On this week’s show Chris and Lisa talk with Tina Lee Odinsky-Zec and Simon Carcagno from True Advance about the concept of “Thinking Partners” and how we need get more intentional about our collaboration.
Lisa mentioned an article questioning the validity of Extroversion and Introversion – that can be found here.
Machine-Generated transcript
Chris: Hello and welcome to episode 295 of WB40, the weekly podcast with me, Chris Weston, Lisa Riemers, Simon Carcagno and Tina Lee Odinsky-Zec.
Let’s start with you, Simon. We’re talking about how we, how we get into the business of working with people and how we get, what we’d call sort of genuine Engagement from the people who work with when, when they come to us and they say, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re in a role where we’re trying to help them make change or to improve something or to understand their organization or whatever.
When, when does that conversation even start?
Simon: I think it’s important to have that conversation. , very early. So if you can set the norms for a good collaboration early, , you are building a foundation that will endure throughout that relationship. And that’s why it is, you know, critically important to have, , a good vocabulary and self awareness.
So you have a vocabulary to describe how you collaborate, the foundation you want to build, and you have the self awareness to know what it is you need, you know, where, what are your strengths, where can you use support and how you can partner with someone to get there.
Chris: And when you talk about vocabulary, often when you talk to somebody who’s a leader, they will say, okay, here I am.
I’ve got these things to achieve, but I am struggling to communicate that to these people. Or sometimes I’ll say I am communicating it perfectly, but those people don’t appear to be hearing me. What are the, what are the techniques that you might use to understand where the gaps in that vocabulary are?
Because often when we work with organizations, what we find is that we have some learning to do about, about how particular business talks, whether it’s the industry they’re in, whether it’s the, whether it’s the history of that organization and the way the culture has, evolved. Often as a consultant or an advisor, you will start to find yourself using the terminology of the business, for example, in order to be better understood. So from a, from a point of view of a, of a thinking partner or somebody going in to be a lever to, to improve an organization. Who do you talk to in order to make sure that you are using that the right language for the business, but also being able to give them better vocabulary and more effective vocabulary and collaboration?
Simon: I think the most important way to get those terms from a business is really to listen, to really carefully listen to how they describe their business, how they describe the challenges. To your point, , when they’re describing a business. Relationship or, something they’re trying to get across to their team.
That’s just not landing, you know, really listening to the words they’re using to describe that challenge and then reflecting those words back to them, , is, is a great way in. But once you’ve, once you’ve done that, , the ability to go in and work with a team, , and share some frameworks, for understanding these challenges.
That’s where you start to really be able to make some, some big, big strides.
LIsa: You both mentioned, or Chris certainly mentioned there, the term thinking partner, which I also saw in Tina’s job description earlier. I’ve never heard the actual phrase thinking partner as a, as a definite term.
Can you tell me a bit more about that Tina?
Tina Lee: It’s used sometimes. as a substitute for executive coach, which is more popular. But the reason why I think thinking partner is so special is that it really engages people to think together. And rather than,, one is helping the other, you’re helping people think through topics, issues, and sometimes people get a little lost and you can be Hearing them and cycling it back to them and it really helps clarify, , whatever’s going on.
So, you can make a deeper connection. One, one quote I heard from someone who is a proponent of thinking partners is, Is it more important what you have to say or what they have to think?
LIsa: Oh, I like that. And speaking of connection, how did you and Simon originally meet?
Tina Lee: So I was actually a client on the client’s side of, , we were, we were choosing a leadership development program for our C suite at a big IT company.
And we went with a company called Bleaker and Simon was assigned to some of the leaders that I worked with. So I got to be in some of his facilitated sessions and, , I just really loved the model, their assessment tool, the way they did it, the conversations that they had, the way they got the peer leaders to, you know, Kind of open up over topics that shouldn’t be very sensitive, but they were like, like Chris, you were saying earlier, issues of trust across, , the pond across, you know, regions, across mindsets, across divisions, and when you can get the right facilitator, , in the room to get people deeply thinking and sharing, and then you have, you know, that group session followed by one on ones with the thinking partner and the individual leaders, it can really move from what they think others think about a topic and then the true awareness when they articulate, that’s how I feel about the topic.
And I was convinced. And then when I was leaving that company, I worked with a coach, a career coach, and she said, Tina, you’re not going to get a job from LinkedIn or Indeed.
You’re going to get one from your network, so when I looked around and I said, Oh, I would love to work with Simon, I reached out and then it happened. So I was really very lucky to be in this position and that’s why he’s here with me today.
Chris: I remember Tina, I think you were either just about to start when we met a couple of years ago or you just started in that role.
And when we met, we were at a conference. in Croatia and you were at various sessions, but you, you kind of take notes in a very descriptive way, don’t you? You draw kind of little rich pictures. And so do you think that having that that particular way of gathering your thoughts and being able to communicate in that way.
Do you find that’s a help in this sort of situation?
Tina Lee: Well, I, I mean, that’s how we met Chris is because I really loved your presentation and I did what you call a visual harvest. Now I can listen to lots of presentations, but unless it’s interesting and organized well, I can’t do a visual harvest, which is, you know, these deep sketches.
But I brought it to you and you liked it and we had a great conversation about it. I focus my attention kinesthetically, so it’s very important for me to draw when I’m focusing, okay? And when I’m sorting things, I talk things through, but at the end, the visual helps me open up and that’s, that’s the way I like to communicate.
Now, interestingly enough, There are some people who get completely distracted when they see one of my visuals, and it actually repels them. So sometimes it engages them, and sometimes it doesn’t. So that’s the whole magic be behind this, , tools we use, because you start to learn, am I doing it at them, or am I doing it for them?
Simon: And I was gonna say with them, yeah. Is, uh, is another lens as well.
LIsa: I love, I love sketch notes. I, I’ve done them myself. ’cause I, I find it helps me remember things. I can touch type, which is increasingly a useless tool. Now you’ve got transcription things, but you could be talking to me and I could type up exactly what you said verbatim.
But because I’ve typed it, I won’t necessarily remember it, but if I was able to do a little drawing summary, . It means I remember it, and it’s funny, I remember going to a conference which, and I wrote sketch notes of all of it for my, mainly for my own memory, and then, There was a vendor that I did a sketchnote of their talk about and I ended up working for them a year or so later because they got in touch and said, You know, we had more attention from your sketchnote than anything that we’ve done in our own marketing efforts.
Will you come and work for us? And it was fantastic. , and it making something, it was, it’s one of those brilliant outcomes as well of making something that is useful for you. It might also be useful for other people. But it also, as you said, might not be because that’s not how people like to process that information.
I’ve never heard it called a visual harvest. What does that mean? I’m learning lots of new terms today.
Tina Lee: Well, there’s a lot of ways people are talking about it, but visual harvesting also is when people are doing it at the back of the room on a really large scale and sketch notes are usually kind of smaller.
Simon: One of the things that Tina and I really believe is that collaboration is a verb. You know, you can’t just rely on it just, just happening. , when it does just happen, it’s beautiful. It’s amazing. You might, , , step in it and, and suddenly be in a beautiful partnership.
But that doesn’t really, Work all the time. You can’t rely on that sense of luck. And so how can we be? intentional about driving collaboration That’s something that is really at the core of what we do and we do that Through a few tools that we use Really based on the the work of Donna Markova and Angie MacArthur in the book collaborative intelligence So it’s they take a neuroscience based approach to You understanding collaboration and providing a vocabulary there.
So they combine, , how we focus our attention, how we learn, how we communicate, how we move through the world with what energizes us. And they use that as a lens to really, , explore how to drive connection and collaboration and understanding. And a, and a big piece of it is how do we interrupt narratives that we build up about other people.
One thing about me is I’m most focused when I’m speaking. So I’m, I’m auditorily focused as opposed to Tina, who’s kinesthetically focused as she shared. So that means that I can talk off the cuff to large groups with a relatively high degree of comfort., it also means that when I’m really excited, I’ll tend to interrupt people or talk over them or build on their idea in real time.
And just to give you an example, when I’m working with Tina At the outset, I say, Hey, I want you to understand this is something I’m working on I don’t let myself off the hook for that tendency, but I’ll say, you know, if I start interrupting you, I want you to know that it comes from, , a place of excitement and intrigue and curiosity about your ideas, not, , from an attempt to, to own your idea or take it from you or because I’m bored with what you’re saying.
Um, it’s usually from a very genuine place. And so if I say that, that interrupts the whole dynamic that, that could arise. , if I’m not careful. I need to write that down,
Chris: because you’re describing how I often behave and, , and I do catch myself doing it and think, you know, stop interrupting people, Chris, but it’s often because, you know, absolutely.
I’m kind of working things out.
LIsa: I love that point that you said about, working with people to find out what energises them. Do you find when you start working with someone they’ve got a very clear idea of what that is?
And how true is it as you work with them?
Simon: I think the real challenge here is people can found it. What they’re good at with what energizes them. And so, you know, the things we’re very good at will often say, Oh yeah, I find that energizing. And so when I’m asking the question and trying to figure out, you know, what, what really energizes you, I ask people to really divorce it from what they’re really good at.
And I describe it like this. I say, , I’m really good at modeling and Excel. Like I’m really good at it. I get it. I get the answer we need. But I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy the process. It kind of burns me out. And so it’s very hard for me to, , not choose that kind of thinking when I’m trying to think about what energizes me because I feel like it’s very, very foundational skill.
But if I’m really thinking about it, no, it doesn’t really energize me. I just want the answer. I love learning. And so I love, I love the getting to the answer that the model provides because it’s an opportunity to learn but the actual doing of it, that, that analytical piece, much less appealing. And so that’s the, that’s the tricky part in, in trying to narrow these things down.
LIsa: I am generally consider myself to be an extrovert. I love meeting people. It’s been a very peoply busy week, but this week I’m now very tired because actually it’s quite depleting energy wise. It’s like you get the high of meeting people and being social and bouncing ideas off each other and All of that, that brilliant energy with being in a room with other great people, but at the same time, I now need a lot of time to recover after that.
And so I think it means I’m an ambivert, but at the same time, , I’m not sure if it’s just an energy thing as over the last few years, I spent a lot more time online and at home. So it’s a bit of a difference to my. my usual day. , it’s like a muscle that I need to start using a bit more of, or not start, continue using and see if I can actually build up some stamina again.
Simon: I think that’s a really interesting point. , you know, just the way in which our interactions with people have changed over the last four or five years, , as we’ve gone through all the COVID lockdowns, as work has shifted , to be each of us in our, in our own, , rooms staring at each other in small boxes.
You know, I think Our ability to have that stamina to connect fully when we’re in person, I think is, I think that’s a very important observation and I, and I, Lisa, I don’t think it’s just you. I think most people have, uh, have that experience now.
Chris: I read something recently about, about introverts and extroverts and about somebody saying, look, we probably need to abandon that description and just know that everybody has, , a particular.
Requirement for a kind of minimum number of interactions in, in a certain amount of time, and, and below which they start acting really weird and a maximum number above which they start acting really weird. , and it might be that you just kind of just tip past your maximum number, , Lisa at that point.
And now you, you need to let yourself sort of
LIsa: recharge a little.
But I think even that maximum number can be one event with several people in it. , last week should, I should have also gone along to the colour walk, but because I had basically seven days of group things, and the colour walk would have been my first one that day, I ended up actually staying at home and having a nap in between doing the work that I needed to get done.
Um,, because I was completely wiped from it all., and that would have been a tipping point to me not being very well, I think. afterwards if I try to do that as well.
Chris: I’d be interested to know, Simon, when , if you’re talking to somebody Who thinks their problem is they need to change culture because that’s often a, a common question, isn’t it? Oh, we need to change the culture here.
How often does that actually Translate into behaviors of the wider group and how often is it a leadership style? How much is it a understanding, how well you can measure something like culture? Is this good or is this bad?
Simon: I think good and bad are hard. I think,, different cultures are, are great for different people, , to a large degree. And I think that’s an important lens. The other thing that I would react to is I think cultures in organizations are very much a reflection of their leaders. And it has to start from the top.
So when you have a leader saying, we need to change the culture here, what they’re really saying is, I need to change my own behaviors and how I’m connecting with the people in my organization. And that is a, that is a level of accountability and ownership that I think is, is really hard for people to take on.
But if you actually want to change the culture, you know, it has to start at the top.
Chris: So in terms of, active collaboration or intentional collaboration. What are the behaviors that you sometimes see in leaders , where culture does need to change, or you can see that there is a, there’s a disconnect between them and the people that they’re, they’re trying to lead and serve, et cetera.
do you see any patterns around that in terms of personality types or in terms of behaviors that are, that are unhelpful?
Simon: I think this is actually a great question for Tina. She has been, , an L and D specialist for. Um, and has sort of looked at it from the internal HR side. I can give you my perspective as a, as an outside consultant, which is, every situation is different, but the themes are often quite similar.
You know, it’s often a lack of, understanding, a lack of empathy, a lack of self awareness that drive a lot of these challenges., and then how open is it? How psychologically safe is the organization? I know that’s a term that sometimes turns people off, you know, when you talk about psychological safety, but it is so important to high performance because people can’t take risks.
, when they don’t feel safe, when they think they’ll be judged, people don’t take risks. And so, you know, you really have to assess where you want your culture to grow towards , and really, think through the best ways in which to create that change.
Chris: So, Tina, what, in terms that question then, I mean, in your experience, are there things that you can see often that are red flags, or maybe things that you’re almost welcome, because it’s like, okay, I’ve seen this before, I can see what this is, and this isn’t that difficult to change, or there might be things where you say, actually, this is a kind of thing that actually is going to be a real difficult situation.
I can say it very soft and gentle, or I can say it like rough and brutal. So I think I’ll go with the gentle side. , if you rip the bandaid off, it’s a really sometimes, denial, and the fixed mindset, and not willing to grow, right? So it’s very unfortunate. What got them there won’t get them necessarily to the next level.
Tina Lee: And they, they don’t know that. There’s like a lack of awareness. And that’s why a coach really is so critical because they cannot show that vulnerability with their peers. They’ll lose confidence where they think they will in, , their leadership persona that they built, right? While actually in reality, people like a little bit of vulnerability and humanness.
, to their leaders. So , for me as, as a thinking partner, I think it’s absolutely so exciting.
You have to be really careful so you don’t push their buttons. And make them feel more vulnerable, and also I, I’m not taking people’s vulnerabilities and turning them into superpowers.
I don’t really like that either. Just be human about it. Just be realistic about it because most likely the people you work with. will like you more as you become more self aware and you give them permission to be self aware about themselves. And that means you can build trust that we are not perfect, but we’re better together because maybe what you’re not good at, I’m good at, and then we’re actually puzzle pieces
because if we’re all trying to be the same thing. We get in the way and reduce productivity. So how might we find the missing pieces and the combination of our teams and that’s leadership teams too, not just the leaders and their teams. And that’s really the special, , things that can happen when you let people not try to be everything to everyone, but what, You know, are you really energized by and what drains you might energize somebody else?
And boy, will that be a great dynamic duo or a deep team complimenting each other?
LIsa: I love what you’re saying there about the complimentary skills and skills and personality types, I suppose, that can make up a good team or a good executive board. , It’s trying to facilitate that environment where you can all come at it with your different viewpoints, but get to a good resolution that’s better because you’ve debated it.
And it’s not one of those things that everyone just feels like they’re hitting their head against a brick wall because nobody agrees with them. I remember an early, early in my, in my communications career, um, my first one to one with a boss. I didn’t know what a one to one was. I’d never had one before.
I had no idea what the expectation was and I was completely floored when my boss said, well, so what are you working on at the moment? Have you got a list? I did not know I needed to prepare a list, but sure. And he said, well, one of your colleagues has said that you’re quite difficult to work with. I was like, well, actually, I was going to say, I found her quite difficult to work with as well, but I’d like to think I’ve got a lot of respect for her.
And if we’re able to have If we’re able to have the conversations that we have when we’re coming at things from two very different viewpoints, we’ll get a better product at the end of it. And it’s, it’s trying to get that balance, isn’t it? Between it being a destructive, cyclical, argumentative environment and actually something where you’re able to move forward from it.
Simon: Such an interesting point. You know, the, the difference between productive and unproductive conflict. is something that is, , incredibly interesting to explore. And if you can recognize that, you know, we don’t always need to shy away from conflict. , often the, Best ideas are sort of forged in that crucible of, of disagreement.
As long as you’re coming at it from a place of respect , and collaboration, you can have those conflicts and they’ll actually improve the, the outcome. But it’s very important that it doesn’t fall into that sort of unproductive, personal, destructive, Conflict that we, we’ve all experienced in our careers.
LIsa: And I think that’s something that’s potentially also in this hybrid world that we’re working in. It can be exacerbated further because tone doesn’t travel if someone’s typed something very quickly. Or, you know, there’s the joke that there are no nuanced arguments on the internet, because someone will post something and then it gets taken out of context.
and either people are blocked, they block each other or they move on with their day and it’s being able to not necessarily resolve everything in that moment but being able how do you do that when everybody isn’t co located when you can’t just go and quickly have a coffee or on the way out of a meeting room together say is everything okay can unpick it a little bit if you’re in back to back online meetings, how do you do that kind of, it’s not a softer thing, but it’s a, maybe it’s a less formal way of being able to sort it without it being a catastrophe.
Is there anything that you’ve seen that works well when people aren’t co located, how they, how they manage that?
Simon: That’s where we really need to be intentional. You know, when we are not together, when we’re, we’re together, we really get the full sense of one another. You know, we intuitively learn things about one another that we, we don’t even realize. You know, so if Tina and I worked together, she would know that,, if I interrupt her, it probably means I’m excited, but since we’re talking heads on the screen, she can get off that call and, and stew about it and, and be alone with the narrative that she creates.
And so that’s why these tools around self awareness are incredibly useful and the maybe somewhat awkward conversation about our preferences and tendencies that we can create that, that foundation to avoid some of those, negative aspects of hybrid and remote work.
You know, where we’re. Alone with our thoughts for so much of the time or just stacked in meetings back to back to back to back to back to back.
LIsa: At the beginning of 2020, I was working on a contract where we were predominantly in the office. And then suddenly we were all trying to get our heads around Microsoft Teams and how to manage that.
And. Most people weren’t in the best headspace at that time. It was quite a scary time to be working and people had, families with illness. And , There was a lot of uncertainty and I know at a micro level, one of the things that we did in our team was, we had a weekly catch up, but I forced it and made it a little bit awkward if we needed to, but I modeled it myself to say, how are you?
And actually giving some space , even if it was a scale of one to 10, how are you feeling today? Okay. , as we modelled that and practised it and the weeks went on, actually making that time to have that conversation as part of the agenda and not just while you’re waiting for everyone to join, was helpful for us at that time.
I don’t think I’ve had, I don’t think I’ve explicitly done that since, but I found at the time it was definitely what our team needed.
Tina Lee: Well, you know, Lisa, I think one of the really key things is, what are the phrases we use all the time, but we just say them automatically?
And when you say, how are you, really, and you want to hear someone’s answer, and you leave the space for it, that makes all the difference. And, , I think that’s also a sign of a great leader when they can ask it and mean it and give you the time to, to say it and share it. And I think one of the things that we’re talking about here is a level of emotional maturity.
If and when we were in COVID times, you’re so much alone, alone with your thoughts that you, you do not only just make up stories. Stories. But everything is very one sided. It’s your side. And when you have to get back into a space of empathy, emotional intelligence, being more aware that someone may be having something else going on and their reaction isn’t To me, but to some other factor, then that really gives space for people to give everybody a break.
Don’t overthink things. Let it go a little bit easier and, and then if they’re not explicit in telling you their style, you’ll learn it if you’re patient enough. Don’t just turn people off. Don’t just unfriend them, unfollow them, shut the door, turn off your camera, whatever it is that’s you. Saying no, give him the hand, no, I’m not going to listen anymore.
That leaves no room, and we definitely have to make room. Chris? You, you look very contemplative.
Chris: I am because I’m listening to that and I’m thinking about, I’m thinking about the, the term intentional collaboration and it’s almost coming full circle for me in terms of, as you say, how do you make space and, and through intention, improve that collaborative work and make it happen rather than, as you say, almost, Retreat into more of a comfort zone.
And I guess, , as we come up to time on the, on, on the podcast, I’m, I’m asking myself when you’re in an organization or when you, are working with a team and thinking about intentional collaboration, how do you know when that’s being achieved? You know, what does good look like? Is it always different?
You know, is that something you can measure?
Simon: I think it’s really hard to measure. I think, I think it’s one of those things that when you’re participating in it, you know it. Chris, if I were to ask you, tell me about the best teams. That you’ve been on. What were they like? You know, I think you could, you could give me a good answer for that. And if I said, what are the worst teams?
, you could give that answer, but I think it, you know, what it comes down to is, what is the output? Like, are you, are you getting more done? So one measure is, are you achieving your goals more easily with less effort? Now, measuring that’s really tricky, but when you’re participating in that, you know it, you can feel it.
How much energy, are people bringing to work? How much engagement? do they have time to explore? You know, I think those are, those are some of the ways you can really measure these things on teams. and it, and it has been measured. There’s a, MIT, , Media Lab, article on energy engagement and exploration as they measured in a pre COVID company , by outfitting members of teams with little trackers that would, measure tone of voice, measured, how long people spent talking to one another on that team.
And, they were able to have a methodology that would predict. Whether a team was highly effective or not, just based on these sort of very, , interesting, social metrics. Yeah.
Chris: But of course, you know, the few of us can go to that level of detail. So what we’re saying really is it’s a subjective thing in many ways, and it’s something that we have to feel that’s happening.
But I think also that goes back to that question of psychological safety that you mentioned earlier, you know, I read a pretty good report That the in the British government the Ministry of Defense produced a report on psychological safety Which is kind of an unusual place to be talking about psychological safety in many ways because The culture is often would seem to be not Not to not to be embracing that sort of thing but actually It mirrored a lot of what came out of Google a few years ago where they measured it, you know, there’s lots of very,, let’s say subjective, but still, you can still measure outcomes and you can measure productivity or you can measure, you know, the way that teams work together in different ways.
You don’t always have to be measuring it. You know, it doesn’t have to be. The thing, there are proxies you can use for this sort of thing, aren’t there? So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, you know, we, we can measure it subjectively, but, but if we need to, we can, we can use some of those proxy measures.
LIsa: Most organisations will do an annual or every couple of years employee engagement survey.
I say employee engagement survey, an employee survey which asks people questions ultimately to try and find out how engaged they are, how happy they are in their job, how likely they are to leave. They probably Matt’s favourite MPS questions, would you recommend working here to somebody else? And then people get really hung up on the scores.
, and to a lot of people, particularly in internal comms or HR, the scores that come out of that survey really get fed back into managers. And whilst it’s ostensibly anonymous, , it’s still broken down so that different leaders can look at the state of their team. Their senior leaders will look at the areas that scored quite lowly and actually hopefully take some positive steps to address it.
, but I think something, something that I think Tom Geraghty said in the WB40 chat a little while ago was that, , once you start trying to measure psychological safety, actually it goes down in the organization. He cited a really interesting example that I’m struggling to remember the specifics of, but it’s, it is one of those things that once you start looking at it in too much detail or people feel like they’re being measured or monitored, it’s got a negative impact.
And when you hear about like the big consultancies who are saying that we’re going to get rid of the bottom 10 percent of people that score in their end of year metric surveys, the whole people being a metric feeds into quite an awful lot. An awkward narrative, I think. So, yeah, I agree with what Simon said, that you absolutely know if something is working or not.
usually, or at least historically. At the time, it might feel like you’re too close to it. In a couple of weeks time or a couple of months time, or even when you look back a couple of years ago, you can spot what worked really well and what didn’t. And sometimes you need a bit of distance. And that distance is something that an external pair of eyes can give you much more quickly.
So if you’re working with a, with a partner, a thinking partner, , they can help you work out if things are working or not. Cause sometimes you need that external perspective.
Tina Lee: I think you, you know, if it’s going well, if leaders can say and honestly say, I am growing. So if the leader is still growing, then that’s a priority and they can make space for their team to grow. And if their team is growing, that means it’s a healthy organization. It’s when everything shrinks, which is the concern.
What would you like to leave people with in terms of, when they go back to work tomorrow, when they, when they think about the organization they’re in, whether they’re, whether they’re leading it or whether they’re, , the part of a team or whatever, are there any things that they should be, , bearing in mind or sort of keeping close to their, you know, close to their heart in terms of what they are, how they’re going to achieve, what they want to achieve and what they want to get out of that, their particular role?
Tina Lee: People are pretty basic, you know, and I think the key is if you say you’re listening to them and you hear what they want, then the last thing you should do is not figure out a way to give it to them because you asked and they answered. So listen and act, you know, and when you do that over and over consistently, you build a lot of trust.
Simon: I love that, Tina. I think one of the biggest things I would, I would tell people is don’t be afraid to talk about what you need. Don’t be afraid to talk about your tendencies. Don’t, don’t be afraid to ask. You know, I think we often feel like doing so would be awkward. It’d be awkward for me to, ask how, to ask how you work best or what you need from me.
You know, I’ll often ask, how can I be a better coach for you? That’s a, that’s a, that question. Like, how can I be a better leader for you? , how can I be a better employee for you? You know, I think these are, these are questions that we often don’t ask, but the answers are really, really valuable.
Simon: Really, really
Tina Lee: important.
Chris: Well, thanks for that, . That was a fascinating conversation. Lisa, , we’ve got a week stretching out in front of us today because it’s Monday when we record this podcast. What’s going on for you?,
LIsa: this week I’ve got a couple of kickoff meetings for a client who need, we’re doing some user research and they’re based in all sorts of time zones, which is brilliant because I’m in the UK.
The office that I’m working with is in Australia and they’ve got clients between the UK and the Middle East. So the next few weeks are going to be Interesting in terms of calls at all times of the day, I think. , so that’s kicking off this week and I’m really looking forward to that. And then this weekend I’ve got cox training.
So,, I am going to be learning about how to cox a rowing boat on the Thames. The first and only time I did this was the very first time I went out on a boat and I found it all terrifying. I’ve spoken before, I think on the podcast even, about all the terminology that comes with a boat and that there’s a very specific difference about left and right because it depends on your perspective.
Because if you are the cocks, you are at the back of the boat facing forward and everyone else is facing backwards. So left doesn’t mean anything. So, yeah, I’m not stressing about that at all. I’m looking forward to it. , how about you Tina? What have you got coming up this week?
Tina Lee: Well, , I have a friend being picked up from the airport arriving from London to Zagreb.
And, , it’s a friend from, , my first career in Major League Baseball. And she was working for, , How to Grow the Game of Soccer in the U. S. So she’s coming in and doing some workshops here. So I’m going to be having some fabulous lunches and things like that. But on top of that, I’m, , writing the first chapter or finishing the first chapter of my new book.
, that’s going to be on mentoring called Mentoring Agents of Change. So I’m really excited that that’s moving forward.
LIsa: That sounds super interesting.
Simon, what have you got this week?
Simon: Sure. Actually, I love that topic. I think there’s, , there’s so much that sport gets right that business gets wrong. , and so that’s, , that’s just a foundational piece of my approach to my work is, is looking at it through that lens. , and Lisa, it’s funny that you’re talking about coxing.
My background is in, in, , collegiate elite sport as a, as a rowing athlete. So I was a world champion in rowing. back in 2008. , so I spent a lot of time in that world. , so, , what do I have coming up this week? This is a big prep week for me. I’ve got two, , really fun facilitations next week that I’m getting ready for building the decks and, , getting all the decks in a row.
And then , this weekend I’m actually going to be, , announcing, a large collegiate. rowing race. So it’ll be broadcast on, on the ACC network. Or just, ESPN, if you’re familiar with them. So that’s, , that should be fun too. So I’ve got to do a little prep work on that as well.
LIsa: Oh, fantastic.
Chris: Great stuff. So, , first of all, what I’m going to do this week is, , tell people that we’ve got a world champion rower. You didn’t mention that before, Simon. We don’t have world champions on this week. The people, the only people we have world champions on this podcast generally are world champions that sell publicity.
So, , for you to hide your light under a bushel for this long, I can applaud you. No, and, , and, and this week for me is going to be, , we’ve got a. In the Midlands, here in the UK, we’ve got a thing called the Midlands Tech Review, which is taking place in the middle of this week. So I’ll be going along to that.
Essentially, it’s a focus on the tech industry of this area. So that’s something that I’m looking forward to and I’m going down to London on Thursday. But other than that, it’s going to be another week of head down and try and get things done before the summer, when everybody seems to go on holiday and we can’t get anything done for several weeks.
, but, , yeah, once again, , fantastic to have you guys on the podcast. It’s been a really interesting conversation. I hope we can talk again, , in the future. , so thank you to Simon. Thank you to Tina. Thank you, Lisa, for being a splendid, co host today. And we’ll see you all next week.
Chris: Thank you for listening to WB40. You can catch us on all good podcasting platforms and on the internet at wb40podcast. com.