes, and it's self-induced. That's the worst part of it. I remember sitting about 20 years ago. My wife and I were on a cruise on one of our anniversaries and I was on a treadmill looking at the ocean. And I did that every day for about an hour and about halfway through the cruise it struck me. They said this is the only real investment in yourself you've made in the last five years. And I grew up as a jock. I'd trained five, six hours a day for eight, 10 years of my life. It was a constant part of me. But as soon as I started work, that disappeared. I wasn't able to manage that work-life balance as a single person. It wasn't that I was running around in bars or chasing ladies, but it was work and that was it. Covid changed all that very quickly.
Speaker 1:Management in the United States is still suffering, trying to figure out how to get people to come back to work, and they don't want to. There was a survey I saw yesterday that said that the average income of a new person coming into the workforce in the United States today, the expectation, is $80,000. The other thing about 10 or 15 years ago there was again Gallup and other survey companies. 90% of the companies in the United States fail to achieve their strategy, and that caused a lot of people concern. So back to surveys. Well, why was that? And the primary cause was 95% of the employees in the company didn't know what that strategy was. So now you've got leaders that are hiding in their offices, not communicating with the people, and that's starting to go away. Everything switch between effective and efficient. You know everybody well what's the difference. Efficient is doing things right. Effective is doing the right things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Liz Wiseman talks about that people getting stuck in contributor mode. So they're just contributing, they're just doing their job, but nothing more. And that's around that 15% right, exactly 15% of gates. They got 85% disengaged, so that's that 85%. Yeah, so it's like you said, about being effective is those impact players and in sport, too, we know who those impact players are, who can raise the energy of the whole team. They know what needs to be done at the critical moment. Now those people exist within an organization and some really forward thinking organizations are like who are impact players? Because they have the ability to not only engage themselves but engage their team and people around them, which is really important for that effectiveness. Yes, because we want leaders to have that multiplier effect on people, because we can't always be one to one. So but to your point, yeah, effectiveness, impact is really important in getting the engagement levels up.
Speaker 1:The hard thing is to get people to understand that there are skills that leaders need to have that haven't been asked of them in the past, and a case in point, that that football tournament in Australia, the winning team from Spain.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, wow yes.
Speaker 1:Do you want to see a case study? That coach got a lot of really, really well respected, wonderful players. They didn't play for him.
Speaker 2:Like 15 players like that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looked into that. It was a tough move. I was going to say Bozzy move. The thing.
Speaker 1:there's a leader who really let it all hang out, and the Federation supported him.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And look how it turned out.
Speaker 2:They won yes, exceptional.
Speaker 1:Think about business and think of that type of transformation. I call it sacred cows. We got to shoot all these old fashioned thinking, ideas, concept, systems, methods, procedures, whatever. Get rid of them 100%. But who has the courage to do it?
Speaker 2:The concerned CEOs. They're concerned about their job Right, so if they make those moves, will they be backed by the shareholder? Essentially? So what we see is what the coach did for Spain. We don't typically see that in organizations.
Speaker 1:Very rare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very, very rare, unless they're the owner and founder. And if they're the owner and founder, they will.
Speaker 1:Perhaps we need to pay more attention to those as case studies. There's Lewis Gerstner. Have you heard the name? He was a consultant with McKinsey and he became the chairman of IBM. This is 20, 25, maybe 30 years ago now and IBM was in deep trouble. His first meeting with his direct reports, he went around the room and asked each of them, one at a time, to stand up and tell him who their top three customers were. After four or five people not being able to do it, he killed the meeting, gave them a week. They had to come back at the next meeting and they went and they gave them three. You know what he did next. He took those customer names and left the building for six months and went out and visited every single one of those customers and asked them what do you want from us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a real old con and we need more case studies. You know, exposing that kind of utzba, okay Courage, it can't be about you. You have to believe in what the heck you're trying to do and if other people don't want to follow, that's their problem, not yours. But there's not very many people that have that kind of utzba. You did it three years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely I did it 40 years ago.
Speaker 1:You know it's a crazy world and the thing the reason it resonates so much with me, sonia, the new leadership is your generation is carrying a torch that the world needs to pay attention to. The style that we had the illustration I've often used is when the electric engine replaced the steam engine. The tool changed, but the process is needed two generations before it changed.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:When the industrial revolution took place, leaving the farm and going into the city, it took a couple of generations, and there's always problems in transition. Today, with technology, artificial intelligence, chat, tpt, data analytics, everything that's going on. It's wonderful, but it's pretty scary for a lot of people. Fear, yeah. Yeah, you know. There's another expression that I use a lot. What would you do if you weren't afraid Getting married? What would you do if you weren't afraid Having a child? What would you do if you weren't afraid? Everything we do is about transitions, isn't it? Separations. I think the younger generation see that more than we and the older generation do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. They expect to change their jobs more often because it's experiences and skills they're trying to acquire. They are very tuned into emotional intelligence and wanting to build that muscle. They absolutely understand and respect technology and our best insight into how best to use it, but they really want to learn from us. You know the people skills, Yet we're not giving them that experience and that's the most important. That gets handed down from leadership and that's how we evolve and we learn and we get better at what we do, but we're not taking the lessons.
Speaker 1:So I wonder how many of the current leaders, or leaders that you've been around or that I've been around, are in the position that they could train on that, or do they have different skills that they honed to get to those positions and they don't know how to transition out of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're typically technical and very civilized in what they do and don't necessarily learn the people skills, so they fall into these leadership roles. But when they get into executive leadership it's very, very rare that they'll take on individual coaching or leadership training. They more put it in the hands of the middle management or the people managers or branch managers. They're the ones that are having challenges with their people leadership styles. But it really needs to happen that. You know that's what I do, that one-on-one coaching with the executive team, because you need to get it right there first and as a group, and then you know you can actually roll that down to people leadership. But yeah, it's got to start at the top.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. And there's the people at the top that engage with you. They're the ones that are enlightened. Their companies are going to succeed Excuse the way this sounds even without you.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:How you can embed yourself in companies that don't know they need you or don't believe they need you. They're okay. That's the real challenge, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, absolutely. It usually shows up in symptoms of not being able to attract talent, of having poor engagement scores and also people not prepared to take on the project. So it could be digital transformation or change management, but they're just literally too tired and burnt out the people that is to do the extra work and to engage in the projects that the business needs to implement, and that's a real handbrake on an organisation. And if you've got a bunch of employees just in that contributor mode, that's another reason they get burnt out as well. If they don't feel connected to the work they're doing, they're having making a difference, having impact, they also fall into that burnout bucket.
Speaker 2:And then we're seeing a lot of absenteeism and productivity issues and also a lot of legal litigation that their performance is challenged. There is a lot of litigation that is happening within Australia and our industrial relations landscape is really changing and there's a lot of risk around employing people these days. If we take it at a leadership level and really think about how we best support, holistically, the employees, then we don't have the litigation, we don't have the disengagement, the absenteeism, the quality issues, the productivity issues. It's not hard for us to hire. So you know it's really flicking the switch on leadership and you're looking at a new way of leading the businesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's true. Everybody needs to adopt new thinking.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And if they can't adopt it, they have to adapt their thinking. And if that doesn't work, the one that's more painful is they have to abandon their thinking because it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But it's a strange world. It's kind of where 45 or 50 years past, continuous quality improvement in Japan. Kaizen is something that I very much admire, that everybody every day tries to do things a little bit better.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And they're encouraged to do that. And the Anglo-Saxon world? That's not so much the way we think. But if you get a job, get good at it. Don't get pushy, be obedient. Do what I tell you to do damn it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That doesn't work. I got a 22-year-old granddaughter and an 18-year-old grandson. Those two have no interest in that whatsoever and they're sharp like tacks, and the 50-year-old actually it's not. But in America, what's happened, Sonia? That's interesting to me. We have delayed the generation of leadership by about 10 years. We've got people that are in their 70s continuing to run businesses and institutions instead of people in their 50s, and that's retarding this whole thing. That's slowing this whole thing down.
Speaker 2:And I've met some, you know, 70 year olds who are very forward thinking. You know, I think it's not necessarily always an age thing.
Speaker 1:Sorry, it isn't, it isn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely a struggle.
Speaker 1:Please, please say it's not an age thing. Yeah, it's definitely not an age thing.
Speaker 2:I have a guy's friend, well, he's still in business in his 70s and he's still doing triathlon and very fit and, yeah, very progressive. So yeah, I just don't want to be biased. It's not an age thing, it's just, it's a mindset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I don't know how we tap that mindset, because we're not teaching it at school.
Speaker 2:No, that growth versus fixed mindset. Dr Carol Dweck's done a lot of work in that area and, yeah, we should be teaching at school for sure.
Speaker 1:There's a guy that's written a lot of books by the name of Patrick Lencioni. Oh, yes, and I remember a talk that he gave where his graduating class was really recruited heavily. A lot of people invested a lot of time to hire them and the executives came and they did all of that stuff and so he's hired and he's in the company and he's working in San Francisco. And one of the guys that interviewed him walked right by him and Lencioni said, hello, good to see you, sir. And the guy just kept on going, didn't even know who the hell he was.
Speaker 2:But that's a bid for connection right. It's exactly right.
Speaker 1:And Brenna.
Speaker 2:Brenna talked about that. You know the Gottmans talk about that. When someone's making genuine connection with you and you do that, oh my God, you know. You can just imagine how that person feels in that moment and that's really hard to recover from.
Speaker 1:It's not impossible.
Speaker 2:Not impossible.
Speaker 2:But, it has to be very deliberate. Yeah, you know, resolving that but it's really an important part for leaders is that they create space and opportunity for the connection. That's informal. So that's what the younger generation are looking for too. You know, they do expect that you're posting on social media and you have a voice and that you're influencing, but they also expect that you're accessible and pretty sort of approachable and transparent as well.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily being the orator at a town hall or in all hands and giving the same message to everyone. They want a message for them as an individual, because they're used to that. You know, with instant messenger and direct message, they're used to a customized message just for them. That's what the employee experience is about now and it could be, you know, it could say that's for the customer experience as well. So for leaders, it's creating that space by. You know, if you've got a 9am meeting, you're not getting in the door at 5am to 9am and then say morning, morning, morning and then going straight to the meeting. You're getting in earlier and you're catching up with people. How are you there for them to talk? And you know, have a bit of time and it's really important, you know to not, yeah, I mean, it's not always practical, but it's important to do it as a routine, and great leaders do that.
Speaker 1:What other than that type of thing, the communication and the engagement with the employees? What else is important? What else is important for leaders to do? Is there anything that is as important as that?
Speaker 2:I think it's, you know, all, very important. I think a lot of the time it's for them remembering what it was like for them when they first started in their career. I don't see them reflecting, you know, on what it was like when they're communicating with an employee of a different generation, really stepping into what their experience might be. I think that's actually really important because you can't provide the same experience to everyone and the best way to do that is to step, try and step into someone else's shoes from their perspective. You know, is it around that empathy? But yeah, I'd say emotional intelligence, empathy and, yeah, bits for connection are important.
Speaker 1:We're shifting as we speak. We're changing our website where we've got assessments, the evaluation tool for people with their job to know what the skills and knowledge is, and also the education piece, and what we're doing is breaking it down underneath those two major categories into subcategories one's operations, one's human resources, one's leadership. And in the leadership side you mentioned reflective we have an associate John Carlson is leading a company called Reflect EF, which stands for executive function. Executive function is a tool that's been used in universities for three, four or five decades to measure the capacity of a student and what it allows. It's got a bit of a bad reputation because it was used in schools for autistic learning. It wasn't a very good application.
Speaker 1:But in the commercial sense, understanding whether you're a giver or a taker, understanding what emotional intelligence is not IQ, eq when a large group of people are well, my brains will get me there has nothing to do with your brains anymore. It's that coach from Spain. You know who got the best out of a group of people. It's all teamwork but there's no start. That's hard for people like oh, come on, you know Michael Phillips is the best swimmer. You know Ian Thorpe is the best swimmer. You know there's always a best, not true? The attribute that's interesting with a good individual sport competitor is they don't compete with others, they compete with themselves.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's a very rare thing. I think it's a blessing. I think it's a wonderful thing to learn at a very young age. You don't need to be better than anybody else, just be better a version of yourself every day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, and it's a really empowering environment to perform in.
Speaker 1:It's pretty scary actually, because you're never good enough in that case.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know, it's almost like I swam and I used to say to people on the blocks you might beat me, but boy, it's going to hurt.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and they don't hurt more than in the Tour de France, I think.
Speaker 1:Isn't that something?
Speaker 2:Because it's individual. Yet they have to be very tactical and very strategic and they have to think of their teammates.
Speaker 1:They kind of think of themselves. You cannot win something like the Tour unless you've got a whole bunch of people that are breaking the wind for you. Absolutely, you know, and people don't get that and I don't know. Do you remember the name? Eddie Merckx?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:I was the guy I grew up with on the Tour de France and he I don't know how those guys did it in those days, because it was all cobblestone roads.
Speaker 2:Did Cavendish beat his record in the end? Oh sure, yes, oh okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know, it's like everything the records that we're making today that are beating things for 20 or 30 years old. The only thing that and let's not go down this path, but the only thing that bothers me is transgender is breaking all kinds of records in different ways, so we need another category for those folks. Sonia, this has been a great opening on a need for change in leadership, and I would encourage you to put another blog out and maybe in a month's time we'll take to the next chapter of this, if that's okay with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Sounds great.
Speaker 1:I think this has been very beneficial and I thank you very much for it. This is afternoon in Australia, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, two o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's evening here. I don't know what it is now. I guess close to six, but it's great to see you and continue success. Sonia is a marathoner. She's going to be in Chicago running the marathon in October.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So this is a lady who walks the talk and does what she says. She balances her life very nicely. So thank you very much, Sonia Pleasure. For your time and thank everybody on the audience for your participation. I look forward to seeing you at another candid conversation in the near future. Mahalo.