People Predictions for 2026: The Future of Leadership and High-Performing Teams with Amplified Group’s Sophie Matthews, Nat Falconer, Mikael Nilsson and Logan Black

0:00Technology only gets us so far unless we've got the right people and the work culture set up to actually get us where we need to be.

0:10James Mitra:Welcome back to 40 Minute Mentor, the podcast on a mission to raise aspirations and inspire the next generation of category defining founders. All in just 40 minutes. This week, you are going to get a double dose of 40 Minute Mentor as we release two episodes looking ahead at 2026 biggest talent and people trends. Today, I'm joined by some of my amazing Amplified People Group colleagues, Sophie Matthews, Nat Faulkner and Mikhail Nielsen from Foundation Partners and Logan Black from Unleashed. They're going to be joining me to look ahead at what's coming up in the world of people and leadership in 2026.

0:48James Mitra:We explore what it really means to build high-performing teams next year, from leadership development and culture to well-being and resilience. A big warm welcome to all of you to this very special roundtable podcast recording on 40 Minute Mentor. There's a lot of us on this, so I'm going to let you all introduce yourselves. I'd love to learn a bit more about you, your backgrounds, what your role is within Amplified Group, and what your favourite moment of 2025 has been. So why don't we start with Nat? Thank you. So I'm Nat, one of the senior partners over at Amplify Group, specifically on the foundation partner side, so all the embedded people pieces.

1:26A bit of background about me. I have done the startup scrappy bit, loved it, liked the excitement and the chaos. Did a bit of time in VC, which, again, loved the scrappiness nature of it all. And then I've recently done a bit more like proper project work around scaling for the next big Series B, Series C, so starting to think bigger picture, if you like. like favorite moment of 2025 if I don't say joining foundation I feel like I'll get culled from this so obviously joining this team and being like really genuinely has been like the best thing ever good people fun projects good clients so it's been great love it thanks Nat Sophie why don't you go next sure thanks James um so hi I'm Sophie um I'm one of the partners at Amplified Group I'm similar to Nat predominantly on the on the foundation partner side so working as a embedded kind of fractional HR leader within our client space.

2:16And previous to that, my background was kind of extensive in pretty much in the people in HR space across kind of B2B scaling kind of tech businesses. And I think favourite moment of this year, I'm going to go personal, which is that I got married this year. So I feel like that has to be a leader for 2025.

2:33James Mitra:Wonderful. Many congratulations again. That's super exciting. Mikhail, we'll come to you next. So I am also a fractional people person working at Foundation Partners. I joined this year, so I guess that's also my highlight. The highlight is probably that in my second week, we all went off to a festival in Hyde Park and enjoyed a bit of sun together. Professionally, I've done this for about 15 years. I've been the first people person in a company as small as 10. I've led people team in a company that was around 500 people. So I've always stayed in a smaller to medium sized company. the the many thousands kind of scares me that's not for me I don't think I've trained as a coach and most recently the companies I worked in before I came here were all AI companies going from series A past series B so my sweet spot's become I guess an AI company between 50 and 200 people and yeah as I said before I joined foundation partners to work as a fractional people person this year and last but by no means least Logan over to you.

3:36The odd one out I'm not with Foundation Partners but part of our group I'm Logan and I'm MD at Unleashed so it's slightly different to the to the fractional work Unleashed is all about leadership development at every single level across the organization. Before or my background I was I similar to now I did the kind of scrappy startup thing I was head of people at e-commerce platform taking this company from series A through to Series D, massive expansion from tiny law office in Brighton to then expanding over to the US, to Berlin, lots of craziness, particularly during the pandemic era. That was an interesting time to try and launch a new site.

4:12But I really enjoyed it and really happy now I get to work with a bunch of different clients at different stages that I unleashed. And highlight for 2025, I'm going to do a personal tour, same as Sophie. I didn't get married, unfortunately, that will come, hopefully, but I did move to Greece. So I left the cold weather of London to move to Greece to have some warm Mediterranean life instead, which has been lovely for me.

4:33James Mitra:What a brilliant decision. I'm incredibly jealous. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. I have the pleasure of working with you all day to day, and I know how brilliant you all are. So I'm incredibly excited to share your expert mentorship and thoughts on the people and talent space with our listeners. And we're going to start by sort of looking back at 2025. and I'm really keen to hear your thoughts on what the biggest shifts that you've seen in this space have been so maybe we'll start with you Mikey what what have you seen in the past year I think we've really seen a shift or a continuation of the trend where people want to keep their companies lean there's no more kind of vanity around super quick headcount growth you see a lot less of that on linkedin these days like we are growing from x to to y it's often more saying we are building a lean company and that is the new cool thing to do you have companies like uh linear i scared one myself called photoreum where we're really obsessed over things like revenue per employee going back over the org chart again and again and again to make sure we have set up in the most efficient way possible and that trend to me i think is quite cool because it's a different challenge and i think often the hyper growth and hiring as much as we could as quickly as we could it didn't end very well so i think this is a more more responsible way of growing businesses and i think that also has a knock-on effect that fractional is really on the rise the market for fractional people is better than ever because companies actually consider it a viable option They can see the value that fractional people can have.

6:14People are less scared and not so many founders or leadership team think, you know, is this the right thing to do? Will they really deliver value? The answer to this question is now yes. And that is the real shift that I think will just continue to grow stronger.

6:28James Mitra:Anybody else have anything that they've seen as a big shift? I kind of mirror your point, Mikey, but also I think from the VC angle, quite often you always like grow, grow, grow no matter what. to get these metrics that are really they're kind of vanity metrics so similar to the team growth which is like hit this 30 percent 40 percent 100 year on year growth and you'll get a really decent round but i think now when you start doing the dd on the vc side you're looking at well let me look at your a bit down target you're miles off you're growing at all costs including your like burn rate and so i think actually the come like vcs are encouraging this sort of behavior too whereas i mean i've been on the vc side and we did used to be like oh you've got a load of money now where's your c-suite who's going to be leading this business i think we're all changing our narrative backwards now to be like do it lean do it tidy don't get fat too quick so it definitely seems to be translating across all the different verticals similarly to what mikey said i've definitely seen that across across uh the clients that i've been working across the challenge there is like you know then looking to ai to like how do we do that and then how do we leverage that and i think a challenge that i've seen within that is who is the right person to really kind of own that um because i think you know across all of our clients they're looking at you know okay how how can we really you know chat it's way beyond just using chat gpt on a day-to-day basis but who is really the right person to really own that because it's a whole job in itself yeah who is owning it who's going to kind of drive it and that's where i've kind of seen the the challenge logan is there anything from a unleashed perspective that you've seen shifting whether it's in relation to a leadership development or management training anything particularly you'd want to call out i think probably one of the biggest shifts that i've seen probably not the most positive one is the shift away from the D &I initiative so away from inclusion diversity work I think we saw a lot of that start at the beginning of the year with the U.S.

8:09executive order that was targeting D &I programs but I think that the ripple effect has kind of spread far further than just the U.S. as well and so we're seeing lots and lots of organizations now globally that are quietly kind of secretly re-evaluating their own commitments or scaling back their own commitments not just when it comes to to IND programs but also thinking about even the underlying values that kind of drive inclusion in the business and so because they're kind of scaling these things back I think that the impact isn't just operational now but it's actually influencing trust it's influencing the sense of belonging people are feeling and how safe people feel at work and so one of the biggest shifts there I think is that now leaders are having to be really really intentional about the culture that they're building to try and make up for maybe the loss of these initiatives that previously over the last couple of years I saw were really maybe topical Some businesses, but actually they were quite well developed in a lot of organisations.

9:01Now without them, we happen to be really intentional about the culture that we're trying to build instead.

9:05James Mitra:What's one lesson from this year that you would like leaders to carry on into 2026 and why? Kind of the biggest lesson that I try to share with every leader or founder that I work with is just to invest in your people before anything else. I feel like 2025 has really been like the year of AI, the year of technology. but we're seeing more and more that actually technology only gets us so far unless we've got the right people and the right culture set up to actually get us where we need to be and I think that if we invest first in developing and growing people rather than just bringing in all the new technologies then everything will be a bit smoother if you've got the right people behind it but I think that's really one lesson I would take into 2026 is just investing your people before anything else.

9:47I think that's going to be a really interesting one going to 2026 around how you invest in your people because i think at the moment we've got this narrative which is almost like twofold like companies now are some companies are struggling because like financially it's pretty tough out there so you've got this company driver which is high performance smash our goals make all our achievements happen but on the flip side in terms of looking after our people we're in a silent recession probably people are struggling for cash but they also want meaningful work and to be challenged and to be like getting promoted how you do that in a really beautiful way is quite challenging i think as a leader going into 2026 because you need to push one agenda whilst making sure you're thinking about this agenda and looking after your team it's really it's a really hard balance I think to get right I think when it comes to like how we're investing people I think for a long time it's kind of been the idea that there's only one way to invest in your people and in your teams and so I think a lot of businesses now are starting to shift that idea and recognize that there's a different way that we can invest in people based on what individuals need or based on what certain departments might need or even what kind of industries might need there as well so this idea of there being one way to invest I think that's becoming a bit outdated now that we're seeing a lot more agility or a lot more kind of organic investment opportunities when it comes to investing in people's development if that makes sense and I also I guess like what people's development looks like I think like typically that's always been kind of you know especially in like when it was like hyper scaling environments it was like promotions beyond promotions really really fast like going upward trajectory and what and how that looked And I think, yeah, I think also going into 2026, people, leaders, founders will also have to be more creative about what that looks like if there isn't necessarily like that really fast trajectory on promotion.

11:22But yeah, what are the skill sets we really want to be driving and what's going to be really important to the business? I have a vision of the David and Victoria Beckham meme in my mind where he is looking around the door. But in my version, he speaks to the founder CEO about their statement that 2025 was the year where they really leveraged AI tools to find efficiencies in the company. And he asked them to be honest. And eventually, the founder CEO says that it's just a graveyard of tools that didn't have any impact. And I think that's what we need to take with us into 2026, because there was a lot of promise.

11:59There's a lot of hype. There's a lot of stuff out there, which essentially is like chat GPT wrappers or stuff that isn't being updated. It doesn't have the right team behind them. So instead of finding efficiencies and cost savings and productivity gains, we just ended up wasting time. And we have all of these SaaS subscriptions that aren't really doing anything for our business. I think really thinking about what problems are we trying to solve as a business and spending a lot of time on due diligence and really testing these tools that whether that's for sales or it's for management development or whatever it is like, is this really going to move the needle?

12:39and coming back to what we talked about before, who owns this in the business rather than just looking at lots of shiny things because there are a lot of shiny things out there right now. But I think this was a year where we learned that shiny things don't really make a business impact on their own. So we started with a Becca meme and we ended up with business impacts. I hope anyone, someone out there could follow.

13:01James Mitra:That's a really good point. And as a founder who likes shiny things, you definitely need people around you, whether that's people leaders, as the COAs to make sure we're staying focused and not getting too distracted. And I think there are a lot of distractions out there at the moment. So I think bringing it back to actually what's going to move the dial and have real impact, as you said, Mikey, is a great piece of advice. I want to move forward thinking about a lot of our listeners are founders. A lot of our listeners are first-time founders who often, when we ask them the biggest challenges in their business, it's often people related, which is one of the reasons why we've got all of you brilliant people together.

13:33James Mitra:so what were some of the biggest challenges that you've seen founders dealing with in 2025 and what can founders do to set themselves up for success going into the new year really one thing that i focus with on when i've been working with our portfolio of companies and it's making sure that it's the right people around the leadership table for whatever comes next so for one company it's to close that series b fundraise for another one is reaching that ar milestone and for for Or another one is the international expansion. Whatever it is, that keeps coming back time and time again. And I think that's where we play an important role as external advisors because we don't have the political and emotional baggage.

14:16We can look at this from a more pragmatic angle and we can help the founders. So that's something that I'm working with every single founding team or founder on this specific problem on every client I work with. So for me, it's that. is basically making sure there's the right people around the table for whatever comes next for the company. What I've seen as well is, you know, CEOs or CEO founders, despite kind of having a C-suite in place, still kind of doing too much themselves and perhaps not being demanding enough of their executive team. And I guess as a people leader, trying to support them and understanding, you know, what is the root cause of that?

14:51Is it, you know, is it that you're giving lack, there's like lack of clarity from your part? Is it that there is the wrong team set up? Is it that you're not delegating in the right way giving that kind of autonomy or whatever that might be but that's definitely a theme i've seen as you know you have a c-suite in place for a reason and you should be leveraging that in the right way it's also on that c-suite point is working out which c-suite members you need at which phase of your journey because i think quite often you can find companies being quite top heavy actually a lot of it is pure graft and you do just need the people in the business that are going to get the shit done as well as like dictate and almost push the levers at the same point so I think a lot of the coaching we're doing with some of the leadership teams at the moment is do you have the right people underneath you to actually deliver it or actually do you need to step down a couple of levels and do some of the work yourselves and it's quite a weird scenario for some of those people because they've not done it for the last two jobs they've been in but they're having to get scrappy again and build again and some of them absolutely love it and also some people it's just not for them and then it's helping coach the fans in those conversations which is actually maybe in the CRO role at the moment you need a really great sales guy that's going to go or women and go and go do some really great sales but actually what you've got is someone that's saying here's all the accounts to go after now i need someone else to go and do it and actually need someone to go and do it and run after it so it's helping educate those conversations too

16:02James Mitra:we have this a lot when clients will come to us saying they need a chief of staff or a coo but actually when we dig under the surface and really understand what the challenges are and what's holding them back they need an executive assistant or they need or they actually need a founder's associate um and it's very easy to over hire because you think it's what you need it's what maybe other founders have told you but actually taking the time this is where i would strongly advocate for like advisors fractional advisors and and headhunters to give you that sort of external advice because it's an expensive mistake to to to get a coo when you actually need a founder's associate so that's a great point that i think um i agree with everything that's been said around kind of making sure we've got the right team in place but i think it's also and this isn't just for this year but i've seen it in years before as well that actually having the right focus in the right areas too we can have the best leadership team set up around us but quite often i'm seeing a lot of leaders and founders really struggling or being torn between the balance of strategy and culture and actually thinking about what should we be aiming for what should we be focusing on again we've already spoken about all the wonderful shiny tools that come in but there's also the shiny strategy stuff that we get distracted as well right but i think that a lot of founders a lot of leaders to sophie's point aren't delegating they're still getting stuck and still getting still doing stuff they're not able to step back fully and so they're kind of caught in this this this firefighting this kind of short-term pressure nurturing that they have to try and do rather than being able to step back and think about how do we create an environment where everyone can step up and do these things how can we enable more around us to be able to do this stuff so I think one of the big challenges maybe the lesson going into next year is thinking about how we can build a discipline around both strategy and also building that cultural element of the business as well because i think that what we need the teams and the people around us to be able to adapt to more more easily going into the future is being able to operate in environments of uncertainty and so strategy isn't going to clear that up on its own having that cultural piece is really going to help us understand how do we solve the things when things do go tits up basically so i think yeah having the right people around the table is really important but having them focus in the right areas and not feeling like they're just being pulled or being hijacked by strategy focus only but actually how we build the culture to be able to support that strategy i wish i'd had you in a room recently um because we got asked by a client recently um what would be the question was what's the optimal time you should spend doing strategy for 2026 when you're in q4 and it's mental and everyone's like really busy you need to land sales and it was such a difficult question to answer because it obviously like businesses are in different phases you know what their objectives are there's lots of different factors but it was a really difficult answer because we were our pushback was you need to spend some time thinking about next year otherwise we're rolling to january 1 and we might have had a brilliant december but then we're like what on earth are we doing now but also you can't take the team away when they're all like up against it so it was a really fascinating debate around when you plan do you plan in june for next year probably not because it's far too early but probably could have done with you in the room to help navigate that conversation a bit better it's really tough to know exactly what that should look like for each business it's going to be different as well yeah i mean it's maybe a good segue Logue and I'll come to come to you first on this but keen to hear everyone's thoughts around the actual sort of leadership skills that we need to be instilling in in teams you know going into the new year perhaps for this new age we're moving into so what what are your thoughts on that how can anyone listening to this that is thinking about is self-aware enough to know okay I need to develop here some some particular skills to be a better leader in 2026 what should they be thinking about I like that you mentioned self-aware because I think that is a really important part of it but I think and I'm not sure if I would categorize this as a skill or more of a behavior but I think that humility is going to be really really important for leaders and hopefully not just for next year but kind of ever after for leaders really being able to be being able to demonstrate that humility I think is the secret to really good leadership and I don't mean that to mean the kind of the soft apologetic version of humility but actually the courageous kind where we're able to be vulnerable we're able to ask for feedback leaders who actually listen and demonstrate that they're listening to understand rather than listening to solve or listening to answer I think that the role of a leader particularly over the last few years has become way more complex and way more emotionally demanding than it ever has been before and I think that it can actually and I hear this a lot from leaders that I work with it can be really quite isolating as well for these people that are in these positions and so I think being able to I think getting ahead of that actually means that you need to be able to recognize that you don't have to do it alone I think is what I'm trying to say you don't have to do it alone as a leader be humble enough to ask for feedback ask for help ask for support you know get a coach build your network lean on your team rely on your team and trust them to get stuff done for you as well i think that modern leadership isn't about having all of the answers anymore i think it's about creating an environment where answers can be found together we can tackle things together we can lean on each other and i think also this kind of a bonus impact of actually being able to be humble as a leader there and it's that as your team see it and they start to copy as well and they start to collaborate more and co-design together and problem solve and call out mistakes and celebrate the fuck up of the week.

21:09I don't know if we're allowed to swear, but we've done it now. But I think that's kind of a really useful part of leadership going into next year. And I see it a lot on leaders now when they start to adapt and build in a bit more humility into a way that they lead and stop wearing this coat of armor of having all the answers and all the solution. All of a sudden they feel quite free in their role and they promote more trust and great transparency within their teams as well. So a bit more of a behavior than a skill, but that's where I'm really kind of aiming my attention for next year, I think.

21:37James Mitra:I really love that, Logan. It actually links really nicely to some of the searches we've been running in the past year. Some pretty high profile, sort of big meaty roles, often COO searches. And the best founders we've worked with have been incredibly honest about their own shortcomings and actually the challenges in the business. And instead of sort of shy away from that and try to sell the dream all the time, it's been incredible. the response from the candidates has been, I love this. This is exactly how we want to start this partnership. They go in eyes open and they already start to build that trust in the interview process.

22:11James Mitra:So it's something just for anyone that might be thinking about leadership hiring as well. You're doing no one any favors by trying to hide. It's going to be so obvious from day one when Sir Haya comes in what you're really like. So you might as well get ahead of it and be really open and honest. So I really love that. What about anyone else? Are there any skills or characteristics that you think are going to be important for leaders to develop in in the new year if we go with almost the opposite in a way uh i would say empathy and like the the ability to empathize and i and i don't want people who don't like fluffy stuff to switch off here because it's essentially not just about being caring and sympathetic and all of those things is actually a competitive advantage if you're a manager if you're really able to tune into the person what drives them what motivates them what where do you challenge them what do they need from you what do they appreciate but well if you tune into all of these things and really really turbocharge your ability to see the world through their eyes really empathize with them you will retain them you will get the best out of them they will be more productive so it's not a fluffy nice to have it's really the competitive advantage that you get from from empathy and i think sometimes we we skip that when we talk about how to have a good one-to-one or how to give good feedback and all this thing we forget that there is actually like humanity behind it and we need to start there because otherwise it's just the cold quite transactional relationship and the best managers that I've had and the best leaders that I've worked on that really got me fired up they were the ones who really understood me and allowed me to communicate very clearly and transparently with them so empathy is is my number one the reality is that most people are going to be different right and so it's a leaders I think being able to be adaptable to what people need I think is is super important and I know that Amplified we always do when we start or when we join we always do these kind of read me docs which I've always loved because I find them so helpful in understanding how you're going to get the best out of that person like how they like to receive feedback how they like to work and I think it sounds quite simple but I think it's really useful in understanding what that individual person is going is going to need from the outset and how you're ultimately going to get the best from them one I think there's this word around I think it comes from your training actually look around how you inspire as a leader and I think it can be really easy to get stuck in like the day-to-day churn of work and actually when you forget to inspire your team whether it's because you've got a really mission-led business like the body coach for example you know exactly what you're doing and you're really excited or you might not have a business that's genuinely changing people's lives day-to-day but it could have a really great impact it's how you get people really excited about their work and you inspire them I think that's one big thing.

24:49The other thing I think, I don't know if we talk about this enough, is I think leaders and the skills they have to avoid is that politics in the business, it's their job to nip it in the bug when it starts creeping in. I think the biggest crash of businesses is when you start allowing politics to creep into your leadership team and it creeps into little mini teams and you get silos. I think that absolutely has to start with the leadership team. So I would definitely call out super honest, super transparent, direct feedback, none of this like bitching in the corner. I think leaders have to own that as their own traits and then allow the team to do the same.

25:19James Mitra:Another thing that comes up on the podcast a lot is high performance, a phrase that's thrown around willy-nilly these days, but we know if you can build high-performing teams and cultures, you're likely to have a lot of success. So it's something that I'd love to get your thoughts on. What does high performance actually look like in 2026? You need to start with defining it, which is what you're asking for, because not every company is a revolute. not every company is a social enterprise there's lots of stuff in between so what is high performance in your organization but actually articulate that be very very clear what it is and it probably goes beyond your set of values or maybe it means that you will redo your values to express a bit more clearly what high performance is maybe it isn't just a value around teamwork or something it's it's something a bit more concrete so that exercise is something that i find often very valuable to leadership team because they will do this they will sit around a table five six seven eight people and say yes next year is the year of performance and we need to be high performing and this is our job and we will drive high performance okay but what is it and you get 10 different explanations i did that two companies ago i found myself just sitting around a table and that conversation happened time and time again so i forced them all to sit down with me one-on-one and define what high performance is and play this back to them just to illustrate that we we're not aligned and we have to be aligned and that took us through an exercise where we got to a very clear definition of what high performance was for us.

26:47So that's number one. And I think also it relates to values, but also how you define high performance. There's often shadow sides. So we might say that speed is a value for us. And that means high performance means that you do things, you ship things quickly in our organization. Okay, fair, great. But what's the shadow side? There's always a shadow side. And the shadow side to that is you will not have perfection. You will sometimes feel a bit rushed and you will probably make mistakes. So are we sure that we are okay with those things? Because you can't ask someone to be high performing, do things very quickly and then get upset with them if they take risks or make mistakes.

27:30So I think often we gloss over the shadow sides when we talk about how we design an organization. And I think if you really want to be high performing, you're clear with the shadow sides and the tradeoffs. So that's really important to me. And then finally, you just have to make sure that you really have ways to celebrate excellence and high performance. How do you reward that? How do I, if I'm really tuned in to what high performance is at my company, how do I get rewarded and recognized for that time and time again, regularly and publicly and in private and financially and otherwise? So, yeah, I feel quite strongly about this topic because I feel like it's really underdeveloped in most companies.

28:07Again, it's something that is really helpful to get an external person like myself or one of my colleagues to come in and help with it because we can just look at it a bit more pragmatically. I really like what you said there, Mike, about the shadow side. I think you're right. This is so often overlooked. We forget about that. We focus so much on what does the output look like. And I was thinking as you were talking about the shadow side from the perspective of what does it look like around the office, around the people when we're high performing, right? I think for me, high performance is really about focusing on the behaviors.

28:37What are we seeing around us? Are we seeing people take risks? Are we seeing people celebrate wins? Are we seeing people make mistakes and take learnings from it instead of being judged or are we seeing that there's really high psychological safety, that people are able to innovate and learn quickly, that they feel safe to do all of that without fear? And then equally, as you were saying about that shadow side, if we're seeing that people aren't taking risks, if people are fearful, if people aren't speaking up in meetings, if people aren't challenging the targets that are being put in there, then that's the kind of shadow side in the behavioural world of low performance.

29:08I think when I think about high performance, it's really about adaptability. It's about curiosity. it's about people feeling safe to own things and I think that if we focus just on the output of like certain targets being hit that's not really high performance we're going to get we're going to get output sure but we won't ever achieve high performance if we're not if we're not creating an environment where people can sustainably perform and outperform themselves but I really like what you mentioned about the the shallow side because I just think it's so easy to overlook that the only point I have in addition to that I guess is more like the infrastructure you have in place and how you evaluate it and a bit to your point in the beginning around what is it for us but also for example this is very like basic example but quite often in sales teams you'll have a target and if people overachieve on the target then they're deemed a high performer but back to all these points underneath it what are you actually as a company what's your metric what's your reward mechanism also how do you recognize the things and all these things underneath that might factor into what high performance looks like i think that can make it quite complex i think we quite often talk about um do you just evaluate monthly a quick one two three great average not great or should you have more of a structure behind it and i think we debate that quite a lot within this foundation group around what we think is the right way about how we evaluate it so it's not an easy quick fix you can do in each company i don't think i hope

30:21James Mitra:there'll be people listening to this that will uh if they have some any challenges that they'll reach out because this is what we're here to to try and help provide sort of real practical tangible advice and action to help you kind of solve these challenges in your business uh so if anyone is in that spot please do reach out moving slightly on but but it's linked very much linked to high performance is attracting and retaining exceptional talent we all know hiring is not easy once you've found somebody incredible you want to keep hold of them but actually attracting them in the first place can be difficult so what advice do you have for any founders that are looking to attract and retain this incredible talent for their teams i think high high performers are ultimately looking for i guess like really challenging and interesting problems to solve so i think like any kind of CEO founder being able to kind of really articulate what that is and what their expectation is on on how they see that person like fitting into that and then ultimately giving them the autonomy I think to really then kind of you know build out on on how they intend to kind of solve or or work towards kind of solving those those big problems so yeah for me that's I think that would be the one piece of advice that I would look to to give to kind of CEOs and founders.

31:29I think there's a big bit here about your branding and um how you get it out there and you represent like the people that you want to hire and i think fix have done an incredible job of that they've been very transparent about the culture that they have the journey that they're on the super black and white around like you either want to come here and work really fucking hard or you don't and that's okay but that's exactly the profile they want someone to come in and work really hard and i think they've just nailed it i feel like they will have saved a lot of time in the interview process probably by like almost sifting out people before they even got to applying because people already know exactly what they expect.

31:58I think that's a really great mechanism to put in place.

32:01James Mitra:I've met some founders historically, no names, of course, but who, you know, have built a brilliant business, and they just assume that everyone's going to want to work there. But the truth is, exceptional talent will have a multitude of options. And you cannot be lazy in terms of how you tell the story, you know, that you invest the right amount of time, and that it's a two way thing, particularly at a leadership level, it really is a two way process. And so I think it's so true to make sure your messaging is crisp that your interviewers in that interview process are fully aligned and all assessing the right things it's incredible how these sorts of things are not talked about sometimes it gives candidates red flags so yeah i think there's a lot there for founders to think about i think the founders need to spend a lot more time networking with candidates and building that pipeline and having a list of people who maybe weren't quite right or weren't available or chose to say no but basically you as a founder of leadership team you need to keep a lot of potential candidates for the future warm make it a project that you own and you do properly because people will leave people will your your company needs to change focus there will be so many different scenarios where you just need good people and unless you have your little black book of good people you're losing time and you're going to lose out on candidates so that's number one Number two, a bit more basic, a bit more process oriented, but comes back to maybe the conversation around high performance and values, like really design a process that tests for values.

33:29Don't do a vibe check. Don't do coffee culture check with like five random people in business that is super awkward for them and the candidate. Like if you have values, let's go back to the speed value. If your value is shipping fast, how do you actually test for that? what do you ask in every single culture interview or values alignment whatever you call it what do you look for what's a red flag and how do you assess whether someone passes that or not because there are so many companies that think that they are testing candidates for culture fit or values alignment but they're really just socializing and having a chat and that is not a good way to predict if someone will fit in with your ways of working because it's not if they're is it going to be a culture ad are they going to fit in it's not that it's like do they work with our ways of working will they align to our way of seeing the world and valuing the same things that we value and it's much better for both parties if you've designed that in a scalable and like consistent way that happens for everyone so it's such low-hanging fruit and it just you do it once and you do it well and it serves you for the next 100 highest it's pretty basic maths that that feels like something that's worthwhile investing in.

34:40James Mitra:I guess on the flip side to this, you will have all seen the companies you're supporting. What are top candidates looking for, whether it's traits, whether it's behaviors, whether it's benefits, like what are the things on their agenda that any founder listening to this or operator that's looking to hire great people should be conscious of going into the new year? I've really enjoyed some really great candidates on the Portco side. People are asking for like product roadmap detail or like people want to see recent board decks and like people are really into the detail now they want to make sure you've got a decent run rate you've got some cash in the bank that they're actually going to be working on exciting product growth or features so i think people actually are being quite demanding in some ways i think before we used to just write an interview process and it always felt like on the interviewer side you were the one in control i don't think we are in control anymore i think the candidate pools are massive rightly or wrongly and therefore we have to be willing to give a bit away and that's good but also test us to make sure we have that all prepped and beautiful and ready to go the way that current interview processes are structured it is still very employer driven and it's still that like oh 10 minutes at the end for any candidate questions if there are them versus actually what are the really impactful questions that that candidate could bring and i'm really making time for it because thinking about it like now i i still don't think i see that in majority of businesses we have one client and um we had this amazing interview a few months ago where we got a whiteboard up and like the candidate came in with 100 questions and answered it live and it was like and i was like the energy in the room was insane because we're all getting really excited about this is what we'd actually all work together and this is what it would be like and there's a few challenges and when people warmed up they could be a bit more direct in their feedback and ask more direct questions it's a really gorgeous way of bringing to life what working together might look like and i think that was the best test in my opinion i think that really helped shift away from the culture fit piece as well like can you actually do the job that's what we're assessing right it's not about like could i go for a beer with you after work which many leaders have said to me before when they've been in that infuran but to Mikey's point it's not about that stuff and this example you just shared there now is like demonstrating right away can this person do this job are they capable today and can we see enough room for them to to grow and develop into this role in the future I think that's really important I think another thing that was mentioned earlier by you James was around that self-awareness piece I think that a lot of people are looking to like work for really smart really self-aware leaders as well we want to know the people that we're working for we can get behind we've heard some really good like mentions earlier on around like being able to inspire people as a leader as well can the leaders actually inspire us do our leaders or the founders that we're going to be working with do they know their strengths and do they play to them or do they kind of think that they have all the answers again this goes back to previous response that i gave but i think that self-awareness is a big thing behaviorally that people are looking for in in their founders in their leaders when they're joining business now they want to know this person knows their shit that they're really good at it and they also know what they don't know and so that's why they're bringing in the expertise and that's why i'm going to feel trusted to come in and do this job because this person knows that they're not going to be right so i think that's kind of like more on the behavioral side but i really agree around the kind of like actually giving them the opportunity to demonstrate like that they can do the role i really like this example you shared the white board i think that's great you're all people leaders giving a lot of great advice to founders but let's talk specifically to any people leaders listening to this.

37:58James Mitra:What should their top priority be as we head into the year ahead? I'm going to go in on something on growth and development, I think, and looking at how we set that up in perhaps a different, more kind of agile way. I think it's going to be really crucial, but to our point at the beginning about, you know, companies aren't looking to double headcount and do that at all costs. So I think there is going to be more of a push to find creative ways to really upskill our people, you know evolve their careers promote them in some cases but ultimately looking at ways to be more agile and not having these really kind of linear career paths slightly rogue one but I think like looking after number one I think the people leader role is really lonely sometimes and can be a really challenging role and I think a lot of the forums I sit in at the moment that you see it and you hear it it's really tiring and I think we've got like way more claims coming in the HR jobs getting a bit icky and like quite er heavy people are unhappy like people want more cash they need more cash to live it's not just because they've been greedy there's so many complex factors at play i think from a people perspective it can feel like you're just getting piled on without necessarily having your avenue to do it and i think um one of the forums i sit in they've just started doing talking partners and i love it so people just pair up and have a good old rant confidentially to make sure they're processing what's going on day to day and i think just look after you number one i think this is probably an obvious one seeing as i'm coming from unleashed but I would say just development at every single level.